I NEVER SAW a key to the front door of my childhood home, though I’m sure my father had one somewhere. Keys were never important in my family. But I loved that front door with its leadlight panels – waves of coloured glass reflecting the light. It sat behind a porch at the end of a short hopscotch path. The small front yard belied the scale of the sprawling, many-roomed house built into the side of a very steep hill. The backyard was my own wild fairyland, with a magnificent view out over the city of Brisbane.

Sometimes I left home by the front door, but I always returned through one of six back doors. Perhaps that says something about my nature, how I fitted into this family as the fifth of eight children. Seven doors that opened and shut, seven siblings who came and went: that demanded great vigilance! Then there were the windows for emergency escapes and the roof door into the turret.