The McDonagh sisters were not girlish or little. The eldest, Isabel, was 25, followed by Phyllis, 24, and Paulette, 23. With their matching glossy black hair, hazel eyes and understated elegance, they seemed more like a set of triplets, or even parts of the one being, rather than three separate individuals. By the time they’d become obsessed with filmmaking, they’d endured more grief and heartache than most people twice their age.
As teenagers growing up in Sydney, and daughters of a respected surgeon and doctor, they’d already lived through World War I and the postwar flu epidemic, as well as the death of their beloved father from a cocaine overdose and their mother from a stroke. Following the death
