An evening with Judy Nunn 

It was an absolute honour to meet Judy Nunn, AKA Ailsa Stewart, wife of longstanding Alf Stewart from the most successful and longest running soap in Australia, Home & Away.  We met in December last year whilst she was here in Perth as she celebrated the release of her latest novel Pilbarra at 80 years young. She was just incredible with so much energy and a real passion for life, a great storyteller with a memory like an elephant and was as large as life as well as having a wicked sense of humour. She is such an inspiration. 

I wasn’t even aware that she hailed from Perth and she proudly told of her favourite haunts around town and how Perth will always be home even though she lives in New South Wales now. She attended Presbyterian Ladies College in the Western suburbs and still has family here in Perth and Geraldton, and it was really like having a conversation with an old family relative, not someone with a string of TV roles longer than your arm, a screenwriter and a successful author of several novels for the last forty years.  

Judy was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015 for her service to the performing arts as a scriptwriter, actor and to literature as an author, but she is as down to earth as your next-door neighbour. 

As you will have gathered, I really enjoyed meeting Judy, and at the end of the evening and being told to move along because we were talking too much, she told me to keep writing and that I was just a youngster compared to her! What a lady!