Run for Your Life

Jill Jolliffe is a freelance writer who has worked as a foreign correspondent for most of her career. She is best-known for her coverage of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor and its twenty-four-year struggle against military occupation. In 1978 she left Australia to live in Portugal, continuing to work as a freelance writer for a wide range of international media, including The Guardian, The Sunday Times, the BBC, and The New York Times. She came back to Australia after Indonesia’s withdrawal from Timor in 1999 and based herself in Darwin, from where she resumed work in the ex-colony, ending a ban of over two decades. In 2009 she published Balibó on the execution of six journalists during the first days of the invasion. It won acclaim as a feature film starring Anthony LaPaglia and directed by Robert Connolly. In 2012 she returned to live in her home city of Melbourne, where she continues to work as a freelance writer, university teacher, and public speaker.