She was one of Australia’s best-selling authors, who made a fortune writing sprawling family sagas including The Thorn Birds, but now Colleen McCullough’s money is centre of an ugly legal battle between her executor and husband.
Nine News and other outlets reported from a Wednesday court hearing that will decide who inherits the writer’s nearly-$2 million estate, with Selwa Anthony, who was one of McCullough’s closet friends and is the executor of her estate, reportedly pitted against the author’s husband Ric Robinson, who is fighting for the proceeds of that estate.
Anthony and Robinson are in dispute over which version of McCullough’s two wills, apparently made one year apart, was her true will. The first leaves her estate to a US university, while the second leaves her estate to Robinson. Nine News reported that Anthony told the court McCullough had kicked Robinson out of their home over an alleged affair, but invited him back two weeks later.
Wednesday’s hearing also heard testimony from McCullough’s own solicitor, who reportedly gave evidence that she thought the writer was reluctant to sign the second will, while Robinson’s barrister argued that the scrawls McCullough had made on the second will as her signature were sufficient to execute the will.
Starts at 60 contacted McCullough’s lawyer and Robinson’s barrister for comment. The hearing will continue on Thursday.
Best known for her internationally acclaimed novels, McCullough died on Norfolk Island in January 2015 at the age of 77. Formerly a neuroscientist, she had shot to fame in 1977 after the publication of her second novel, The Thorn Birds, which was the story of a doomed romance between a Catholic priest and a woman in the Australian outback.
It sold 33 million copies worldwide, which Wikipedia says makes it the best-selling book in Australian history, and was turned into an award-winning television miniseries in 1983, starring Richard Chamberlain as Father Ralph de Briscassart and Rachel Ward as Meggie Cleary.The paperback rights for the novel sold for a then-record of $1.9 million.
The notoriously plain-speaking author, though, wasn’t happy with the miniseries, reportedly saying that Ward “couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag” and that English actor Chamberlain “wandered about all wet and wide-eyed”.
McCullough’s first novel Tim (1974), the story of a developing romance between an unusual couple, was also adapted into a film starring a young Mel Gibson in 1980.
McCullough’s other novels included An Indecent Obsession (1981) about a ward for shell-shocked soldiers in World War II, The Ladies of Missalonghi (1987), a romance set in Australia, and The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet (2008), which reworked characters from Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice.
In 1990 she published the historical series Masters of Rome, and in 2000, she was awarded the prestigious Scanno Prize for literature in Italy, largely on the back of the Rome series.
McCullough was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which she suffered from childhood, and suffered health problems throughout her life, including losing her eyesight in her later years. She originally took up writing because the pay for female scientists was so low at the time she was working – her books were typed on old-fashioned typewriters rather than computers – and married Robinson in 1983, when she was 46 and he was 33. She died after suffering a series of small strokes.
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