Judy Nunn – September 30 2018

In commemoration of the first Maralinga tests – September/October 1956

Judy is an actress, author and screenwriter. She was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015 for her service to the performing arts and literature. A successful stage actress, Judy has also played ongoing roles in long running television series such as The Box, Prisoner, Sons and Daughters and Home and Away. She has written scripts for Neighbours and Possession. Judy is married to actor, writer and former police officer Bruce Venables. Formerly long-time residents of Bondi, New South Wales, they now reside on the Central Coast, New South Wales. A specialist in Australian period fiction, Judy’s other books include Beneath the Southern Cross, Territory, Pacific and Heritage. Her children’s fiction includes Eye in the Storm and Eye in the City as well as The Riddle of the Trumpalar and Challenge of the Trumpalar co-written with Patricia Bernard and Fiona Waite under the pseudonym Judy Bernard-Waite.

Maralinga
Random House Australia, 2009; ISBN 9781741666786
A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men – a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956. Maralinga is the story of a British Lieutenant, an MI-6 deputy director and undercover operative, an Australian Army Colonel and an enigmatic bushman and anthropologist who all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates. It is also the story of a love so strong that it draws a young English journalist halfway around the world in search of the truth. And Maralinga is a story of heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for over 40,000 years.

Spirits of the Ghan
Random House Australia, 2015; ISBN 9780857986733
2001: the mighty Ghan railway line linking Adelaide with the Top End is about to be completed. But construction of the final leg will not be without its complications, for much of the desert it will cross is Aboriginal land. Negotiator Jessica Manning, of Arunta heritage, is hired to reassure the Elders their sacred sites will be protected but it’s not easy when Matthew Witherton and his survey team are quite literally blasting a rail corridor through the timeless land of the Never-Never. When the paths of Jessica and Matthew finally cross, their respective cultures collide to reveal a mystery and as they struggle against time to solve it, an ancient wrong is awakened and calls hauntingly across the vastness of the outback ….