NEWCASTLE playwright Vanessa Bates was born in Australia, with her father an Australian man who was in this country's air force and her mother a woman who had been born in the Philippines.
And when she was a child, her father's air force team was transferred to Penang in Malaysia, so she spent her initial school years in that country and saw many of its theatre shows. And her sister was born there. They returned to Australia in her childhood, but her father was soon sent to Malaysia again and she was in a Penang high school for three years before they came back here and lived in a house in Raymond Terrace as her father was based at Williamtown.
