Biography

Born in Cairns, Nth Queensland, Josephine was originally christened, ‘John’. Her early life was spent on a coconut plantation west of Lae, in PNG. The family moved to a back-blocks farm in South Australia. ‘John’ attended boarding school in Adelaide, worked in gold-mining, exploration, and desert construction and forestry before taking a degree and becoming a writer and university teacher. John’s early successes as a writer of gritty, real-life working men’s stories created opportunities for him to adapt them as screenplays: notably ‘Backroads’ for Philip Noyce, ‘Freedom’ for Scott Hicks, ‘Fever’ for Craig Lahiff.