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 NOLA MCKENZIE
Played by Carole Skinner
Nola McKenzie is one of the most evil inmates that Wentworth has ever been home to. She is introduced as Jean Carter when she arrives at the Halfway House with nowhere to live and no money - with the story that her husband has taken it all, leaving her clean broke. All is not what it seems however with Jean when Hazel Kent (who she is sharing a room with) discovers that she infact has hundreds of dollars hidden away, and Hazel uses this opportunity to steal some of it and runs off (episode 332).
Jean ends up inside Wentworth a couple of episodes later and is soon found out to be responsible for a bank robbery and is on the run from Western Australia where she's facing the death penalty for murdering her husband and a policeman. It is at this point (episode 337) where she admits her real name: Nola McKenzie. The only problem is that now the authorities know who she is, she'll be sent back to W.A. to face an imminent death for her crimes. Nola decides that the only way she can stop this happening is by having a really good reason for staying in Wentworth, so she takes it upon herself to drown Paddy Lawson in a sink full of water in the shower block. Nola insists that she would have murdered anyone who walked into the shower block where she was waiting - Paddy was the unlucky one and the reason for Nola's stay in Wentworth to be permanent.
Nola instantly leaves the rest of the women inside the prison scared of even being in the same room as her and forces the other women into buying into her 'insurance scheme' where she will pay out if they get into trouble with the officers. The women don't know that Nola is behind this initially as she uses Faye Quinn as collector of the monies - she even bashes Faye to make it look as if they aren't working together.
This all becomes a little too much for top dog Bea Smith to handle, after learning that Nola has bashed a number of women for not paying up. Bea manages to get Nola alone in a cell and brands the letter K on her chest (episode 342) with a soldering iron - for Killer: a permanent reminder of what she's done to Paddy.
This stops Nola in her tracks but only for a short while. It's not long before she's selling her insurance scheme again to the other women who seem to have forgotten about their friend who met with her death just because she walked into the shower block at the wrong time. Nola begins to get the other women on side by bringing in a selection of goodies and drugs to the prison under the watchful eye of Joan Ferguson who she is working with. Bea, realising that she's fighting a losing battle, steals Nola's stash of money she's made from her rackets and escapes.
Nola is now running the prison with the help of Joan and works out a number of ways of getting drugs into the prison while Bea is not around. One of the most bizarre is perhaps when a Vicar visits Nola and slips her some drugs in the middle of a bible which has been cut out in the middle for the drugs to appear un-noticed.
Bea is returned to Wentworth a few episodes later and she is immediately bashed by Nola and her cronies. This leads to Bea spending a little time in hospital to recover from her injuries but she is soon back on form and takes over as top dog until crazy psychic inmate Zara Moonbeam arrives. Joan and Nola see this as an excellent opportunity to get rid of Bea once and for all by making her think Zara can contact Bea's dead daughter Debbie. This begins to work as planned until Joan makes a 'zip gun' for Bea to use on herself after she's convinced that she needs to kill herself to be with Debbie.
By this time, Bea has been told by Lizzie that it's all a trick and Zara is just making it all up so she goes crazy. Bea manages to pretend she's about to leave this world and asks to see Nola in the infirmary where she shoots her in the head with the gun that was planted for Bea to kill herself (episode 369). Nola dies instantly in one of Wentworth's most gripping storylines ever to have been screened.
© 2004 Scott Anderson. Not to be reproduced without permission.
Thanks to "Who's Who in Wentworth" for episode numbers & precise details.
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