Hugh Lunn


Hugh Duncan Lunn is an Australian journalist and author.

Writing career

Early journalism

Lunn served his journalism cadetship with The Courier-Mail. Upon completing his cadetship, he worked overseas for seven years. During 1967 and 1968 he covered the Vietnam War for Reuters. In 1969 Lunn reported on the Act of Free Choice in West Papua while Reuters Correspondent in Indonesia.
On returning to Australia he became Queensland editor of The Australian. Over the course of the next two decades Lunn was in turn sacked and re-employed
by Rupert Murdoch's newspaper a number of times. Finding himself without employment at the age of 47, he began to pen a memoir about his childhood.

Author

Lunn is now famous in Queensland for a number of autobiographical books: in June 2009 he was voted a Queensland Icon as one of 15 "influential artists" in the state's history in a list of 15 which included the Bee Gees, Geoffrey Rush, Powderfinger and David Malouf. The best known of his memoirs is Over The Top With Jim. Published in 1989, it became the biggest-selling non-fiction book in Australia for 1991. It tells the story of his Brisbane childhood and his friendship with Jim Egoroff and Ken Fletcher. After reading the book Egoroff is said to have visited Lunn and threatened to "punish you for your sins".
In 1994, A by Brisbane artist Dr. Rhyl Hinwood was erected on the University of Queensland campus to celebrate the publication by UQP of several of Lunn's national bestsellers.
In 2015, Lunn was inducted as a Fellow of the .
Lunn is famous for coining the phrase "there is no such thing as an ex-Queenslander", which he first used when in November 1979 when discussing with Senator Ron McAuliffe, President of the QRL, on a 90-minute plane trip from Brisbane to Canberra, the viability of a State of Origin series.
In 2019, three off-Broadway performances of The State of Origin Musical! - written by Hugh Lunn with comedian and composer Gerry Connolly - were performed at The Princess Theatre in Annerley Road, Wooloongabba, a stage on which Hugh had debuted as a tap-dancer, 70-something years earlier.

Awards