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The Age newspaper is rather taken lately with the idea of interviewing someone over lunch. Its not a bad idea - it gets the subject a little more relaxed and you get the added bonus of covering the restaurant/cafe as well. Recently Jason Steger met up with Colleen McCullough in the Sofitel in the city. |
She has come to Melbourne for a day. Not from her home on Norfolk Island, where she lives in a house she bought more than 30 years ago on the proceeds of her rather successful second novel, The Thorn Birds. She's been in Sydney talking about her new book, Life without the Boring Bits, a sort of memoir cum collection of essays cum rant that is very Colleen. But she can't get back home for a while because there aren't many flights to her outpost in the Pacific.
Last time I saw her was in that home she shares with her husband, Ric Robinson, a Norfolk Island local. It was not long before she was due to have a major operation and, to be honest, I wondered whether I'd see her again. But here she is, I'm happy to say; a bit frailer but undaunted. She takes a lot of aspirin - ''a wonderful drug'' - and still loves a fag. And she still has her raucous laugh.
