Her father landed a job working with Palestinian refugees via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) when she was 4 years old.
She and her sister grew up in Lebanon until civil war forced their evacuation to Switzerland in 1973.
Julia trained as a teacher in London and returned to Lebanon in 1978, working for Beirut's Daily Star until another evacuation, this time to Vienna.
There she worked at an international school and met her husband, Jon Arne Reinholt, a Norwegian employed in UN logistics.
After a stint in Jerusalem, the young family moved to Syria in 1989.
Together with another Kiwi she opened an infant school for 2-7-year-olds in the capital, Damascus, basing the curriculum on that of the New Zealand Correspondence School.
In the holidays she ran summer schools teaching sports, art and theatre to young refugees and orphans, volunteer work which earned her recognition from the UN.
As an UNWRA volunteer, she also started six kindergartens in refugee camps around Damascus.
The family spent four years in Jordan, where Julia worked for an international school and first exhibited as an artist, before returning to Jerusalem in 1997.
A series of bomb blasts near their daughter's school persuaded Jon to take early retirement two years later.
Of all the places they lived in the Middle East, she says Israel was the hardest because of the injustices they witnessed every day.
They moved to Kerikeri where Julia had family ties and Jon could pursue his love of sailing.
She started a gallery at her home on Kemp Rd, selling her own watercolours as well as Syrian fabrics and Palestinian needlework from her Middle Eastern contacts.
It soon became clear that many Northland artists were looking for a place to show their work.
"I found there was a lot of talent but nowhere, apart from a few co-ops, for local and emerging artists to exhibit," she said.
The first artist to approach her wanted an outlet for her artworks carved from ostrich eggs. Now Paitangi Ostick is an established ta moko artist, carver and weaver of korowai who has "gone on to great things".
When Julia outgrew her home studio, her father converted half a fruit packing shed on Kerikeri Rd into a gallery.
In the early days, before galleries like Village Arts opened in Kohukohu, she drove all over Northland tracking down artists. Now the gallery is booked two years in advance and she has to pick and choose whose art she exhibits.
Many of her original artists have branched out and made it into city galleries, she says.
She still likes to introduce new artists and makes space for one-off events, like last year's art auction fundraiser for Christchurch.
She also still sells fabrics for her friends in the Middle East and now shares space with an in-house framer.
The need for a place where Northland artists can show their work is greater than ever with the recent demise of Kerikeri galleries Gravel and Origin, the latter after 30 years.
"There's still a lot of talent looking for a place to exhibit," she says.
Less is More runs until March 31 at Kaan Zamaan, 373 Kerikeri Rd. Phone (09) 407 5191 for more information.
