Beyond Alice

‘A tender, raw and beautiful coming-of-age adventure, that forces Tanya to pivot between the vast freedom of desert life, and the rigid expectations of city boarding school. From start to finish Beyond Alice is beguiling!’ Renee McBryde, bestselling author of The House of Lies

In 1975, twelve-year-old Tanya Heaslip leaves her isolated home in outback Australia and is sent sixteen hundred kilometres south to a girls’ boarding school for an education the bush can’t provide.

The freedom of her young life gives way to an unfriendly world of stone and concrete, high walls, small skies, uniforms, harsh words and endless rules that make no sense.

In common with many children of the outback, Tanya struggles to adjust to boarding school. Yet, over time, her fellow boarders become her new family and Tanya survives both by writing, and by telling her stories of family, race meetings, gymkhanas, campdrafts and stock camps to her loyal friends.

Tanya’s pain of losing family and the trauma of dislocation are ultimately transformed into five life-changing years. She emerges stronger and more resilient, now determined to carve out her own life.

Warm, humorous and uplifting, this is the story of a small girl who triumphs.

Author Biography

Raised on an isolated cattle station north of Alice Springs during the 1960s and 70s, Tanya learnt about the outside world through the Correspondence School and School of the Air. She spent many hours dreaming of the overseas lands depicted in her childhood storybooks.

When she was twelve years old, she was sent sixteen hundred kilometres away from her outback home to a boarding school, a traumatic and life changing experience. From there, she became a lawyer. She never stopped dreaming, however, which led her to the Czech Republic to teach English in 1994, four years after the Berlin Wall fell.

Tanya has published Alice to Prague (2019), An Alice Girl (2020), and Beyond Alice (2021) is her third memoir.

Tanya still works in law and lives back in Alice Springs with her husband. Tanya is President of the NT Writer’s Centre.