My mother is a very funny and silly woman. She loves me and I love her, but sometimes she gets really annoyed when I do silly things. She believes in fighting for her causes. She has travelled extensively and some of the places she has been to are: Austria, Germany, Romania, Israel, America (3 times), Holland, Belgium, the UK, France, the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

She loves drama. She has been in thirty productions (not including the ones she has directed) and directed six. She has been in drama for twenty-one years.

She has had five children's books published and two or three poems published.

It all began when she was born at the Sunshine Hospital to European parents, on the 18^th of February, 1961. Her parents are Hannelore Jost and Gerhard Weber. Her mother changed her name to Weber when they married in June of 1960.

For the first six years of her life she lived at 131 William Street, St.Albans with her parents and grandparents. He grandfather, Matthias, owned chickens, rabbits, pigeons and a big German Shepherd named Susie which she could ride on. She had a pet rabbit named Spotty.

She then started school at Sacred Heart Primary which was a catholic school. Later, the family - minus the grandparents - moved to 6 Harleston Street, St.Albans where she lived for twenty years. Her parents, my grandparents, still live there. After only a year at Sacred Heart, her parents enrolled her at St Albans Heights Primary. My mum did not enjoy her time at the Catholic school. She has very strong memories of the nuns in their black habits carrying straps. Children were chased around the playground and beaten. My mum no longer believes in religion or any god.

After she finished Grade 6, her mum took her overseas for the first time. They travelled to Austria and Romania where her grandmother, aunts and cousins still lived.

During the early days at 6 Harleston Street, my grandparents struggled financially. My mum remembers sitting on foam mattresses on the floor of the living room. There was no TV! She would spend time reading, drawing and playing with such things as paper cut out dolls. It took my grandparents two jobs each to be able to buy furniture. It took them an even longer time to get a phone or a TV.

My mum remembers the outside toilet - the dunny can - which was a big tin can with a lid. A man ("the Dunny Can Man") came to collect it every week and replace it with a new one. Instead of going to the outside toilet before bed, she and her mother would use a potty that her mother then put outside. You used to be able to smell the toilet collecting man for miles because, of course, he already had full cans on his truck. The poor man would carry the full can to his truck on his head; sometimes there were spills!

She started secondary school at St Albans High where she first found her love of acting. She graduated from Year 12 in 1978, with the intention of either going to University to study to be a teacher or attending NIDA - the school of Dramatic Arts in Sydney. She did neither.

Instead, she began working for the State Bank of Victoria in 1979. In her early days with the bank, she remembers how primitive the computers were. Unlike today, most transactions were done manually. She has a strong memory of manually calculating June interest for bankbooks, then having to write it into each and every one that was presented. In those days, calculating machines were only used if absolutely necessary.

For her, getting money was novel so she saved up and bought her first new car, which was an old Toyota Corona. Once she had had her own car, she would drive to auditions. She got her first part in 1980, in a play called The Anniversary.

Then she saved a bit more and took another trip to Austria. She worked in the bank for thirteen years until she got pregnant with a little girl who would be called Jessica Leigh Taurins. I was born on the 13^th of March, 1992.

She met my father when she was working in the bank. After many years of friendship, they got married in Las Vegas, Nevada, in November 1990. His name is Peter William Taurins.

In 2000, she gave birth to another baby girl. My sister was born on the 18^th of April, 2000. My nickname for her is Gabbie-Stinky-Monkey-Face. Her name is Gabrielle Kate Taurins.