'Evidence from the novel, the Franklin Papers at the Mitchell Library, and the wonderfully informative Goulburn Evening Post indicates that while Franklin always insisted "the novel is not my life", both she and it owed a good deal to 1890s Goulburn', particularly her teacher Miss Mae Gillespie and journalist Thomas J. Hebblewhite (Jill Roe, Macquarie University News, September 2001, p.6)