Author

Kim Traill studied clarinet at the Victorian College of the Arts and performed with the Australian Youth Orchestra before leaving Australia for the USSR in 1990. She spent the next seven years traveling and working in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the US, Europe, China, Pakistan, Vietnam and India.

In 1997 Kim turned to film-making.  She was runner-up in ABC TV's inaugural Race Around the World program, filming stories in Peru, Bolivia, Mexico (Chiapas), Botswana (Kalahari), Ethiopia, Yemen, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Laos.  She then went on to shoot ‘postcard’ stories for Foreign Correspondent (ABC), a report on the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, in addition to filming for The 7.30 Report and Lateline in Russia and Macedonia.

In February 2000 she produced her first story for SBS's international current affairs program, Dateline - on the war in Chechnya - which was nominated for a Rory Peck Award.  Over the next five years she worked as a video-journalist for Dateline, researching, filming and reporting from the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan and Cuba.  These included reports on the Chechen conflict, alcoholism in Russia, the Mayak nuclear disaster, the dictatorship in Belarus, the former Soviet Union’s HIV epidemic, media control in Russia, the rise of xenophobia in the former USSR, Afghanistan pre and post 9/11.

Her son, Nik, was born in Beijing in December 2002 and she returned to live in Australia in 2004. She has made a number of extended visits back to Russia since and keeps in regular contact with friends.