About Brian

Wanderer, truck driver, dishwasher, deckhand, advertising executive, television producer, lecturer, author. 

In 1960 he sailed for England where he worked in London as a copywriter. He travelled in Europe and journeyed overland alone for twelve months back to Australia through Afghanistan, Kashmir, India and South-east Asia. He worked in the Outback as a driller and truck driver and then returned to London to study for three years at The London School of Film Technique, under famous British film directors Charles Frend, (The Cruel Sea) and Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers starring Alec Guinness).

He became a film editor concentrating mainly on BBC productions and then returned to Australia and worked for twenty-two years as an editor, writer, producer and director for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He worked on numerous iconic television series including In the Wild with Harry Butler, Torque, A Big Country, Bill Peach’s Holiday, Peach’s Australia, the religious series Encounters, arts programmes, social history documentaries, travel and adventure series such as The Flying Vet, The Blue Revolution and the acclaimed science series Quantum.

During these years he travelled overseas to the USA, the Pacific and extensively throughout Australia.

Brian Nicholls is married to Johanna Nicholls, well-known author of Australian historical novels. They live in Sydney.

What readers say

It has everything: humour, pathos, history, laughter, tears.

C. McG. Perth, WA.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Nostalgic as well as immediate… and thoroughly engrossing.

A.T. Glebe, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Details the mapping of a moral universe…a wry, humorous approach to living. ‘Uncle’ Stan is my all-time favourite character – a man with a unique worldview. I thoroughly recommend it.

Sylvia Rosenblum, East Side Radio
A Saucepan in the Sky

I particularly empathised with the days which for no reason at all become mood days and that thing about times where nothing “happens”.

M.T. Glebe, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Dry, witty, sad, funny and amazingly frank.

E.M. Rozelle, NSW
Wanderlust

A wonderful story beautifully told.

D. B. Campbelltown, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

The humour and the entertaining bits make one laugh out loud, but underlying this is the layer of pathos and longing. Hyperbole confronts understatement; sensitive and poetic passages of intense sympathy contrast with brutal reality.

A.R. Applecross, WA
Wanderlust

I liked the surprise of it, the feeling that anything could happen. There is a time in life when one enters any open door. I guess that’s how you grow up.

R.W. Leura, NSW
Wanderlust

Thank you for your story and your style.

J.A. Greenwich, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Paints a vivid picture of a colourful extended family. A compelling tale.

Sunday Age
A Saucepan in the Sky

Many of us have memories of our own innocence abroad.

E.B. Roseville, NSW
Wanderlust

Wanderlust talks about things that people think but do not say.

M.B. Coogee, NSW
Wanderlust
Wanderlust
A Saucepan in the Sky
A Suitcase in the Desert
Darkling