Sarah Walker
Script Editor: 2000-2001
Story Editor: 2001
Story Consultant: 2005-2007; 2008-2010
Script Producer: 2007; 2009
Script Consultant: 2011
Story Producer: 2011-2012
Born on 14 March 1965, Sarah Walker got her first break in television at 14, when she sent off a screenplay to a competition and won. Through this competition, she was later offered a guest position as an actor on a television series.
After 8 years of acting, and realising it wasn’t suited for her, she moved into the journalism field and wrote feature articles for The Good Weekend and Vogue Australia. Afterwards, she began working as a chief sub-editor for NW magazine for three years, during which time she was completing a Bachelor of Arts and Communication at UTS. She also wrote six young adult fiction novels during this time.
During the summer break, Sarah was asked to write a short fiction column for the magazine, and through this, her name was thrown into the television arena. She received a phone call from Des Monaghan, who was setting up Screentime Australia and asked her to develop a series for them. Although this series never eventuated, she then joined Jimmy Thomson as the story editor on his new series for Channel Ten, Breakers in 1998. This series was cancelled the following year.
After a few weeks as story editor for Home and Away in 2001, Sarah was hired to replace Susan Bower as story editor on All Saints, with her first episodes airing in the fourth season. She remained in the role until 2004, but remained writing for the series until the end of 2005. She was nominated for an AFI Award for her fourth season episode, “The Sign”. She was succeeded by Louise Bowes.
After leaving her position at All Saints, Sarah was moved back to Home and Away and acted as a story consultant for two and a half years under the reign of Dan Bennett. Sarah was appointed as script producer of Home and Away, several weeks after Dan’s departure in 2007. Her first episode aired on 18th June 2007 (Ep#4441) and her final episode aired on 30th November 2007 (Ep#4560). Over her six month tenure, Sarah was responsible for storylines including Alf running over Pippa, the Campbell siblings and Brad and Sally’s ill-fated wedding as well as the return of Donald Fisher. She remained on the series as a script consultant and story producer, and briefly script producer again in 2009, until 2012. She has written over 300 episodes for the series and most recently wrote the Home and Away spinoff episode An Eye for an Eye.
For two years, Sarah developed the Network Seven drama, Winners & Losers alongside Bevan Lee, and in 2011, when the series premiered, was credited as script producer alongside Dan Bennett for the first 8 episodes, before leaving him in the sole capacity.
In 2012, Sarah began to work as a script executive at Fremantle Media, alongside director of drama and head of scripted Jo Porter and Anthony Ellis, respectively. Together, they created Wonderland. Sarah was in the role of script producer for two years until the series was axed. Sarah also worked on two other Fremantle series, Wentworth and Neighbours as a script consultant and writer, respectively.
In March 2014, Sarah delivered a pitch for an original series called The Swimming Pool in America, which garnered interest from AMC.
Sarah Walker joined the in-house script department of Neighbours as the script executive in 2016, overseeing the scripting process and story department, with Stephen Vagg. She left Fremantle in January 2017.
Sarah is currently working as a freelancer, and is involved with a feature film and several television productions.
In 2022, Sarah launched a play starring Danielle Cormack and Nicole da Silva, which premiered at Belvoir Street Theatre in August titled Who’s Afraid?.
Other Credits
Breakers
Story Editor (1998-1999)
All Saints
Story Editor (2001-2003)
Script Producer (2004)
Winners & Losers
Script Producer (2011)
Story Consultant (2011)
Wonderland
Script Producer (2013-2015)
Neighbours
Script Executive (2016-2017)
The Secret She Keeps
Script Producer (2020-2022)
The Twelve
Script Producer (2022)
Picture with thanks to Sarah Walker