Heather Nimmo emigrated to South Australia with her family at the age of ten, and continued her education, begun in Paisley, Scotland, at Penola where her father taught at the High School. Heather grew up in a large extended family which revelled in story-telling, making people laugh and getting under their skin. Everyone in the family had a party "piece" to perform at family functions. She says of this time, "No one was particularly talented but all were committed to having a good time. There was planty of shouting, arguing and laughter. And tears. I once said (as an adult) to my mother, through gritted teeth, 'Can't anything happen in this house without it being a drama?' And then laughed, thinking it was an appropriate milieu for a playwright" [personal communication]. One of her first theatrical experiences was appearing as a bridesmaid in a Penola High School production of Trial by Jury with Peter Goldsworthy who went on to become a well-known South Australian writer.
Heather matriculated from Unley High School, and has a BA with Honours in Psychology from the University of Adelaide (1973) and also has a DipEd (1979), a Graduate Diploma in English (Film and Television) from Curtin University (1990) and an MA (English) from Curtin University of Technology, WA (1991). She married in 1973 just before moving to London where she was employed as a community-based youth worker. She had wanted to stay on and live in Britain again, but after a year she reluctantly returned to Adelaide with her Adelaide-born husband. A year later they parted. She went on to work in South Australia as a research officer for the Department of Community Welfare (1974) and as a remedial teacher at Ingle Farm High School (1975-6). Then she followed geologist Nick Langsford, who was to become her second husband, to Tasmania to a remote mining ghost town where they mined tin for eight years.
She has since lived and worked in many remote areas of Australia, working as, among other things, a researcher, a teacher and a school psychologist in various locations in Queensland and Western Australia. From 1985-88 she lectured in Behavioural Science at Curtin University and tutored mature-age Aboriginal students in Year 11 and Year 12 English. She has taught Scriptwriting (Kalgoorlie College 1986-88) and done sessional teaching of writing for theatre and radio at Curtin University, the WA Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University and the University of Western Australia (1992-98). She has done occasional film script editing for Nova Productions, London and has been dramaturg for a number of successful Australian productions including a pre-rehearsal involvement in "Carrying Light" by South Australian writer Verity Laughton (qv). She has been Writer-in Residence at Salamanca Theatre Co, Hobart (1989), Perth Modern School (1990) and the Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Hobart (1990), and has run workshops and courses in Western Australia and in London.
As well as the plays listed here, she has published a monograph, Some Day My Prince Will Come: The Cinderella Complex in the Playwright and Her Writing (Women in Leadership Project 1994). Heather has been the recipient of a Literature Board Grant (1978), a Creative Development Fund from the WA Dept of the Arts (1987), a Literature Board Studio Residence in Paris (1988), the WA Premier's Award (1993), GIO Australia Perth Theatre Trust Script Award (1993) and a Varuna Fellowship (1994).
She has settled in Perth but returns regularly to Britain to visit family and friends, and often visits Adelaide. She says she still regards South Australia as the place where her Australian roots are planted, along with her parents' ashes, and her youngest brother Stuart, who lives in a community house run by Minda Inc, keeps the family together.
