They could base it on the true story of National Library of Australia librarian Nicolette Suttor. The librarian's spectacular hair (during our interview on Wednesday it seemed to have a life of its own) is already down to her knees (it is 135 centimetres long) , and is growing at a gallop.

The Grimm's Rapunzel's hair is so long it acts a golden staircase that can be climbed to get up to the tower room in which she is imprisoned. The inevitable Handsome Prince is one of its climbers. But in the end it is hacked off by an wicked witch, and goes to waste.

But after Nicolette Suttor's hair is carefully harvested from her head by a hairdresser next March (who, even if she is a witch, will be a sweet-tempered one) it will be sold to raise money for cancer research. Suttor hopes to get more than $3000 from her feat and from the harvested crop. Competitive as anything, she laughs that her twin sister Camille Mosely got $3000 for her hair in a Shave For Cure event in New Zealand, and that "I certainly hope to beat her on that!"

But Suttor is being driven by more than competitiveness.

"I started to think of Shave For A Cure because I have this great length of hair and I might as well do something with it. And I did lose my cousin a few years ago to leukaemia [he was 18]. What better thing to do with my hair than to donate it to the cause [of leukaemia research]?".

"And donating the hair is close to my heart because when my cousin was diagnosed with leukaemia I was actually dealing with a major mental problem of my own which I was told would leave me dead [from almost inevitable strokes] by the age of 30.

"But my cousin's leukaemia was not supposed to be as certainly fatal as my problem. My problem was supposed to kill me, but my cousin's was not supposed to kill him. But it took my cousin, and I survived.

"I don't think that's right. And I think we need to find a solution for leukaemia. My cousin had a range of only three treatments for his leukaemia. The three treatments failed and then there was no hope for him. So I'm donating my hair because that is something I can do. I'll donate whatever I raise to the Leukemia Foundation for them to use in any way they wish."

Her coming dramatic deRapunzelisation will raise funds in two ways. We can all sponsor her in support of her feat of growing her hair and then shaving it, but then, she rejoices, "They use the hair itself by making it into wigs for people undergoing chemo."

Blessed are the wig makers, and it emerges that Suttor's crop of hair is just the kind that wig makers love to harvest.

"The thing about my hair is that it's dead straight. It's what wig makers absolutely adore. It's very long but it needs no straightening. It's only met with a curling iron once in the last seven or eight years, for my sister's wedding."

What's more, she adds, making a claim our Prime Minister certainly couldn't (without his pants catching fire) "my hair has never met any hair dye".

When her hair is harvested on March 11, 2015, (it's going to happen in the theatrical space of the National Library's foyer) the event will be, poignantly, symbolically, also a celebration of her 30th birthday of just a few days earlier.

"We'll be celebrating the 30th birthday I was once told I'd never live to. But [against all the expectations] that issue in my brain has been solved. And so I'll be celebrating being alive! I'm here and I'm working and I'm happy."

Hair like hers, so voluminous, so Rapunzelesque, has become a kind of (constant) companion . She's braced for the possibility that she will miss it a lot.

She laughs that "I make no promises for my emotional state on the day it's shaved off. I'm so used to combing through it when I'm stressed or worried."

She can imagine, with no hair of her own, paying more attention to her hairy cat.

"I'd love to raise at least $3000!" she enthused as we said goodbye.

I calculated, walking to my Barina, the breeze tousling my own flaxen locks, that from all the illustrations one has ever seen of Grimm's Rapunzel the donation of the golden staircase of her hair might have netted the Leukaemia Foundation at least $30,000.

You can support Nicolette Suttor at