A Quality Life

Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, June commenced this final challenge - to write her memoirs. Robbed of the ability to speak she started typing a story or two a day. Eighty-six thousand words in all, the keyboard rattled away at the start but finished with single, lonely clicks.

Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, June commenced this final challenge - to write her memoirs. Robbed of the ability to speak she started typing a story or two a day. Eighty-six thousand words in all, the keyboard rattled away at the start but finished with single, lonely clicks. Not one to be silenced, in her final days she composed haikus in her bed and shared them via her sight board. June revelled in life and that is what added the quality to it. These stories trace her life growing up in South Australia, exploring the United Kingdom as a young woman, marrying in Canada, raising her young family in Tasmania, and an active retirement in Sydney. It focuses on the Dollman, Bryant and Burdon families, her observations of the times, poetry, travelogues and her experience with MND. Sale proceeds will be donated to MND NSW, Australia.

June Burdon, artist, teacher, and student of languages, was born June Dollman in the historic mining town of Burra Burra, South Australia in 1926. After the Second World War she travelled to the United Kingdom before moving to Montreal to marry fellow Australian, Errol Burdon. With her young family she returned home in 1961, living briefly in Melbourne and then for extended periods in Tasmania and New South Wales. She died of Motor Neurone Disease in 2003, and is survived by Errol and their children Trevor, Ross and Jennifer Burdon.