The Shiralee
D'Arcy Niland was born in Glen Innes, NSW, and spent much of his boyhood travelling with his Irish father, who followed the NSW shearing circuit. He began work as a copyboy on the Sydney Sun but he decided quite early that in order to write about real people he had to travel, work and live amongst them. Accordingly he led an adventurous, rather romantic life, travelling through Australia and the Pacific, working in a wide variety of jobs - as an opal-miner, circus hand, stevedor, woolshed rouseabout and later as a television and film scriptwriter and magazine editor. He married the writer, Ruth Park, and they had five children. D'Arcy Niland died suddenly in 1967 from a heart attack, two days after completing his last novel. He was forty-seven, and well established as one of Australia's best known novelists. The Shiralee, with its insights into fatherhood, confirms that he understood the human heart as well as he knew the country roads of Australia.