Makkalou Kolin

Colleen McCullough was born in 1937 in Wellington, a small town in the Australian state of New South Wales. The scenery there is beautiful: it is the fertile valley of the Macquarie River. Her mother was of New Zealand origin and was very proud of her Māori blood; her father, James McCullough, of Irish descent, quite justifiably considered himself a descendant of Australia’s earliest settlers. The family moved constantly, and the girl barely had time to make friends before they had to change their place of residence again. Books, drawing, and writing poetry became a substitute for peers. Colleen was considered the only bookworm in a family of athletes. The family’s shared hobby was mountaineering. Even at the age of seventy-four, Laurie McCullough went climbing. When the McCulloughs finally settled in Sydney, Colleen entered the Catholic College of the Holy Cross, where she astonished her teachers with her erudition. The talented student had a special interest in the humanities. Her cherished dream was medicine, specifically neurosurgery. On the way to higher education, she had to work as a primary school teacher, librarian, and journalist. At last the determined Miss McCullough entered the medical faculty of the University of Sydney and... in her very first year developed allergic dermatitis from disinfectant soap. With such an illness, there could be no thought of a career as a practicing surgeon. After grieving for a while, Colleen turned her gaze to pure science and devoted many years to neurobiology (not neuropsychology; Wikipedia is a little mistaken). After graduating from university, she worked at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital, and in 1963 she moved to Great Britain. In London, at Great Ormond Street Hospital, she had a fateful meeting with the head of the neurology department at Yale University, who offered the promising specialist a job. Mrs. McCullough devoted ten years to Yale, to teaching and research. It was at Yale University that her first two novels were written. "Tim," devoted to medical issues, namely mental retardation, was received favorably by the public, and "The Thorn Birds" made an even greater splash. The success of both books led McCullough to decide to leave her medical career and "set off on her own." At the end of the 1970s, after London and Connecticut, the writer found a quiet harbor on Norfolk