The results of these labours were a website, moiramcalister.com, and more recently her first novel, Izzy.

In Izzy, McAlister has given one of her female ancestors, who lived in a world where women were powerless and had few rights, a fictional - better - life.

"It's a fictional view of the actual life of my great-great-grandmother," McAlister said.

The book takes place among significant 19th-century historical event including first illegal settlement of Melbourne, the Irish Famine and the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.

Izzy Marchbank is the illegitimate daughter of an Irish peer. She marries Dr Bryn Carrick, the first doctor in Melbourne, and they have three children together, but eventually part. She takes up with a soldier, Francis Chevalier, with whom she also has a child, but they also separate and, with her children, Izzy returns to Australia and faces the daunting challenge of rebuilding her life at a time when that was even more difficult than it is now.

McAlister's great-great grandparents were Barry Cotter (1806-74), who was Melbourne's first doctor, and his wife Inez Seville Fitzgerald (c. 1817-64), on whom Izzy is based.

Like the fictional couple, they had three children together but parted after several years and she became involved with a soldier, Francis Vignolles, before returning to Australia with her children.

While Dr Cotter was the one mostly written about, McAlister said Inez "had a life of her own". Writing the story as a novel was a way of exploring and highlighting Inez's life while acknowledging it wasn't a biography. The author used her own invention to fill in the gaps.

McAlister used a lamp post metaphor to describe how this worked: each fact she uncovered illuminated part of Inez's life, and she filled in the dark spaces in between.

"You can see another lamp post in the distance."

Writing the novel was a challenge, she said, as "not much was recorded" about women in the 19^th century.

McAlister spent a total of 10 years researching her family history in Britain, Ireland and Australia, creating a website based on this research, as well as Izzy.

Izzy was inspired by the lives of her great-great grandparents, Barry Cotter (1806-74), who was Melbourne's first doctor, and his wife Inez Seville Fitzgerald (c. 1817-64).

McAlister came to Canberra in 1969 and worked as a teacher and later a teacher-librarian in Catholic primary schools in Belconnen and Calwell until 2012.

She said despite the advent of screens big and small with plenty of content, books were still popular with children.

"The children I know are all big readers," she said.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Captain Underpants, Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman were among the enduringly popular books and authors among young people.

Having produced and had printed her first novel, McAlister said she would probably write another in a similar vein.

"I love historical fiction," she said.

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