As a result of her tireless campaigning , the Yale University magazine Globalist named her the 2006 Journalist of the Year for her extensive writing on important matters .
In her 2008 memoir , Run For Your Life , Jill revealed her birth mother had adopted her out , she had been brought up in a violent household and ran away as a teenager , going to Monash University and becoming involved with activists . She lobbed in East Timor in April 1975 as a Reuter's freelance correspondent with a student delegation , evacuated on the last flight out of Dili in December , Roger East refusing to leave .
From 1978 to 1999 she was based in Portugal where she interviewed refugees from East Timor , covered the war in the former Portuguese colony of Angola and reported on matters in other colonies . Documentaries she was involved in included European prostitution rackets which enslaved Portuguese , Spanish and Third World women , the East Timor guerrilla war which involved a highly dangerous journey inside the occupied country seeking the Revolutionary Front commander Nino Konis Santana , the subject of a book she wrote , and a Foreign Correspondent special with Jonathan Holmes about the Balibo Five. When East Timor achieved its freedom , Jill ,who had been banned from entering the country by the Indonesians , came to Darwin and resided , went to East Timor where she launched the Living Memory Project , a video archive of testimony by East Timor former political prisoners . In 2010, she was a Northern Territory finalist for the Australian of the Year Award .
While in Darwin , Jolliffe came to this writer's residence and discussed a wide range of subjects and people , including Roger East and prominent Darwin reporter John Loizou who started the online South East Asian Times , still running . Now this relentless fighter is suffering from loss of memory .
