David Campbell (poet)

He was the third child of Australian-born parents Alfred Campbell, a grazier and medical practitioner, and his wife Edith Madge, née Watt.

[1] In 1930, Campbell went to The King's School, Parramatta, and in 1935, with the support of the headmaster, he enrolled at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1937.

He served in New Guinea, where he was injured and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and flew bombing missions from Darwin in the Northern Territory.

[1] Campbell married Bonnie Edith Lawrence on 20 January 1940 at St John's Anglican Church, Toorak, Melbourne.

[1] In 1946, he settled on a family property, Wells Station (now in Harrison, a suburb of Canberra), and in 1961 he moved to Palerang, near Bungendore, New South Wales.

Campbell, wrote Clark "was an enlarger of life, not a straitener or measurer, or a life-denier" the key to him being found in "the two books he re-read each year: The Idiot by Dostoevsky, and The Aunt's Story by Patrick White.

These early poems dealt primarily with war, but from 1946, after his move to Wells Station, "his poetry became more closely attuned to the realities of the countryside".

[1] Kramer writes that "his daily life as a grazier, his acute observations of the natural world and his deep understanding of European poetry gave him a distinctive poetic voice, learned but not didactic, harmonious but not bland, vigorous but finely tuned".

"[4] "See how these autumn days begin With spider-webs against the sun, And frozen shadows, fiery cocks, And starlings riding sheep-backs.

[9] At the opening of the park, Chief Minister of the ACT, Jon Stanhope, said that Campbell is "often called the poet of the Monaro" and that his poetry "reflects the local landscape and was greatly influenced by his life as a farmer of the surrounding countryside".