Wheatley's first book,
Five Times Dizzy (1983) was acclaimed as Australia's first
multicultural book for children. Awarded the
New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Special Children's Book Award, it became a
television mini-series that went to air on the new multicultural channel
SBS in 1986. The picture book,
My Place, has also been produced as
television mini-series 26-part television adaptation, with Nadia Wheatley acting as history consultant and story consultant. Released on the
ABC in 2009 and 2011,
My Place was acknowledged as Most Outstanding Children's Series in the 2012
Logie Awards. Wheatley also used her background as a historian in the writing of the historical novel,
The House That Was Eureka (1986), set in the turbulent anti-eviction battles of the
Great Depression. Described by critic
Maurice Saxby as ‘a novel of enduring significance’, this was republished in 2014 as a
Text Classic. While Wheatley was producing these books for children and young adults, she was also researching and writing a biography of the acclaimed Australian author, Charmian Clift. Published by
HarperCollins,
The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift won
The Age Book of the Year — Non Fiction (2001) and the Australian History Prize in the
New South Wales Premier's History Awards (2002). Over the last decade, Nadia Wheatley has collaborated with artist
Ken Searle to produce a set of non-fiction books that exemplify the
Papunya Model of Education — an Indigenous curriculum model that puts the Country at the centre of learning. This journey began during the period 1998 to 2001, when Wheatley and Searle worked as consultants at the school at Papunya (an Aboriginal community in the Western Desert, Northern Territory). While assisting the Anangu staff and students to develop resources for their curriculum, the two consultants helped produce the multi-award-winning
Papunya School Book of Country and History (Allen & Unwin, 2002). Wheatley and Searle subsequently took part in the Australian Society of Authors funded mentorship program for Indigenous authors, supporting Papunya artist and teacher, Mary Malbunka, to write and illustrate her picture book memoir,
When I Was Little, Like You (2003,
Allen & Unwin). =="Going Bush" project==