

She found jobs first in London and then at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.Īfter her beloved younger brother Carl died in 1965 at age 25 while rescuing two drowning women in the waters off Crete, a shattered McCullough quit writing.

Planning become a doctor, she found that she had a violent allergy to hospital soap and turned instead to neurophysiology – the study of the nervous system's functions. She flourished at Catholic schools and earned a physiology degree from the University of New South Wales in 1963. Raised by her mother in Wellington and then Sydney, McCullough began writing stories at age 5. Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and Tim.
