Vale Sonia Borg

 

Glowing tributes for Women of the Sun writer

The Australian Writers’ Guild has paid tribute to one of its early members, multi-award-winning film and TV writer Sonia Borg, who has died aged 85.

Although Austrian-born Borg had a string of credits for Australian dramas, she was probably best known as co-writer of 1981 TV mini-series Women of the Sun, which critics said changed the way Australians looked at Aboriginal history.

In 2006, The Age’s Paul Kalina wrote: “Women of the Sun started conversations in indigenous and non-indigenous communities across the country. Through its fictionalised accounts of the stolen generation, of the dispossession of Aboriginal homelands, of challenges to white Australia's laws and customs, it put the untold history of indigenous Australia on the agenda.

“It pre-empted a once-robust campaign for national reconciliation.”

AWG Vice President Roger Simpson writes that despite the turmoil of her early life as a displaced person – or maybe because of it – Sonia Borg became a very Australian writer: 

“Born in Vienna in 1931, Sonia was a trained actor who emigrated with her family from war-torn Europe to India, where her father found employment as an engineer.  Joining Shakespeareana International, a theatre company that toured various countries including India, Singapore and Hong Kong, it was when her family made one final move – to Australia – that Sonia’s career really took flight. 

Hired initially as a drama coach by radio producers, Crawford Productions, she was soon writing scripts for the company’s first television drama series, Consider Your Verdict, eventually becoming the program’s producer.  Sonia went on to write, act in, script edit or produce most of the subsequent Crawford’s television series: Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police, Young Ramsay and Solo One. 

In 1975 Sonia went freelance, joining famed ABC producer Oscar Whitbread’s ‘gang of four’ (Cliff Green, Howard Griffiths, Borg and a youthful Roger Simpson) to write the landmark adaptations, Power Without Glory and I Can Jump Puddles.

Sonia then turned to features, adapting the hugely successful Storm Boy, (directed by Henri Saffron) which won both the Jury Prize and Best Film at the 1976 AFI Awards, followed by an adaptation of the other Colin Thiele best seller, Blue Fin (starring Hardy Kruger).

But it was her seminal work in 1981, Women of the Sun, that changed the face of Australian scriptwriting. The mini series (shown first on SBS and then on the ABC thanks to the guile and deal making creativity of producer, Bob Weis) portrayed the lives of four Aboriginal women from 1820 to 1980. Collaborating with the wonderful Aboriginal rights campaigner, poet and scriptwriter, Hyllus Maris, Women of the Sun strode onto the screen with its indigenous point of view, winning many prestigious awards including the Major AWGIE Award, the United Nations Media Peace Prize and the Banff Grand Prix.

Sonia came to love Australia and immersed herself in its literature, culture and landscape. With her brother Hans, an engineer like their father, she turned farmland back to regenerated bush on their beloved Otways property in order to gift it back to the community.  Though she never lost her rich Austrian accent (except of course when she was acting) or was seldom without her intimidating German Shepherds at her side, Sonia became a passionate Australian and a passionate Australian writer.

Though dementia clouded her final years, she remained in the wild ranges she loved so dearly.  One of the true pioneers of television drama, Sonia was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1985 for her services to the industry.”