Thorn Birds author cut her cheating husband out of will
The author of created a real drama on her deathbed when she allegedly disinherited her husband after discovering that he had a mistress and was spending all her money.
Colleen McCullough threw Ric Robinson out of their home on Norfolk Island before her death in 2015, starting a legal wrangle over her estate.
an Outback epic involving a sexually tempted Catholic priest and a row over a multimillion-dollar will, sold more than 33 million copies and inspired a successful television drama. McCullough, a former neuroscientist, made millions from her 25 books. She bought a mansion on the South Pacific island and married Robinson, a builder and apparently a descendant of a Bounty mutineer, in 1983.
Robinson is now in a legal battle with his wife’s executors. An American university claims that it is entitled to the estate and Selwa Anthony, her friend and literary agent, told a court in Sydney that McCullough told her on the phone in July 2014 that she had ‘‘kicked Ric out for good’’. Anthony said that McCullough, who was by then sick and blind after a series of strokes, told her Robinson had ‘‘taken a mistress’’ and ‘‘spent all the money’’.
Later, Anthony said, McCullough told her: ‘‘Ric is back because I can’t afford the night carer and he needs the money.’’
The court was told that there were at least two wills. The first, signed less than six months before McCullough died, set out why she had decided not to make Robinson a beneficiary. On the same day, she signed a bequest intention letter making the University of Oklahoma her sole beneficiary.
Three months later, the letter was changed; the university was removed and replaced with Robinson. The university has said that McCullough did not make the amendment, arguing that she was in poor health, blind and dependent on her husband.
Piria Coleman, a solicitor who had acted for McCullough, said she believed that the couple’s reconciliation had been ‘‘temporary’’, although at a meeting just before McCullough died they appeared ‘‘attentive to each other’’. She admitted that McCullough had told her ‘‘f*** Oklahoma’’ and yelled ‘‘give him what he wants’’, but said the author was ‘‘delirious’’ at the time.
The hearing continues.