Storytelling was part of Shayne’s world long before she became an author. Raised within Australia’s traveling circus and entertainment community, she grew up surrounded by performers, musicians, rodeo families, and larger-than-life personalities. Her childhood was spent moving from town to town, attending different schools and discovering that every community—and every person within it—had a story worth hearing.
Some of her most treasured memories are of sitting around campfires as a little girl while entertainers including Slim Dusty, Reg Lindsay, Chad Morgan, and others brought days gone by to life through their stories. Those evenings taught her that the best storytelling does more than entertain: it makes people laugh, brings them together, and transforms the confusion and chaos of real life into something worth sharing.
Shayne’s own life has provided no shortage of material. As a teenager, she gave educational talks with reptiles and became a circus schoolteacher at seventeen. She later performed as an aerialist and on the high wire, met her husband, Wayne, at Lennon Bros. Circus, and became part of a partnership shaped by a shared performing heritage and an appetite for adventure.
Together, Shayne and Wayne raised three children while traveling, working, building businesses, and creating a life that rarely followed a conventional script. Their adventures included taking a circus aboard a converted fishing trawler to remote communities in the Northern Territory. Over the years, Shayne also worked in event coordination, helped steer the Bendigo Easter Fair through a difficult financial period, operated catering and coffee-cart businesses with Wayne, and helped develop the Cruise Port Wizard travel app.
Across all these experiences, one belief remained constant: interesting stories are not reserved for the rich, famous, or extraordinary. Whether sharing space with celebrated entertainers or sitting beside someone whose only possessions were those they could carry, Shayne learned that everyone has a story—and that every one of those stories can reveal something funny, moving, or unexpectedly familiar about being human.
In 2020, life changed direction once again. The COVID-19 pandemic brought Shayne and Wayne’s business to a standstill while Wayne was also facing a serious heart condition that would eventually require double-bypass surgery. With no way of knowing how long the disruption would last, Shayne applied for what was intended to be a six-month position as a Drive Tester with VicRoads.
That temporary role became a five-year career. After starting in June 2020, Shayne expanded her knowledge across vehicle registration and driver licensing before training to become a Drive Test Trainer herself. Preparing the next generation of Drive Testers became one of the most rewarding parts of her work. She later served for nine months as an Acting Team Leader, gaining a broader understanding of the organization and discovering that, after a lifetime spent in circuses, entertainment, events, and family businesses, she could also thrive in what she jokingly called the “real world.”
The role brought Shayne lasting friendships and strengthened qualities that had guided her throughout her life: listening to people, helping them through unfamiliar situations, finding humor under pressure, and creating a sense of connection wherever she happened to be.
While she was still at VicRoads, a family conversation quietly planted the seed for her next chapter. On the day before her granddaughter’s eighteenth birthday in November 2024, the young woman tearfully confessed, “Nan, I don’t want to adult.” She wasn’t joking.
The words stayed with Shayne. They expressed something she recognized in people of every age: adulthood can feel confusing, overwhelming, and suspiciously short on instructions. The thought continued rumbling around in her mind until, during 2025, she began turning it into something meaningful.
Shayne retired from VicRoads at the end of July 2025. She and Wayne sold their home, bought their motorhome, Big Bob, welcomed a Jack Russell puppy named Cookie into the family, and returned to traveling Australia’s highways and byways. With the time and freedom to concentrate on writing, Shayne transformed her granddaughter’s deeply honest words into the inspiration for the Hot Messy Self-Help Series.
Drawing on a lifetime of unconventional experiences, memorable people, unexpected detours, and plans that did not always behave themselves, Shayne writes books that find the humor and humanity in trying to hold life together. Her work offers a refreshingly human alternative to polished, prescriptive self-help—less life overhaul, more laughter, perspective, and the comforting realization that most of us are making it up as we go.
Shayne Halliday 