Australian author Colleen McCullough during portrait session held in 1997. Photo: Ulf Andersen

Having read The Australian's obituary of author Colleen McCullough, you could be forgiven for wondering if their initial draft had read "Well, she was fat and not much of a looker, but somehow she managed to get by in life, bless her".

Yes, the paper's appalling decision to run with a piece that was less obituary than, well, you can't even really call it a "character assassination", since it is so concerned with how McCullough's body and face played such a big part in her private life.

After that cracking start, the Australian obit dithers around with a few of McCullough's life's highlights in a desultory fashion before once again plummeting into personal details of questionable relevance, such as the fact that her father was revealed to be a bigamist, and that she had married a man who was 13 years her junior.

Yes, evidently you can be a neuroscientist who wrote a mega-selling series of books in your spare time, but what'll be most remarkable about your colourful life will be the fact you didn't let being a bit of an ugger hold you back.


ABC journalist Joanna McCarthy was at the crest of the wave of disbelief that flooded Twitter as the nation awoke and reacted to the obit:

Award for worst opening lines of an obituary goes to ... #everydaysexism pic.twitter.com/xmQogrR58P — Joanna McCarthy (@joanna_mcc) January 29, 2015

McCullough was a successful writer & neurophysiologist, but "she didn't let being fat & ugly get her down" was the best they had. — Sophie Benjamin (@sophbenj) January 30, 2015

"Colleen McCullough died this week, though of course her relevance as a human died much earlier, when she started overeating." — Anna Spargo-Ryan (@annaspargoryan) January 30, 2015

McCullough's memory fared better, perhaps not surprisingly, in the hands of The New York Times; that paper's obituary, written by Margalit Fox, began, "Colleen McCullough, a former neurophysiological researcher at Yale who, deciding to write novels in her spare time, produced The Thorn Birds, a multigenerational Australian romance that became an international bestseller and inspired a hugely popular television mini-series, died on Thursday on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, where she had made her home for more than 30 years. She was 77."

Perhaps the Times had learned its own lesson after its obituary for scientist Yvonne Brill focused on her domestic skills including her cracking recipe for beef stroganoff; aside from her standing as a kitchen magician, the obit ran, "[she] was also a brilliant rocket scientist who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits".

(When not focusing on the cooking skills of noted rocket scientists, the Times has often come under fire for favouring the obituaries of men over women; a survey found that of the 66 most recent obituaries run, just seven were written about women.)

As yet there has been no response from The Australian regarding the outcry over its dog of an obituary. Writing in The SMH, Joel Meares applied the Oz's tack to some other noted authors, rejigging their obituaries to reflect this brave new era in posthumous hatchet jobs: J.R.R. Tolkien was, "A touch shrivelled and certainly orc-esque in his latter years, [he] nevertheless was a prolific and talented fantasy weaver."

And on Twitter, back where the wave of disbelief first broke, writer Celeste Liddle penned a variety of #MurdochPressEulogies, all of which had the same sensitivity of tone as The Australian's effort:

"He was the finest political essayist of the Howard era, despite having a bum-chin and only one testicle" #MurdochPressEulogies — Celeste Liddle (@Utopiana) January 30, 2015