It all started with a "badly paid job" working nine hours a week as a typist with literary journal Westerly.
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But that eventually snowballed into a bachelor's degree, a masters of philosophy and positions with a range of arts/literature organisations including Australia Council, the National Playwrights Centre and Varuna, The National Writers' House.
For English-born Susan Hayes, who has been awarded a medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to literature, particularly as an administrator, it's been a world of opportunity given to her by this country.
"I always thought if this happened, I would be very blase about it. But I'm not blase," she said. "I'm very excited and very pleased."
She was most gratified that the people she has worked with deemed her worthy of such an honour.
Glenbrook resident Ms Hayes was born into poverty in England and orphaned at 13. By 15, she had left school and was living in a hostel.
She moved to Australia in 1981 with her then husband, which is when she got the badly paid typing job and then made a life-changing discovery.
"I found out that in Australia, people like me could go to university and get a degree," she said.
She promptly enrolled at the University of Western Australia where she discovered her love for the literature of her adopted country and graduated with first class honours.
Ms Hayes managed the Centre for Studies of Australian Literature before moving to the Department of English at the university.
By 1994, she had been appointed director of the Fremantle Writers Festival, a director and later chair of the Australian Society of Authors and later manager of the Cultural Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Copyright Agency.
When she was appointed chief executive officer of the National Playwrights Centre in 2002, she took the annual conference, which had always been held in Canberra, to different venues around the country.
From 2008 to 2012, Ms Hayes was director of the Literature Board of the Australia Council overseeing the grants program. For someone who had spent years painstakingly assembling grant applications, it was thrilling to be in a position to be able to help those organisations get their grants.
Eventually in 2013, she became deputy chair of Varuna, The National Writers' House in Katoomba, which she said was a "great honour".
And through all those years, she has retained her passion for literature. When the Gazette visited, she had just finished Pip Williams' The Bookbinder of Jericho, which she declared "the best book I've read this year".
Ms Hayes has come a long way from her impoverished start in south-west London.
"Australia has done wonderful things for me," she said. "I am very grateful to this country."
