Anna Cahill

Anna Cahill was born in New Zealand, but has been in Australia so long she considers herself an ‘Australasian’, with one foot in each country.

Life as a wordsmith was sealed at the age of 11, when she first heard the word ‘reporter’. Anna left school with a journalism cadetship on the Otago Daily Times newspaper in Dunedin, New Zealand before taking her fascination for words on to radio broadcasting, photo journalism, corporate communication, public relations, editing and writing tuition.

She has worked for newspapers big and small, driven the expanses of Northern Australia with camera and notebook in search of compelling human-interest stories, and written for city and shire councils. A distinguished corporate career led to executive State Government roles in Queensland, directing media, communication and publication teams in primary industries and natural resources sectors. For a change, she undertook community engagement contracts with a major dam construction, not-for-profit health projects, even a town planning review.

Anna co-authored Fruit Fly Fighters, a history and crisis-management reference on the successful Queensland eradication of one of the world’s most invasive exotic pests, published by CSIRO in 2002. She is even prouder of a volunteer assignment helping a wheelchair-bound woman find her voice to write and publish Wonky, a personal view of disability, in 2015.

'Colours of a Life' was a personal challenge of a different sort, working across three countries to chronicle the extraordinary career of a remarkable nonagenarian uncle, the acclaimed New Zealand expatriate painter Douglas MacDiarmid, of Paris. Published in New Zealand in 2018, the biography was made possible by unlimited access to his personal papers, thoughts and considerable recall.

This book is supported by a dedicated website www.douglasmacdiarmid.com for which Anna regularly writes blogs on the stories behind significant paintings and other glimpses into MacDiarmid’s unconventional life. As a director of the not-for-profit MacDiarmid Arts Trust, she continues to take care of his copyright and creative interests since the late painter died in August 2020 and is currently compiling a volume of letter extracts and poems to mark his centenary in November 2022.