He was the kind of dad took her to the library twice a week and learnt how to tie her hair in a ponytail when her mum moved up the corporate ladder.

He would watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and nail every question.

But when he went from finishing cryptic crosswords to unable to write a phone number down, the only real choices that were offered to him were to die slowly or die even more slowly.

"It was 11 weeks from diagnosis to death. He hoped the chemotherapy would at least give him more time in a healthier state whereas it didn't, it actually made him sicker," Cheyne said.

"He instantly fell into a deep depression and within three weeks he was basically in hospital full time. And the last two weeks he was essentially comatose because he was on quite a lot of painkilling drugs and still an enormous amount of pain."

Euthanasia is a hard topic but it's one the newly elected Member for Ginninderra wants to champion, following the retirement of Labor backbencher and voluntary euthanasia advocate Mary Porter.

Cheyne said the veteran parliamentarian was her inspiration when hitting the campaign trail around Belconnen.

"I think in many people's minds that Mary is the epitome of a good politician and that's what I aspire to be," Cheyne said.

"In the election campaign if it was raining or if it was storming or really windy out there I'd think 'What would Mary do?'. Of course she would be out there and just suck it up."

Belconnen is Cheyne's first real home town, she said.

Born in Cairns, the only child of two restaurant owners, her parents changed careers and moved towns too frequently for her to become attached to any one place.

Cheyne attended boarding school in Rockhampton and later studied journalism in Brisbane before she moved to Canberra in 2008 worked in the Attorney-General's department.

"I first lived in Red Hill and was still pretty homesick for Queensland. And every time I went back to Queensland I felt this sense of you know, Queensland is where I belong. But then about three quarters of the way through 2009 I moved to Belco and into the town centre and just fell in love and I felt a greater sense of belonging than I've ever had in my life," Cheyne said.

Her blog, In The Taratory, was a love letter to this newfound sense of belonging.

"When I first started blogging people were so happy to jump on the bagging out Canberra bandwagon," she said

"It was fun to love to hate Canberra even if you lived here. And for me I thought that was absurd."

In recent years, she believes there's been a resurgence in pride in coming from Belconnen.

"It's understated but it really is there and you don't have to have a tattoo of 2617 on you to feel it," Cheyne said.