A loving journey of words
LORRAINE Walton once wrote in her diary she had a feeling she would die in Paris and her words would one day be read widely.
After spending the last three-and-a-half years of her life in the City of Lights, the former Dubbo High School student tragically did pass away in 1984 in her early 30s.
Lorraine’s mother Yvonne Walton and sister Barb Croghan received Lorraine’s many letters, which Mrs Walton kept and catalogued into many volumes for decades.
“We knew she was writing a diary and we found it in her papers after she died,” Mrs Croghan told
Over the years, as the words on the pages of Lorraine’s letters began to fade, Yvonne set out to rewrite them, lovingly preserving her daughter’s thoughts.
“Mum was actually writing them by hand into foolscap notebooks. At that stage I was living in Sydney and I said, ‘Why don’t we do it on the computer?’” Mrs Croghan said.
“Mum was living at Banora
Point so from Sydney I linked onto her computer and she would read the letters out to me and I’d type them by remote onto her computer.
“Then Mum thought it would be a really nice book
Lorraine Walton’s sister Barbara Croghan and mother Yvonne Walton. PHOTO: DUBBO PHOTO NEWS
and knew that Rainey wanted to tell her story. It just grew from there,” she said. “She was a prolific writer, and always wanted to be a writer,” Mrs Walton said. Mrs Walton, now aged 92, compiled and wrote the book over seven or eight years and, despite two strokes in 2017, published “Lorraine – A Free
Spirit” in May 2018 through indie publisher Ocean Reeve.
As she had predicted, Lorraine’s thoughts and memories of her life in Paris are now open for all to read in a book she has posthumously co-authored with her mother.
“Lorraine – A Free Spirit” is available at The Book Connection, Dubbo.