Janet Dalgliesh

Janette Dalgliesh was born Janet Dalgliesh in London, UK, on 21 October 1955. She migrated with her family to Australia in 1966, where her father, a doctor, set up practice in Hervey Bay, Queensland. After attending school and University in Brisbane, Queensland, Janet began working as a puppeteer for the famous Marionette Theatre of Australia under her married name, Janet Ashelford. In 1983 she landed her first major television puppetry gig, providing the speaking (not singing) voice and performance for Maria, the soprano in Maestro's Company. She performed puppetry for several TV commercials and satirical news programs over the next couple of years, and also created the puppet characters of Angelina Wallaby, Mrs Magpie and Kerry Koala in the Australian Broadcasting Commission's children's production, The New Adventures of Blinky Bill. She wrote several episodes of The New Adventures of Blinky Bill and later went on to write for children's theatre and on other television productions. In 1986 when her marriage broke down she returned to her maiden name Janet Dalgliesh. Under this name she continued working on The New Adventures of Blinky Bill, and also performed and directed for Melbourne's Polyglot Puppet Theatre. Her last major puppetry performance was on the feature film Babe. In the late nineties she was involved with animation technology company Didjiglove, and in 2002 moved to a small country town in Victoria. She now writes speculative fiction and is involved in politics and the union movement.