They were relocated to a camp at Uranquinty, which was previously a base for the Royal Australian Air Force, in rural western New South Wales.

Every day, Ilsa and her elder brother John cycled to the Bankstown pool before sunrise, for a two-hour training session, before returning home for breakfast and then attending school.

In 1958, the results of Talbot's regime training began to materialize, when at the age of 13, she broke the 800-metre and 880-yard freestyle world records at the New South Wales championships, and then defeated Lorraine Crapp to become the first woman to complete 440-yard under five minutes.

Her last competition was at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, where she claimed silver in the 440 yd event.

After her retirement from competitive swimming, Konrads went into journalism, and eventually became the editor of Belle, from 1975 to 1979, a leading Australian interior design magazine, and Vogue Living, from 1979 to 1984 and 1992 to 1999.