Category: Australasian authors
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Garrard, Phillis
About the author Phillis Garrard (also known as Phillis Garrard Rowley) was a New Zealander. She is probably best known now for her Hilda series, about a co-educational school in New Zealand. Hilda at School, the first of the series, was the earliest school story to be set in New Zealand, and it was followed up…
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Fowler, Thurley
About the author Thurley Fowler was born in New South Wales, and brought up on a farm. She’s written several children’s novels which have met with critical acclaim. Her Wait for Me! Wait for Me! was shortlisted for the 1982 Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award, and The Green Wind won it in 1986. She’s written one horse…
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Farrell, Anne
About the author Anne Farrell also writes under the name Anne Heazlewood. She was born on 24 June, 1954, in Latrobe, Tasmania. She was one of several authors the paperback arm of Hodder & Stoughton, Knight books, picked up in the 1970s in the UK. Knight picked their pony books very well, as Farrell’s The Gift-Wrapped…
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Downie, John C
About the author John C Downie is the brother of James Downie, several of whose books he illustrated, including Warrigal, the Story of a Wild Horse (1935), Killer-Dog, and The Treasure of the Never-Never (1936). He has written and illustrated at least one title himself: Galloping Hooves, a Story of Australian Men and Horses. Finding the bookReasonably easy to find. SourcesAustlit…
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Downie, James M
About the author James M Downie was an Australian author. He wrote children’s stories, mostly based on flying, and flying doctors. Some of his books, including Warrigal, the Story of a Wild Horse, Killer-Dog, and The Treasure of the Never-Never, were illustrated by his brother, John C Downie. Finding the bookReasonably easy to find, though not necessarily…
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Dickon, Julian, Jackson, Wendy & Stuart, Duncan
About the author Moon Jumper was a New Zealand TV series of the 1980s. The series was devised by Julian Dickon, and the episodes were written by Ken Catran, Tim Harrigan and Wendy Jackson. The programmes were produced by Huntly Eliott, and certainly ran to two series, if not three. The three books in the series…
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Dee, Sheryn
About the author Sheryn Dee is an Australian author. She started acting for Australian television and radio at the age of 13, and writing for radio two years later. She has worked as secondary school teacher, and worked in communication psychology (neuro linguistic programming). She now works principally as a screenwriter, and has adapted books…
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Cowley, Joy
About the author Joy Cowley (b.1936) was born in New Zealand. She is a phenomenally prolific author: she’s written over 400 books. She started off editing the children’s page for local paper the Manawatu Daily Times when she was sixteen, and went on to write stories for her own son. She had one printed in Short Story International which…
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Clark, Mavis Thorpe
About the author Mavis Thorpe Clark (1909–99) was born in Melbourne in 1909, and died there in 1999. Her first published work was a serial in the Australasian when she was 14, and she published Hatherley’s First Fifteen at the age of 18. She won the Book of the Year Award of the Children’s Book Council of Australia for The…
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Chauncy, Nan
About the author Nancen Beryl Chauncy (1900–70) was born, one of twins, in Northwood, Middlesex, England. When she was 12, the family moved to Hobart in Tasmania after her father, a civil engineer, lost money and needed to find employment. He worked as a council engineer, and Nan went to the Collegiate School in Hobart.…