A
Public Memory Project
by
Chris Lee

About

History

Places

Writers
Alice Guèrin Crist
Dorothy Cottrell
Margaret Curran
Bruce Dawe
George Essex Evans
Jean Kent
David Rowbotham
Steele Rudd
A. G. Stephens
Margaret Trist
Jillian Watkinson

Writers

'… Golden lights touched the pale-iced cream-piled splendour of the cakes, and the little green jade tea-cups gave an odd clear note to the dim brown-gold gloom. But strangest of all were the little old ladies themselves. The light brushed heavy coiled white hair, sparse grey locks, tight-screwed, little decorous black frills, little tightly held black hand-bags, little bowed shoulders, and old shoulders rigidly straight. It lit withered lips and sharpley gleaming black eyes and more gentle glances of faded blue; and they chirruped together like so many strange small birds, preparing for migratory flight; which after all they were; for all the long pageant of life was behind them, with its fruit blossom of youth, its storms, its agony, its splendor of noon, and they were left just a little while to chirrup in the gold sunset.' ‘The Singing Gold’ Dorothy Cottrell

Toowoomba and the Darling Downs have been associated with a significant number of writers active in different ways and in different spaces within our literary culture.

Some writers were born here and moved away, others came from elsewhere to stay for varying lengths of time, others still were just visitors. Some wrote extensively about their local place, others ignored it completely, most dealt with it in some shape or form.

The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia list of writers who have a connection with Toowoomba or the Darling Downs includes: A.G. Stephens, W.H.Trail, Steele Rudd, John David Hennessey, Heber Hedley Booth, Francis Adams, Ronald McKie, David Rowbotham, Maureen Freer, Bruce Dawe, Mary Hannay Foot, John Henry Nicholson, JE MCDonnell, Eric Partridge, Arthur Upfield, Peter Edwards, Margaret Curran, Margaret Trist, Dorothy Green, V Cunnington and Gavin Souter. [i] J.L. Blyth and P.T. McNally name hundreds more in their extremely valuable Darling Downs Writers: A Bibliography. [ii]

This section provides biographies and portraits of some of the area's more distinguished writers but it hopes to add to this list writers important to the local area who have yet to have their work collected. More information on the place of these figures within the cultural history of Toowoomba or the Darling Downs can be found in the History section.

Further Reading

[i] Peter Pierce, ed. The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, revised edition, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.

[ii] J.L.Blyth and P. T. McNally, Darling Downs Writers: A Bibliography, Toowoomba: Darling Downs Institute Press, 1989.

Please use the link list on the left to access various featured writers Biographies and Portraits.

Submissions and suggestions for writers not yet included can be sent to leec@usq.edu.au