Passionate about interrogating and developing new Australian work, TIM MCGARRY trained in theatre at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. His writing credits include – for Brisbane Festival/QPAC Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, for CDP Theatre Producers Being Beethoven,  Queensland Theatre/QPAC Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Christine Dunstan Productions Colleen McCullough’s Tim, Australian Chamber Orchestra There’s A Sea In My Bedroom, Sydney Opera House Families Unit Music for the Dreaming, The Nutcracker, Swing Baby Swing, Monkey Baa Thursday’s Child, Hitler’s Daughter, I Am Jack, Goodbye Jamie Boyd, The Peasant Prince, True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer, Pete the Sheep, Sydney Symphony Who Needs A Conductor Anyway.  Between 2005-2017 Tim was a Creative Director of Monkey Baa Theatre Company, one of Australia’s largest touring companies for young audiences, where he co-wrote over 20 new Australian works, touring nationally and internationally, receiving multiple Helpmann, Glug, and Sydney Theatre awards.Tim also works as a theatre director, actor and dramaturg.

COLLEEN McCULLOUGH was born in Wellington NSW in 1937. She graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in neurophysiology and in 1958 founded the neurophysiology unit at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital and then moved to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for four years. From 1967 until 1976 she worked at the Yale School of Medicine in the USA, as a researcher and teacher. It was during this period that she started to write seriously and her first novel Tim, published in 1974, received critical acclaim. Her devoted following grew even stronger when her second novel, The Thorn Birds, was released in 1977. Tim was adapted to the screen in 1979 starring Mel Gibson and Piper Laurie. She wrote eleven more novels and has sold more than 80 million books worldwide, in more than 30 languages. McCullough was named a ‘living treasure’ by the National Trust of Australia in 1997. In 2006 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. She died in January 2015 and is without a doubt one of Australia’s most revered and loved authors.