Joliffe left school at the age of fifteen, where he spent the next six years in the country New South Wales and Queensland, working as a boundary rider, rabbit trapper and in shearing sheds.
Eventually they began to buy his cartoons and by the beginning of World War II he became a regular contributor, taking over Andy from Arthur Horner.
[1] After the war, he joined Smith's Weekly but resigned and began freelancing by selling his cartoon strips Saltbush Bill and Witchetty's Tribe to Pix magazine.
Wherever he went he sketched the minutiae most people failed to see – shacks and sheds, funny old gates and tree stumps they hinged on, bark roofs, billabongs and cows in bogs.
Jim Hodge observed that "sensitivity without sentiment describes his approach"[3] and Tony Stephens noted that "Joliffe made Aboriginal men hunters with a sense of humour" and "the women as beautiful as ...