Colleen McCullough was born in western New South Wales in 1937. A neuroscientist by training, she worked in various hospitals before settling into ten years of research and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in the USA. In 1974 her first novel, Tim, was published in New York, followed by the bestselling The Thorn Birds in 1977 and a string of other successful novels.
Bill Ten Eyck has appeared in numerous films including The Extra, Boytown and Hating Alison Ashley, and television shows such as Stingers, Blue Heelers and The Micallef Programme.