Briefly

I was born in Mitchell, a small town on the edge of the Maranoa River in south-western Queensland, Australia. The Ooline bottle trees from the remnants of a rainforest in times long ago are currently in flower.

My life and my award winning short stories has been informed by Mitchell. After the first version of Neighbours failed to rate, I was hired to write, re-write, edit and storyline the highly successful second version from about episode 26 up to its sale from Channel 7 to Channel 10 and thereafter. Although Neighbours was shot in a reasonably wealthy suburb of Melbourne, I gave it the characters, stories, drama and humour found in the location of the tiny town I grew up in. Mitchell and my family and I became the Mitchell family — Charlene (me), Henry (my brother) and Madge (my mother). The suburb they lived in was finally given a name in the second version. I called it Erinsborough: an anagram of Neighbours. Millions of people tuned into it. 

I have a Master of Arts from Griffith University in 2005. I was awarded Alumnus of the Year in November 2011 by Griffith University, School of Arts, in Queensland.