[1] He later credited Anthony O'Grady, the magazine's editor, as giving him his first break as a professional journalist.
[2] He was a full-time journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from 1996 to 2012, specialising in travel and popular culture.
[5] In 1988 Elder won acclaim for his book Blood on the Wattle, which collects in one place all reports of massacres of Aboriginal Australians.
It was listed as one of the ten most influential Australian works of non-fiction in the twentieth century in an extensive poll conducted by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
In 2010 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Lifeline South Coast (he had been a member of the board for over a decade) and, for ten years, has been an Australia Day Ambassador (including in Gosford, NSW in year 2010)[9] travelling around New South Wales and performing civic duties for the Australia Day Council.