Jenny was born and raised on a small farm in the Riverina in southern NSW, Australia. Following boarding school in Sydney, she commenced her nursing training at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne before embarking on a twelve-month adventure overseas with five close nursing friends at the age of 21. 

On her return, she married and lived on a remote cattle station in north Queensland. Her life there was recounted in her best-selling biography published as McAllister by Ocean Reeve at inHouse Publishing in 2016, later re-published by Allen&Unwin as Back of Beyond in 2018. 

Jenny's newest book, Innocent Nurses Abroad is a prequel to her previous biography. Now the reader can understand where Jenny's indomitable spirit comes from as they follow her exciting but often threatening—and dangerous adventures in Europe and beyond, in 1968.

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