No Time to Waste

'You never know what Louise Collins is likely to do,' a teacher said of the young Louise, a spirited child born in Melbourne in the thirties. Through childhood and adolescence, we follow her experiences and developing perceptions as she is introduced to Bohemian cafe life, student parties, art, literature and left-wing politics.


Surviving at seventeen from a life-threatening illness, and emerging from a hospital ward of terminally ill patients, she is determined to make the most of life while it lasts. A naturally adventurous nature, combined with this new urgency, soon propels her to England and shipboard romance, fearless hitchhiking alone through Europe, the vagaries of temporary winter work in London in the fifties, and political activism in the age of Mc Carthy in America  and capital punishment in Britain.


Back in Australia, she settles to marriage and child-raising, but is soon back in the work force embarked on a career in the world of art and artists. Through Louise's relationships with the four generations of women in her life, the author documents changing morals and mores, and the evolving status of women.


No Time to Waste, the first novel by M.G. Johnson, draws on personal experience and is set against the historical events and politics of one life time.