Julia, My Sister

At the end of her Year 10, Julia Kelly, gifted music scholarship student at Killian Grammar School, Melbourne, is taken hostage during a bank hold-up. The getaway car crashes and Julia barely escapes the flaming wreckage. Severely traumatised by burns and the loss of a rising career as a pianist, Julia depersonalises, sending the burned Julia to an imaginary place in the Simpson Desert, while retaining as herself, the undamaged "Kate".

The first part of 'Julia, My Sister' focuses on the internal relationship between Julia and "Kate", the imagined desert ghost town on the Old Ghan railway and the effect that Julia's depersonalisation has on her parents and her boyfriend, Ned.

"Kate" spends most of Year 11 at home or in hospital recovering from her burns and psychological trauma. She becomes obsessed with the Eurydice and Orpheus myth and writes a sixteen-part Song Cycle based on this in an effort to reintegrate Julia and "Kate" and to reinvent herself as a composer. In her determination not to become a victim, she seeks to "change the ending" of the myth, (Orpheus' destiny and death).

Julia's closest friend, Danica, from a tiny wheat town in Central Victoria, is also a scholarship student and fellow boarder. Danica is working as a cleaner at the Royal Children's Hospital during the summer holidays while Julia is there as an inpatient. Both of them return to Killian Grammar for Year 12; Julia, following face reconstructive surgery.