Director for Crawford Productions in the 1960s, especially Hunter and Division 4.

Director and occasional producer for Crawford Productions' programs in the 1970s, including Division 4, Matlock Police, and Homicide.

Howard Griffiths began work at Crawford Productions in 1966 and has written for many significant Australian television series, including Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police, Rush, Hunter, Power Without Glory, G. P., A Country Practice, Blue Heelers, and All Saints. Among his telemovie credits are Outbreak of Love (1981) and Becca (1983).

Douglas Tainsh was the son of poet William Tainsh and Mina Moore, a New Zealander who pioneered women's photography in Australia. He grew up in Melbourne, served with the AIF in Borneo in the Second World War and, on his return to Melbourne, studied at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he met Alice Drysdale, his future wife. He soon became a well known cartoonist, his most famous creation being 'Cedric' the swagman who appeared in the Australasian Post for 45 years. He also illustrated the cartoon strip 'Speewah Jack' in the Melbourne Argus - text by Alan Marshall. Tainsh was also a radio, television and film scriptwriter. He and his wife, Alice, moved to Queensland in 1970.

Ian Jones worked as a journalist with the Herald and Weekly Times before becoming a television producer, director and writer with the Seven Network and later with Crawford Productions.

His television and film work ranged from Crawford 'cop shows' like Homicide (on which he was the first writer/director) and Matlock Police through to family dramas like The Sullivans, and mini-series such as Against the Wind, and The Last Outlaw (a series about Ned Kelly).

His first film screenplay was for Ned Kelly, starring Mick Jagger: he went on to write a number of books about Kelly, making a name for himself as a Kelly scholar. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1987 feature film, The Lighthorsemen.

He was at one time married to Bronwyn Binns, with whom he frequently collaborated.

Jones died in Melbourne in August 2018.

Director working for Crawford Productions.

Author, screenwriter.

David Boutland's parents John George Boutland, an electrical mechanic, and Gertrude Helen (nee Lucas), immigrated to Australia with their three children in 1951 under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme. After completing his schooling Boutland pursued a career as a freelance writer, and in 1960 returned to England with his wife Shirley. It was here that his science fiction short stories, written under the pseudonym 'David Rome', began to appear in such magazines as Science Fantasy, New Worlds Science Fiction, Pocket Man, Amazing, Galaxy and Science Fiction Adventures. Boutland's first story to be published in the UK was 'Time of Arrival' (New Worlds April 1961).

In addition to having his works published in science fiction magazines, Boutland also began submitting stories to a number of early 1960s anthologies, notably New Writings in SF, New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural, and The Second Pacific Book of Science Fiction. Steve Holland records in his Bear Alley blog that two of Boutland's stories were also selected by Judith Merril for her Annual of the Year's Best S-F anthologies. One of these, 'Parky,' first published in Science Fantasy in 1961, was later reprinted in The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing: A Fifty Year Collection (q.v.). Between 1964 and 1968 Boutland also contributed more than twenty storylines to the Commando, War Picture Library and Battle Picture Library comics.

Sometime around 1963/1964 Boutland returned to Australia and began writing pulp fiction novels, still under the David Rome pseudonym, for Sydney-based publisher Horwitz, including its Scripts imprint (qq.v.). The first Boutland/Rome novel to be published by Horwitz was Squat: Sexual Adventures on Other Planets in 1964. Squat was later awarded runner-up status at the third Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards after being re-issued in 1971 by Scripts

While Boutland's output for Horwitz/Scripts as David Rome was largely popular fiction, he nevertheless continued to have his science fiction short stories published in such magazines as Man, Man Junior, Adam, Vision of Tomorrow and Galaxy Science Fiction. These appeared under the names David Rome or Richard Ansvar. In 1972, under his real name, he also wrote The Professional, a work on prostitution conceived and produced by Ron Smith.

By the early to mid-1970s Boutland had begun to turn his attention more towards writing for television, a career move which saw him contribute numerous scripts under his birth name during the next three decades. Among the best known series for which he contributed material are Homicide (1968-75), Division 4 (1969), Ryan (1973-74), Matlock Police (q.v., 1972-76), Rush (1974-76), Tandarra (1976), A County Practice (q.v., 1981-85), The Flying Doctors (1988), G.P. (1990-93), Halifax F.P. (1995-97), Stingers (1999), MDA (2002) and Blue Heelers (q.v., 1997-2003). Although he ended his fulltime career as a freelance television scriptwriter in the early to mid-2000s, David Boutland continues to write in his retirement.

[Some information in this entry has been sourced from Steve Holland].

Born in the United Kingdom, Michael Harvey has worked in the Australian film and television industries for more than thirty years. He began his career as a scriptwriter in the early 1970s, working on Crawford Productions drama series from 1972-1998 such as Ryan (1973), Homicide (1973-76), and Division 4 (1975). In 1976, he studied direction at the Australian Film and Television School, where his graduation piece, Goodbye, Johnny Ray, won him the 1979 Australian Film Industry (AFI) Silver Short Fiction Award. The 1970s also saw him work on several other popular series, notably Prisoner and Skyways.

During the 1980s, Harvey wrote episodes for A Country Practice (1981), Carson's Law (1983), Special Squad (1984), Prime Time (1986), Home and Away (1988), Richmond Hill (1988), and Inside Running (1989). Since 1990, he has written scripts for such series as Skirts (1990), Cluedo (1992), Phoenix (1993), Janus (1994), Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left (1994), and State Coroner (1997-98), which he also devised. A co-production between Crawford Productions and Harvey Taft Productions (the company he formed with David Taft), the pilot episode of State Coroner was nominated for both AFI and AWGIE awards.

In 2000, Harvey Taft Productions made a successful application to Film Victoria for funding under the Commercial Script Development Scheme. This allowed Harvey the opportunity to develop and write a number of feature film and television scripts, notably Mug's Game, CHAS, and Bones. In 2009, he was also a writer and associate producer for the Dirt Game series.

As a writer/director, Harvey has overseen numerous training films, including Ruth, a thirty-minute dramatised educational video about Alzheimer's Disease, and Galbally, a biographical film about Victorian lawyer Frank Galbally (1989). The recipient of several AWGIE nominations for TV Drama and Education during the 1980s and early 1990s, Harvey won the 1995 AWGIE award for TV Drama with an episode of Janus.

An active member of the film and television industry, Harvey has been a past Victorian Vice President and State Chairperson of the Australian Writers' Guild, and is the recipient of the 2000 Richard Lane Award for services to the guild. In addition, he has delivered lectures in television writing for both the guild and various tertiary institutions.

(Source: Michael Harvey resume, Harvey Taft Productions website)

Film director.

Gary Conway began work with Crawford Productions in the 1960s, where he was in the art department, before becoming assistant director and then director on Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police, and Ryan. Beginning in 1988, he directed nearly 800 episodes of Neighbours, and only stopped work on the series in late 2018, after a diagnosis of esophageal cancer.

He died in Melbourne in November 2019.

Director working for Crawford Productions.

Roger Simpson completed a Bachelor of Laws at Auckland University in 1968, then practised law for three years in New Zealand.

After moving to Australia in the early 1970s, he became an award-winning film and television writer. As was common with script-writers in that era, his earliest scripts were for Crawford Productions: he wrote for Homicide (1972-1974) and Division Four (1972-1975). At the same time, he was writing scripts for New Zealand television, including the telemovie Richard Pearse and the historical children's television programs Hunter's Gold (1977) and Children of Fire Mountain (1979): the latter, for which Simpson was sole script-writer, won Feltext Television Awards for Best Drama and Best Script.

In Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, Simpson wrote a number of telemovies and mini-series, including The Trial of Ned Kelly (1977), Players in the Gallery (1980), I Can Jump Puddles (1981), Squizzy Taylor (1982), Sword of Honour (1986), Nancy Wake (1987), and Darlings of the Gods (1989).

He als contributed episodes to such television series as Power Without Glory (1976), Young Ramsay (1980), and Learned Friends (1983).

In 1989, Garry O'Connor published Darlings of the Gods: A Novel Based on Scripts by Roger Simpson and Graeme Farmer and on Garry O'Connor's 'Darlings of the Gods: One Year in the Lives of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh'.

His writing in the 1990s was weighted more towards television series than telemovies, with scripts for Skirts (1990), Snowy (1993), Halifax f.p. (1994-2000), Good Guys Bad Guys (1998), and Stingers (1998-2002). He also wrote the script for 'His Master's Ghost', an episode of the Australian Children's television Foundation's anthology series More Winners.

He also shifted into the role of producer in this decade, a role he would occupy successfully for some two decades. In 1992, he produced the Australian film The Nostradamus Kid, and for 25 years (to 2006), he co-produced with Roger Le Mesurier many successful Australian television dramas, including Halifax f.p., Good Guys Bad Guys, and Stingers.

Since 2000, Simpson has contributed scripts to such television programs as Something in the Air (2000), Silversun (2004), Satisfaction (2007-2009), and Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms (2012), as well as writing the telemovies Big Reef (2004) and Life (2005), and the movie-length pilot for the ill-fated television series The Angel Files (2002), six episodes of which were produced but never aired after the disappointing ratings for the pilot.

Director who worked with Crawford Productions.

Script-writer.

Although perhaps best known as the screenwriter for the 1981 feature film adaptation of Puberty Blues, Margaret Kelly has also carved out an impressive career over four decades as a television script-writer.

Kelly's first television scripts were for Crawford Productions' Homicide, for which she wrote in the early 1970s. She followed this with scripts for Quality of Mercy (1975), an anthology series for which all authors were Australian women; the ABC's comedy series No Thanks, I'm on a Diet (1976); Pig in a Poke (1977), co-written with John Dingwall and co-starring Justine Saunders, in which a wealthy Melbourne doctor moves to Redfern; and the ABC's Top Mates (1979), co-written with Anne Brooksbank. Both Pig in a Poke and Top Mates dealt with, among other issues, the disenfranchised and impoverished state of Australia's indigenous population.

In 1980, Kelly adapted Patricia Wrightson's novel as the ABV TV series The Nargun and the Stars, in which a heartbroken and orphaned city boy moves to the country and finds, hidden in the depths of undeveloped land, creatures from the distant Indigenous Australian Dreamtime. This was followed by Kelly's adaptation of Puberty Blues, which she had optioned from the as-yet unpublished stories of Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, whom she had met at a writing workshop in a suburban theatre.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Kelly wrote for A Country Practice (1982, for which she wrote at least seven episodes), The Cowra Breakout (1984), G.P. (1989-1990), Heartbreak High (1994-1995), and SeaChange (1998).

Her post-2000 credits include scripts for McLeod's Daughters (2003).

In 1978, she shared the Logie Award for Best Dramatic Script with John Dingwall for her work on Pig in a Poke.

Screenwriter, producer

Ron McLean has written scripts for more than 20 Australian television series, including such well-known shows as Skippy (1969), Woobinda: Animal Doctor, (1970), The Rovers (1970), Division 4 (1969), Spyforce (1971), Homicide (1971), Barrier Reef (1972), Ryan (1973), Silent Number (1974), Chopper Squad (1978), Prisoner (1979), Glenview High (1979), and Bellamy (1981).

McLean has also operated his own production companies: South Pacific Films and Ron McLean Productions. He has produced the telemovies The Little Feller, Air Hawk, and Outbreak of Hostilities, and the television programs Spyforce, Human Target, Silent Number, Case for the Defence, and Glenview High.

McLean was also one of a team of four people who wrote children's books under the name of Mary Elliott.

Screenwriter, producer, director.

A former journalist and Sydney Morning Herald newspaper police reporter, John Dingwall utilised his experiences by writing episodes for Crawford Production's 'cop shows' during his early years as a television scriptwriter. Among the series that he was associated with during the late 1960s and early 1970s were Homicide, Matlock Police and Division Four. His 'Johnny Reb' teleplay for an episode of Homicide won a 1970 Australian Writers' Guild award. After establishing his reputation with police dramas, Dingwall eventually branched out into writing straight drama and comedy.

In 1974 Dingwall conceived and wrote the feature film Sunday Too Far Away! (q.v., 1975). The screenplay, based on his brother-in-law's experiences as a sheep shearer, is credited by many critics as having opened the country's films to the world. It was, for example, the first Australian film to compete in the Director's Fortnight in Cannes and one of the first to receive international distribution. Two years after Sunday Too Far Away!, Dingwall co-created and co-wrote the award-winning television series Pig in a Poke (1977). His success in these ventures led him to consider becoming an independent producer and, in the early 1980s, he formed his own film production company, JD Productions.

The company's first feature film production was Buddies in 1983. Faced with distribution difficulties, Dingwall took a print and posters of the film on the road, touring it successfully around rural cinemas in Queensland. In 1988 he mortgaged his house and raised funds to make the psychodrama, Phobia (q.v.), which he wrote and directed. Well received at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, it was also nominated in each and every category as one of two final nominations for the 1991 Australian Critics Society Awards. The film ultimately won Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards. His final film, The Custodian (q.v.), was released in 1993.

During his distinguished career, John Dingwall's work won him fourteen Australia film awards including AFI, Awgie, Logie and Penguin awards. He died in Murwillumbah of cancer in 2004 and is survived by five children and his partner Dimitra Meleti.

After completing his education at Marist Brothers College in Randwick, Ted Roberts worked in advertising and sales promotion before commencing his career as a freelance writer for television and film.

Among his early writing assignments were episodes for several series from the late 1960s and early 1970s, notably Skippy (1969-70), The Rovers (1970), Spyforce (1971), Barrier Reef (1971-72), Homicide (1970-72), Division 4 (1970-72), The Spoiler (1972), and Boney (1972-73). He later wrote scripts for such shows as Elephant Boy (1973), Castaway (1974), Three Men of the City (1974), The Seven Ages of Man (1975), Rush (1976), The Outsiders (1976), Catspaw (1978), and Patrol Boat (1979).

During the 1980s, Roberts was a principal writer for A County Practice (1983-85); the mini-series Silent Reach (1983), Body Business (1986), and Cyclone Tracy (1986); Willing and Abel (1987); and Mission Impossible (1988-89). He also wrote scripts for Menotti (1981) and Bellamy (1981).

His credits in the 1990s include G.P. (1992-93), Snowy River: The McGregor Saga (1993-94), Murder Call (1997), and Water Rats (1999-00). Since 2000, he has contributed episodes to All Saints (2002) and Blue Heelers (1994-2006).

Roberts's film scripts include Lindsay's Boy (1974), Polly My Love (1975), The Amorous Dentist (1982: part of the ABC's true-cime anthology series Verdict), A Descant for Gossips (1983), The Settlement (1984), Bush Christmas (1983), Just Us (1986), and The Territorians (1996).

In addition to his writing career, Roberts has been engaged as a producer for such shows as Mission Impossible, Snowy River, and Water Rats.

Director working for Crawford Productions.

Australian film-maker.

David Pulbrook worked as director in Australian television in the early 1970s, directing multiple episodes of Division 4, Homicide, and Matlock Police for Crawford Productions between 1971 and 1973.

Prior to this, in the late 1960s, he had worked for Crawford as a film editor, including on episodes of Hunter and Division 4; after his stint in directing, he returned to film editing, on such television series and films as Ryan, Squizzy Taylor, Eureka Stockade, Hotel Sorrento, and Brilliant Lies.

In 2012, Pulbrook returned to directing with Last Dance, starring Julia Blake and Firass Dirani. He followed this with Bad Blood in 2017.

Cliff Green grew up in the outer Melbourne suburbs of Sunshine and Upwey. After leaving Upwey High School at 14, he worked as an office boy and later undertook an apprenticeship as a compositor in the printing trade. He later returned to study at night and graduated from Toorak Teachers College, after which he taught for nine years in small Victorian country schools. Thoughout this time, Green wrote short stories and television scripts and in 1969 turned to screenwriting as a full-time profession..

Green first worked for Crawford Productions contributing regular episodes to their popular television police dramas Homicide (1969-70) and Matlock Police (1971-72), as well as writing telemovies such as Halfway to Nowhere (1972) and The Spoiler (1972). He later worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation writing for documentaries and series, and was engaged as a tutor in film and television writing for the Victorian Council of Adult Education. Among the extensive list of television series for which he has written are Rush (1974), The Seven Ages of Man (1975), Power Without Glory (1976), Against the Wind (1978), Lucinda Brayford (1980), A County Practice (1984), Special Squad (1984-85), The Petrov Affair (1987), Mission Impossible (1988), The Flying Doctors (1988-90), Phoenix (1992), Janus (1994), Mercury (1996), Something in the Air (2000), and Marshall Law (2002).

In addition to television drama series, Green has also written a number of feature film and telemovie screenplays, including Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Let the Balloon Go (1976, additional dialogue), Summerfield (1977), Mystery Island (1980), I Can Jump Puddles (1981), and The Incredible Steam-Driven Adventures of Riverboat Bill (1986). Green's film and television writing achievements have been recognised through professional awards for excellence, including numerous Australian Writers' Guild Awards (AWGIEs) between 1974 and 1992 for television plays and film adaptations.

Among Green's other works are Upbeat (1956), an anthology of folk songs edited by Green; The Art of Dale Marsh (1981); and Evergreen: The Story of a Family (1984). He is also the author of many humorous and popular children's books.

Gwenda Marsh's scriptwriting career in the Australian television industry began in the early 1970s through Crawford Productions series such as Division Four (1972-74) and Matlock Police (1974-76). She later contributed episodes for the Matlock Police spin-off Solo One (1976) and for Bluey (1976-77). During the 1980s, Marsh wrote for A Country Practice (1982-83), Five Mile Creek (1984), The Flying Doctors (1986), and Prisoner (1986) among other shows. She was also a principal writer on the mini-series All the Rivers Run (1983).

In addition to writing for television, Marsh has been engaged as script editor for such series as Prisoner (1986), Chuck Finn (1999), Guinevere Jones (2002), and Parallax (2004); and has overseen a number of series as producer, including Skyways (1979), Holiday Island (1981), Zoo Family (1985), Ship to Shore (1993), and Chuck Finn (1999).

David Stevens was an author, screenwriter, playwright and director. Born in Palestine of British parents, he was raised in Africa and the Middle East, before moving to New Zealand in the 1960s and then to Australia, where he took later up citizenship, in the 1970s.

He wrote extensively for television, and more recently for film and the stage. His credits include popular Australian soaps such as Homicide (screenwriter) and The Sullivans (screenwriter), the television mini-series A Town Like Alice (director), A Thousand Skies (director), and Always Afternoon (director/sceenwriter), and the films The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years (screenwriter), and Breaker Morant (screenwriter, with Kenneth Ross and Jonathan Hardy).

In 1987, Stevens moved to work in the United States, where he is perhaps best known for the novels Alex Haley's Queen and Mama Flora's Family, which he completed from Alex Haley's unfinished manuscripts.

Stevens died in Whangarei, on New Zealand's North Island, in July 2017.

Director who worked for Crawford Productions.

Director working for Crawford Productions.

Script-writer and occasional director/producer.

Prolific script-writer Everett De Roche was born in Lincoln, Maine (United States), in what he describes in his interview with Spectacular Optical as 'a tiny town surrounded by lakes and forests. Not far from Stephen King. I think there's an inherent spookiness in Maine that spurs an interest in the Dark Side.' His family moved to San Diego, California, when De Roche was six years old. In 1968, when he was twenty two, he and his wife moved to Australia.

Despite a strong interest in writing as a child and teenager, De Roche had no training in script-writing when he began writing for Australian television, beginning with Crawford Productions in Melbourne. In his interview, he recalls:

I finally landed a job with the Queensland Health Education Council, where I'd write pamphlets on herpies [sic] and such, and I had a 'Doctor Day' column in the Brisbane Telegraph. It was shit work, but at least I was getting paid to write.

More importantly, I met and befriended a guy who told me that Crawford Productions, in Melbourne, were paying a whooping [sic] $250 for TV scripts. Wow! That was five times my weekly wage at QHEC. I brought a typewriter from work, bought a stopwatch to time various TV shows, then wrote a specky submission for a Crawford's cop show called DIVISION FOUR.

Nine months went by before I returned from work one day to find a telegram from Crawfords, inviting me to Melbourne to try out as a scriptwriter (everything was by telegram in 1970 because few people could afford telephones). And hells bells, it turned out that Crawfords didn't pay $250 per ep at all, it was more like $2500 per ep - enough to put a deposit on a damned house!

His trial run in Melbourne resulted in a year's contract as a staff writer, the first of four years that he would spend as a staff writer on Crawford programs.

De Roche's scripts for Crawford Productions were for the police procedurals in which Crawfords specialised at the time: Homicide, Ryan, Division 4, and Matlock Police. According to De Roche, writing for Crawfords' programs was a matter of trial and error, and 'it took me about three scripts to get up to speed':

Eps were usually assigned according to the writer's experience. All new writers started on HOMICIDE, then graduated to other shows as they proved themselves. A few times I'd write a script for one show and it would be reassigned to another more suitable show (the four top shows were all police dramas so they were easily interchangeable). I did about 15 eps of MATLOCK POLICE. This was my best work because it was more flexible than, say, HOMICIDE, which required at least one murder. Whereas a show like MATLOCK (rural) gave writers a wider choice. In one ep, I had the main cop's granny growing cannabis. Some of the stories got pretty wild as writers were given more and more leeway.

When Crawford's police procedurals Division 4, Homicide, and Matlock Police were all abruptly cancelled within months of one another in 1976, staff writers found that their contracts were not renewed. De Roche moved on to freelance work, writing scripts for such programs as Bluey and Tandarra.

It was at this period, in the mid-1970s, that De Roche began working on the scripts for the 'Ozploitation' films with which his name is now synonymous. De Roche had met and worked with directors Colin Eggleston and Richard Franklin at Crawford Productions (where Eggleston was an in-house script editor and Franklin a director): Eggleston went on to direct De Roche's first film script, the environmental horror story Long Weekend, and Franklin his second, the influential horror film Patrick, both of which were released in 1978. He continued to write freelance scripts for television, including for Solo One, Chopper Squad, and Skyways. His final film script for the 1970s was Snapshot (Sigrid Thornton's first significant film role), which was released in the United States under the misleading title The Day After Halloween.

In 1980, De Roche scripted the alien-abduction three-part television series, Locusts and Wild Honey. He continued to produce television scripts through this decade, including for Special Squad and Police Rescue, but produced a significantly higher number of film scripts, including adventure film Race for the Yankee Zephyr (directed by British actor David Hemmings, who had appeared in De Roche's modern-day Rasputin drama, Harlequin, in 1980), hostage drama Fortress (based on the novel by Gabrielle Lord and directed by Arch Nicholson), and surf film Windrider (directed by Vincent Monton, who had been director of photography on De Roche's earlier films).

At the same time, De Roche was continuing to write horror and fantasy films, including Russell Mulcahy's first film, murderous-boar horror film Razorback; the Verity Lambert-produced murderous-chimpanzee horror film Link (directed by Patrick director Richard Franklin); and the children's fantasy (with a strong element of Indigenous Australian mythology) Frog Dreaming (released in the United States as The Quest).

In the 1990s, De Roche concentrated more on television script-writing than on film scripts, writing for both children's and adults' programs, including The Flying Doctors, R.F.D.S., Blue Heelers, Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left, Snowy River: The McGregor Saga, Flipper, Ship to Shore, Fire, Medivac, and Good Guys, Bad Guys. This decade also saw the beginning of his involvement with Jonathan M. Shiff Productions, for whom he wrote scripts for Ocean Girl and Thunderstone.

De Roche continued to write television scripts after 2000, including for Something in the Air and Stingers, but also returned heavily to film scripts: hallucination-based horror film Visitors (directed by long-time collaborator Richard Franklin, and for which De Roche won the Victorian Premier's Literary award), hillbilly horror film Storm Warning and the re-make of 1978's Long Weekend (both directed by Jamie Blanks), and his most recent project, the scientific-horror film Nine Miles Down (directed by Anthony Waller).

See also:

Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 'The Making of Storm Warning'. Interview with Jamie Blanks (director), Everett De Roche (script-writer), and John Brumpton and Robert Taylor (actors). Podcast. 15 November 2008. 24min. (http://www.acmi.net.au/podcasts-archive.htm) (Sighted: 29/8/2012)

Graham, Aaron W. 'Crafting "Little Aussie Masterpieces": An Interview with Everett De Roche.' Spectacular Optical: The Official Fanzine of the Fantasia International Film Festival, 1 June 2012. (http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2012/06/an-interview-with-everett-de-roche/) (Sighted: 29/8/2012)

Director who worked with Crawford Productions.

Director who worked for Crawford Productions.

British-born script-writer for Australian television programs.

Sonia Borg was born in Vienna where she studied dramatic art before moving to India in 1951. While based in India, Borg joined Shakespeareana International, a touring theatre company.

In 1961, she moved to Australia and joined Crawford Productions as a drama coach. She also worked as a script writer, editor and associate producer. She wrote her first scripts for Crawfords as early as 1961, with episodes of Consider Your Verdict. She continued to write for Crawford Productions for the next two decades, with scripts for Homicide (for which she wrote at least seventeen episodes, between 1964 and 1973), Division 4 (1970 to 1975), Matlock Police (for which she wrote at least eleven episodes between 1971 and 1975), and Solo One (1976). She also worked in a production capacity for these programs: as associate producer (1964-1969), producer (1969-1972), and supervising producer (1967) for Homicide; producer (1969) for Division 4; and both assistant producer and associate producer (1964) for Consider Your Verdict. She was also Homicide's script editor between 1968 and 1971.

While working for Crawford Productions, Borg was also writing scripts for other television studios and production companies, including Gemini Productions (The Spoiler, 1972) and the ABC (including an episode of the anthology series A Time for Love in 1972, and at least three scripts for Rush in 1974).

In 1976, she contributed to the ABC and Paradine Productions' Power Without Glory, based on Frank Hardy's book, and written in conjunction with other major Australian script-writers, including Cliff Green, Howard Griffiths, Tom Hegarty, John Martin, and Roger Simpson. The same year, she adapted Colin Thiele's novel into the film Storm Boy, which won her an AWGIE Award (for feature film) and was nominated for an AFI Award (Best Screenplay: Original or Adapted).

Borg followed Storm Boy with the script for the ABC TV drama No Room for the Innocent (1977), in which a married Catholic woman in dire financial straits struggles with the church's dictum on contraception. In 1978, she adapted another Colin Thiele novel into the feature film Blue Fin. She continued to write for television drama, including Young Ramsay (1980). In 1981, she collaborated with two of her former Power Without Glory co-writers, Cliff Green and Roger Simpson, to adapt Alan Marshall's I Can Jump Puddles as a nine-part ABC serial.

In 1982, Borg and Hyllus Maris brought Women of the Sun to the screen: this groundbreaking four-part television series covers two hundred years of white occupation of Australia through the eyes of Indigenous Australian women, and was born of Borg's concern at the widespread under-representation of Indigenous Australian women on the screen, where she felt they only appeared as prostitutes. The program garnered several major awards, including the United Nations Media Peace Prize (1982) and two AWGIE Awards (Television Award and Major Award, both 1983).

Borg's other scripts in the 1980s included the telemovie Dusty (1983), though she had no discernable role in the later television series of the same name; the Gold Rush-era television series Colour in the Creek (1985); and the horror-fantasy film Dark Age (1987), one of Arch Nicholson's few films before his early death. Never released in Australia due to the collapse of negotiations between American studio RKO and Australian distributors, the film is recognised as providing strong, non-stereotypical roles for its female and Indigenous Australian actors.

Borg's scriptwriting output gradually decreased from the 1990s onward but nevertheless still included a number of significant productions - notably the four-part television series Ratbag Hero (1990); episodes of the television series Mercury (1996), created by Cliff Green, her co-writer on Power Without Glory and I Can Jump Puddles; and the screenplay for Sarah Watt's short, animated film The Way of the Birds, an adaptation of the book by Meme McDonald. Sge also served as as executive assistant on ABC television program The Glass House in 2001.

In 1985 Borg was awarded an A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) in the Queen's New Years Honours List for her services to the film and television industry. She passed away on 4 February 2016 at an aged care facility in Apollo Bay, Victoria.

During her extensive career in Australian television Denise Morgan was involved as a writer, script editor and producer on some of Australia's most successful drama series. Among her early credits were shows from the mid to late-1970s, including Matlock Police (1976), Solo One (1976), Young Ramsey (1977-78), Chopper Squad (1978-79) and Prisoner (1979-81), which she also helped develop.

During the 1980s Morgan worked on Holiday Island (1981), Taurus Rising (1982), A Country Practice (1982), Five Mile Creek (1983), Home and Away (1988) and The Flying Doctors (1986-91). Her screenplay for the 1985 telemovie An Indecent Obsession - based on Colleen McCullough's novel of the same name, was also nominated for an Australian Film Institute (AFI) "Best Screenplay" award in 1985. Morgan's credits since 1990 include Phoenix (1992), Water Rats (1996-2000), Murder Call (1997-99), Medivac (1998), Stingers (1999), McLeod's Daughters (2003-05) and All Saints (2002-09).

In addition to her role as writer Morgan has been engaged as Script Editor for Young Ramsey, Water Rats, McLeod's Daughters and as Associate Script Producer for All Saints. Morgan was also Script Editor for the critically acclaimed 2004 feature film Somersault, and acted as story editor for Blue Heelers in 1994.

Script-writer.

Peter Kinloch began working as a script-writer in the early to mid-1970s, beginning with Crawford Productions' major crime dramas, including Homicide (1974-1975), Matlock Police (1973-76), the Matlock spin-off Solo One (1976), and Bluey (1976), as well as two episodes of the convict-era mini-series Against the Wind (1978).

The 1980s saw him associated with long-running series A Country Practice (1982-1985) and The Flying Doctors (1987-1990), comedy Willing and Abel (1987), mini-series Sword of Honour (1986), Australian 'western' Five Mile Creek (1985), and historical series All the Way (1988).

In the 1990s, Kinloch wrote for The Miraculous Mellops (1991-1992), Kelly (1991-1992), G.P. (1991-95), Chances (1992), Snowy (1993), Blue Heelers (1994), Ship to Shore (1994), Snowy River: The McGregor Saga (1994-95), Ocean Girl (1994), Flipper (1995), Halifax f.p. (1995), Correlli (1995), The Adventures of the Bush Patrol (1996-1998), Medivac (1997), Wildside (1998), All Saints (1998), Heartbreak High (1997-99), Stingers (1998-99), and Thunderstone (1999).

He also wrote two television films during the 1990s: Hurricane Smith (1992), directed by Colin Budds, and Siringo (1996), directed by Kevin G. Cremin.

Since 2000, Kinloch has contributed scripts to All Saints (2000), Head Start (2001), Horace & Tina (2001), Cybergirl (2001), Something in the Air (2001-2002), Young Lions (2002), Pirate Islands (2003), Wicked Science (2004), and Silversun (2004).

Director who worked for Crawford Productions.

Keith James Hetherington has written commercial fiction in most categories, radio plays, and scripts for television. Today [2007], he writes for Black Horse Western. He started writing after a work accident: 'One day I filled my boot with boiling water. When I took off the sock, the skin came, too. I had a week off and bought a book of locally published western stories.' Keith thought, "Hell, I can write as good as that! and penned The Texan. Ten pages in an exercise book. I submitted to Jack Atkins of Cleveland Publishing Co...They eventually asked for regular contributions, one a month, then they began publishing 15,000 and later 48,000 word novelettes and I got into that. When I wanted something, like a motorbike or a trip to England, I'd write like hell and save the same way, until I had enough, then ease off. I soon realized I could make more writing at my fast rate than I could working for a boss. I took the plunge just before I got married in 1957 and began churning them out: westerns, a couple of Larry Kent crime thillers, and the Carl Dekker series, which was about a world-weary adventurer, each yarn set in a different city or country.' Markets multiplied.

Hetherington also wrote short stories that separated pin-ups in Man magazine and the digest-sized Pocket Man, and for a similar New Zealand magazine called Stag. During the 1960s a boys' adventure book, Scuba Buccaneers by James Keith, was published by Angus and Robertson in Australia, and during the 1970s, two Keith Conway thrillers were published as hardcovers by Hale in Britain: Naked Nemesis and Hammerhead Reef. 'One of the thrillers went to paperback but I didn't find out for something like 14 years when I picked up a copy at a book exchange,' Hetherington has said. 'I'd forgotten to notify Hale's of change of address so they wouldn't pay me interest on the fees due!' Earlier, Hetherington had taken a job as a journalist in the Queensland Health Department.

'This involved writing short radio plays as well as articles. I became editor, and a Yank who worked for me went to work for the television series maker Crawford Productions in Melbourne. He kept pestering me to write for TV. There was big money there at the time, so I gave it a go. When I got tired of flying back and forth between Melbourne and Brisbane at weekends for editing of scripts, I moved to Melbourne in 1971 and got to work for Crawfords full-time, though I worked as a freelance from home.'

For the rest of his biography refer to http://www.blackhorsewesterns.com/ back issues/ issue 2 September 2005.

In addition to writing fiction, Jock Blair has also been a television producer and scriptwriter, responsible for a number of serials adapted from works of Australian literature (including The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland and Robbery under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood, qq.v.).

Librettist, lyricist, film and television scriptwriter, director, and producer.

Don Battye and Peter Pinne began their collaborative partnership in 1959, when they met through Melbourne's Bread and Cheese Composers and Songwriters Group. The first production they worked on was the revue One to Fourteen. Over the next four decades, the pair collaborated on more than fifteen music theatre works, including six adult musicals, several soft rock/folk operas, seven children's musicals, a telemovie (A Special Place), a film (A City's Child), and a theatre restaurant show (Fasten Your Seat Belts), as well as contributing material to numerous revues (including The Mavis Bramston Show) and theatre restaurant shows throughout Australia.

Battye and Pinne's first major success was A Bunch of Ratbags (1966), a play with music, based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by William Dick. This production is believed to have been the first rock musical staged anywhere in the world, pre-dating Hair by a year. They followed it two years later with It Happened in Tanjablanca, a musical spoof on Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, which had a second life several years later as Red, White and Boogie (1973). In 1971, the pair staged a tribute to Caroline Chisholm with the assistance of a $40,000 grant from Sir Henry Bolte. Caroline has been, perhaps, their most popular and most frequently revived musical. That same year the pair collaborated on A City's Child (Kavanagh Productions), a film that explores the issue of loneliness in a large city through the life of an unloved spinster. Three years later, their musical about two rival whorehouse madams, Sweet Fanny Adams, premiered in Melbourne.

During his collaborative years with Pinne, Don Battye was also engaged at various times in writing, editing, and producing television shows. His early credits include long time ABC favourite Bellbird, along with Richmond Hill, Possession, and The Entertainers. For nine years, he worked for producer Hector Crawford as associate director. His involvement with Crawford Productions saw him oversee some of the most influential and popular television shows in Australian history, notably The Box, Division Four, Bluey, Homicide, Matlock Police, and The Sullivans. Battye left Crawford's in 1978 to take up a position with the Grundy Organisation. His involvement as producer included such shows as Chopper Squad, A Special Place, The Restless Years, and Bellamy. Battye eventually became Senior Vice President: Drama for the company, and has also acted in the positions of Executive Producer and Producer. As a senior member of the Grundy organisation, he also oversaw the development of such shows as Sons and Daughters, Neighbours, Tanamera, and Waterloo Station.

Battye moved to the Philippines in 1998 to live in Peurto Princesa City on the island of Palawan. He died at his home aged 77.