Jacqueline Mulhallen
Around the world
... by boat, train, bus, rickshaw, donkey cart ...
Jackie was born in Devon but as the daughter of a Naval officer spent part of her childhood living in a fort at the entrance to the Grand Harbour, Malta, and in Hong Kong.
In her twenties she left London with £10 in her pocket and flew to Canada where she worked at Expo, travelled across the country, and set off for Australia, via San Francisco, Fiji and New Zealand. She hitch-hiked round New Zealand for a month with an Irish friend.
Once in Australia, she worked at various jobs including selling encyclopaedias, washing dishes on the Barrier Reef, waitressing, and cleaning. She also travelled round a large part of the continent including to Uluru. She wrote articles about her experiences for the Australian magazine Pol, and the BBC broadcast a talk in 1970.
On leaving Australia, she sailed to Singapore and hitch-hiked or travelled by boat, train, bus, rickshaw, donkey cart – whatever was available – back to England.
Prose and poetry from these years has been collected and will be shortly published by Chandler Press.
Jackie returned to Australia to study at the University of New South Wales, where she graduated with a first class Honours degree in English in 1976.
She also studied and worked at acting, as well as the inevitable work in the pub, hospital kitchen and Sydney Opera house coffee bar!
In 1977 she travelled back to England and spent the summer working on a yacht in the Mediterranean, followed by a scholarship to study drama in Finland. Her Finnish research was published in Theatre Australia, 1979.
After a spell of teaching English at Hackney College, and further acting experience, she founded Lynx Theatre and Poetry with William Alderson. Since then she has studied for a PhD, worked with the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, and written lots more plays.
She currently lives in West Norfolk, but still travels to read papers at conferences and for pleasure. In 2017 and 2018 she toured England and Scotland with her one-woman play Sylvia.
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She has two cats, one of whom loves poetry (Arlecchino), and the other music (Colombina).