Colleen McCullough: 1937-2015 |

Colleen McCullough was born in Wellington, Australia to Jim, an itinerant worker and Laurie, a New Zealander with a Maori background. McCullough described her early life as nomadic and unpleasant. "Mother and father hated each other but refused to separate. They fought constantly," she said. Following Jim's death in 1973, Laurie was accused of poisoning him. It was discovered that Jim had at least two other families and she was cleared of the charges. Both McCullough and her younger brother Carl vowed to remain single.

When Colleen was 12, the family settled in Sydney where she excelled academically in both arts and science. She felt that a career in science would be most suitable for a spinster so she studied neurophysiology. She was a well-respected scientist, working in Australia, England and the United States where she ran a research laboratory and taught at Yale University Medical School.

Because she was determined to remain single, she became concerned about supporting herself in her old age. Women scientists were paid about half the salary of their male counterparts during the 1970s. She envisioned herself as a "a 70-year old spinster in a cold-water walk-up flat with one 60-watt light bulb" and decided to write a bestseller. Her first novel, Tim, was published in 1974. It did not provide the financial security she had envisioned, so McCullough polled Yale students to see what they wanted to read. With their suggestions–romance, character, and plot–she tried again. Her second book The Thorn Birds was the bestseller she had wanted. By 1977, she was a millionaire and gave up her job at Yale.

She returned to Australia to write full time. Because their relationship was so strained that she did not want to live on the same continent as her mother, McCullough settled on remote Norfolk Island, 1400 km from mainland Australia. In 1984, she married Ric Robinson describing him as "nicest man I'd ever met".

She died of apparen't kidney disease on January 29, 2015 on Norfolk Island.

Some of her books: