Ron McLean(1944-1985)

Entered the screenwriting profession by submitting story ideas for Riptide (1969). At the time he was running a women's shoe shop in Sydney's Double Bay, and learned how to lay out a TV script from a library book.

Scriptwriting is like the blueprint of a building. It's the writer's job to write within the money available. A novelist has a much easier job. ... A novelist can write in a herd of 40,000 elephants and the reader supplies his own elephants. But let me tell you, to a scriptwriter each elephant adds to the cost.