Eleanor Witcombe: A Pioneer of Australian Screenwriting

A Brilliant Career of her own – not just her screenplay

Eleanor Katrine Whitcombe spent much of her professional life known as Eleanor Witcombe.

She was born, however, Eleanor Katrine Whitcombe in Yorketown, South Australia, on 20 September 1923. That alone makes her story particularly interesting for the Whitcombe Extended Family Network.

At some point, the family name lost its h.

Whether that was a deliberate simplification, a local spelling convention, or simply something that became established over time is not yet clear from the records we have reviewed. We should resist inventing an explanation.

What is clear is that Eleanor herself went on to build a remarkable career under the Witcombe spelling.

She wrote for theatre, radio, television and film. She adapted some of Australia’s best-loved novels for the screen. She worked on pioneering television programmes, helped fight for writers’ rights, won major industry awards, and was eventually appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the arts.

Her credits included Seven Little Australians, The Getting of Wisdom, My Brilliant Career, The Mavis Bramston Show, Number 96, Water Under the Bridge, Jonah and The Harp in the South.

It is an extraordinary body of work.

And, rather appropriately, one of the films she helped create was called My Brilliant Career.

Book cover of 'My Brilliant Career: The Screenplay' by Eleanor Witcombe featuring a woman with wild hair and a historical costume against a desert backdrop. — Credit: Australian Writers’ Guild

Born a Whitcombe in South Australia

Eleanor was born in Yorketown, on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, to Noel Whitcombe and Bertha Eriksen.

Her father worked as a farmer and later ran a grocery store. Her mother was of Danish and Prussian descent. Eleanor had a sister, Aileen.

In 1939, the family set off for Queensland with the intention of moving to Cooktown.

They never got that far.

Instead, they settled in Brisbane, where Eleanor and Aileen attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

Two years later, chronic asthma forced Eleanor to leave school.

The family moved again, this time to Sydney, where she studied at the National Art School.

During the Second World War she also worked for a period as a governess on a New South Wales property.

She apparently disliked it.

Writing was clearly her passion.

Finding Her Way into Theatre

Eleanor’s route into professional writing was gradual.

In 1947 she won a scholarship to the Mercury Theatre, which had been founded by the actor Peter Finch.

The following year, the Mosman Theatre Club commissioned her to write three plays for children.

Those plays were well received and gave her the beginning of a real writing career.

There is something quite fitting about the fact that she entered the industry through children’s theatre.

At that time, women writers were still frequently pushed towards areas regarded as more suitable or less prestigious.

Eleanor did not remain confined there for long.

Her career would eventually span almost every major dramatic medium available in Australia.

Images below from New Theatre History Wiki.

London, the BBC and Toynbee Hall

In 1952, Eleanor moved to England.

She found work at the BBC, although not initially as a writer.

She was employed as a typist according to Wikipedia (see links below).

That detail matters because it says something about the period.

She was already a writer. She had already written plays. But entering a major broadcasting institution as a woman in the early 1950s did not necessarily mean walking straight into a writing department.

So she typed.

And carried on writing.

While living in London, Eleanor succeeded in getting her play Smugglers Beware! produced at Toynbee Hall in the East End.

Toynbee Hall had been founded in 1884 as part of the settlement movement, bringing education, social support and cultural activity into one of London’s poorest districts.

For a young Australian writer trying to establish herself thousands of miles from home, having a play staged there was a meaningful step forward.

It also gives the Whitcombe story another unexpected geographic connection.

South Australia.

Brisbane.

Sydney.

London.

Then, eventually, back to Australia.

Returning Home and Finding Her Voice

Eleanor returned to Australia and began writing extensively for radio.

Her work was broadcast by ABC Radio, the Macquarie Network and Lux Radio Theatre.

Radio drama was still one of the dominant forms of home entertainment in Australia, and writers had to learn how to create character, tension and atmosphere using dialogue and sound alone.

That discipline served Eleanor well.

When television expanded in Australia during the 1960s, she moved naturally into the new medium.

She adapted Smugglers Beware! for television and worked on an adaptation of the Australian novel Pastures of the Blue Crane for the ABC.

She was also part of the writing team for The Mavis Bramston Show, one of Australia’s pioneering television satire programmes. Australian Screen records her among the scriptwriters for the programme’s first series.

That alone shows how widely she could write.

Children’s drama.

Radio plays.

Literary adaptations.

Television satire.

She was not building a career in one narrow corner of the industry.

She was becoming a professional writer who could work almost anywhere.

Fighting for Writers

Eleanor was also deeply involved in the development of the Australian Writers’ Guild.

Sources differ slightly over whether she should technically be described as a founding member or as one of its very earliest members.

The Guild itself is careful on this point.

What is not disputed is that she became an important and passionate advocate for writers’ rights, particularly around fees, royalties and proper recognition as Australia’s film and television industries expanded.

The Australian Writers’ Guild later remembered her not only for her screen adaptations, but for what former Executive Director Angela Wales Kirgo described as her fierce commitment to the rights of writers.

This is an important part of her legacy.

Eleanor was not only trying to secure work for herself.

She was helping establish the principle that writers deserved to be treated as professionals.

That meant contracts.

Fees.

Royalties.

Credit.

Ideas that now seem obvious were not always treated as such.

The Australian Stories She Helped Put on Screen

By the 1970s, Eleanor had become one of Australia’s leading adapters of literary works for television and film.

She adapted Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding for a marionette production and worked on a television adaptation of his novel Redheap.

She also joined the writing team for the hugely popular television soap Number 96, a programme famous for pushing boundaries in Australian television.

Then came one of the most important adaptations of her career.

Seven Little Australians

In 1973, Eleanor adapted Ethel Turner’s classic novel Seven Little Australians for ABC television.

The production was a major success and helped demonstrate that Australian audiences wanted to see their own literature, history and family stories represented on screen.

Australian Screen credits Eleanor directly as the adapter of the series.

The adaptation also required judgement.

The original novel had been published in 1894 and reflected parenting attitudes very different from those of the 1970s.

Australian Screen notes that Eleanor deliberately softened some of Captain Woolcot’s harsher treatment of his children because behaviour accepted in the 19th century would have been difficult for a modern television audience.

That is a small but revealing example of what good adaptation actually involves.

It is not merely copying words from a book into a script.

A screenwriter must understand the original work, preserve what matters, and decide what must change so that the story still works for a different audience in a different age.

Eleanor became particularly good at doing exactly that.

From Television to the Australian Film Renaissance

Australia’s film industry was undergoing a major revival during the 1970s.

Government support, new directors, new producers and a renewed confidence in Australian stories created what is now often described as the Australian New Wave.

Eleanor became part of it.

Her success adapting Seven Little Australians helped establish her reputation as one of the country’s strongest screen adapters.

Director Bruce Beresford approached her to adapt Henry Handel Richardson’s semi-autobiographical novel The Getting of Wisdom for cinema.

The film was released in 1977.

It told the story of Laura, an intelligent and independent girl negotiating the social rules of a Melbourne ladies’ school.

Screen Australia lists Eleanor as the film’s writer and records screenings at both the Cannes and Berlin film festivals.

The work also brought Eleanor major recognition.

She won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Getting of Wisdom.

But an even more famous film was about to follow.

My Brilliant Career

In 1977, producer Margaret Fink asked Eleanor to adapt Miles Franklin’s novel My Brilliant Career.

The decision was hardly accidental.

Eleanor had already shown that she understood how to bring strong, complicated young female characters from Australian literature onto the screen.

The film, directed by Gillian Armstrong, was released in 1979.

It starred a young Judy Davis as Sybylla Melvyn and Sam Neill as Harry Beecham.

Screen Australia records Eleanor as the screenwriter.

The story centres on Sybylla, a young woman growing up in rural Australia who refuses to surrender her ambition to become a writer simply because society expects her to marry.

That theme has an obvious resonance with Eleanor’s own career.

She too had grown up in provincial Australia.

She too wanted to write.

She too entered industries in which women frequently had to fight harder for creative authority.

And she too chose a professional life built around words.

A Film That Changed Australian Cinema

My Brilliant Career became one of the defining films of the Australian New Wave.

Australian Screen describes it as a classic of Australian cinema and highlights its central theme of a young woman choosing independence and creative ambition over the expected path of marriage.

The film was also notable behind the camera.

Producer Margaret Fink, director Gillian Armstrong, associate producer Jane Scott, production designer Luciana Arrighi, costume designer Anna Senior and screenwriter Eleanor Witcombe formed an unusually female-led creative team for the period.

It was the first commercially released Australian feature film directed by a woman since the 1930s.

The film launched Judy Davis internationally and helped establish Armstrong as a major director.

It also travelled internationally, screening at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival.

Eleanor won another AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, this time for My Brilliant Career.

Screen Australia also records her as the Variety Club of Australia Best Writer for a Feature Film in 1980.

The title could hardly have been more appropriate.

More Television, More Australian Stories

Eleanor continued working across television and film.

Her later credits included:

Water Under the Bridge
Jonah
The Harp in the South

These continued a pattern that had defined much of her career.

She took Australian stories seriously.

Not as provincial material that needed to imitate Britain or America, but as stories worthy of being seen and heard in their own right.

Her career coincided with a major cultural shift in Australia, as local broadcasters and filmmakers increasingly stopped looking overseas for legitimacy and started turning towards their own history, landscapes, families and voices.

Eleanor helped write that transition.

The Sharp-Witted Iconoclast

One of the richest modern sources on Eleanor’s life comes from Dr Eleanor Hogan, whose research at the National Library of Australia has helped bring renewed attention to Witcombe’s career.

There is something rather delightful about one Eleanor researching another.

Dr Hogan worked through Eleanor Witcombe’s papers held at the National Library and became increasingly fascinated by the woman behind the scripts.

She described Witcombe as emerging from the archive as a sharp-witted, feisty iconoclast.

That phrase feels important because it gives us something beyond the credits.

It suggests personality.

Someone opinionated.

Someone funny.

Someone prepared to challenge assumptions.

Someone who did not simply adapt to the industry around her, but pushed back against parts of it.

Dr Hogan has also highlighted the broader significance of Eleanor’s career, particularly the journey from the relatively restricted world of post-war women’s writing into the more confident portrayals of independent young women that appeared in Australian film during the 1970s. (library.gov.au)

The National Library’s decision to preserve Eleanor’s papers means that future researchers can continue exploring that story.

For that, considerable credit should go to Dr Hogan for helping make those archives accessible and interesting to a new audience.

A Writer Who Never Quite Stopped Researching

One fascinating detail from the National Library concerns a project Eleanor pursued later in life.

She became deeply interested in researching a screenplay about the Australian artist and desert figure Daisy Bates.

The screenplay itself was never completed.

But Eleanor continued researching the subject for years, trying to untangle fact from mythology.

Much of that research survives among her papers at the National Library.

There is something wonderfully consistent about this.

Even after decades in the industry, she remained curious.

Still researching.

Still questioning.

Still trying to work out what the real story was.

Recognition at Last

In 2014, Eleanor was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

The honour recognised her significant service to the arts as a writer for radio, film, television and theatre.

By then, her career stretched back more than six decades.

She had entered Australian theatre at a time when opportunities for women were limited.

She had written through the golden age of radio drama.

She had moved into early television.

She had worked on satire and soaps.

She had helped adapt major Australian novels.

She had participated in the renaissance of Australian cinema.

And she had campaigned for writers to be properly paid and recognised.

The Order of Australia was less an isolated honour than an acknowledgement of an extraordinarily sustained contribution.

Whitcombe Becomes Witcombe

For this project, the spelling of Eleanor’s surname adds another intriguing layer.

She was born Eleanor Katrine Whitcombe.

Yet throughout her professional life she became known as Eleanor Witcombe.

The records reviewed so far do not give us a definitive explanation for when or why the h disappeared.

That makes this different from the American Whitcomb story, where the final e frequently disappeared as branches of the name became established overseas.

Here, it is the h that vanished.

Perhaps a future family record, letter or archival document will explain it.

Until then, the safest conclusion is simply that Eleanor was born a Whitcombe and became professionally known as Witcombe.

For the Whitcombe Extended Family Network, that is precisely the kind of surname evolution worth recording rather than tidying away.

Names travel.

Spellings change.

The people behind them remain part of the story.

Why Eleanor Whitcombe Belongs in the Hall of Fame

Eleanor’s case for inclusion is exceptionally strong.

She was born with the Whitcombe surname and went on to become one of Australia’s important dramatic writers.

She worked successfully across theatre, radio, television and film.

She adapted several of Australia’s best-known literary works for the screen.

She won major awards for both The Getting of Wisdom and My Brilliant Career.

She helped bring strong female characters into mainstream Australian cinema.

She fought for the professional rights of writers.

And, eventually, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her service to the arts.

That is not a marginal contribution.

It is a substantial cultural legacy.

An elderly woman sitting at a desk, holding a book titled 'Practices of Sustainable Development'. The desk is cluttered with books, a cup, and a tissue box, with a window showing a garden view in the background. — Credit: New Theatre History. On her 94th birthday, 2017

Why This Matters Today

There is something particularly inspiring about Eleanor’s story.

She did not begin with obvious advantages.

She left school because of illness.

She worked as a governess.

She travelled to London and found herself typing at the BBC rather than writing for it.

She worked through industries in which women were often given less authority, less status and fewer opportunities.

And yet she kept writing.

More importantly, she kept expanding what she wrote.

Children’s theatre became radio.

Radio became television.

Television became cinema.

A typist at the BBC became an award-winning screenwriter.

And a girl born Eleanor Whitcombe in a small South Australian town eventually helped create films that travelled around the world.

Dr Eleanor Hogan’s research has helped remind us that the great value of Eleanor’s career was not only the famous titles.

It was the persistence behind them.

The willingness to move between forms.

The insistence that writers deserved respect.

And the belief that Australian stories, particularly stories about independent women finding their own path, were worth telling.

That makes Eleanor Whitcombe a particularly fitting addition to our Hall of Fame.

Eleanor Katrine Whitcombe, Screenwriter, Playwright and Champion of Writers, 1923–2018