Mary Grant Bruce

It was characterised by fierce patriotism, vivid descriptions of the beauties and dangers of the Australian landscape, and humorous, colloquial dialogue celebrating the art of yarning.

Her books were also notable and influential through championing of what Bruce held up as the quintessentially Australian Bush values of independence, hard physical labour (for women and children as well as men), mateship, the ANZAC spirit and Bush hospitality against more decadent, self-centred or stolid urban and British values.

Her books simultaneously celebrated and mourned the gradual settlement, clearing and development of the Australian wilderness by Europeans.

After being educated at Miss Estelle Beausire's Ladies High School, Bruce worked as a secretary before establishing a career as a journalist, poet and writer for Australian magazines.

From 1927 to 1939, and following the death of her younger son in a shooting accident, Bruce, her husband and their surviving child, Jonathan, travelled in Europe, before returning yet again to Australia.

"[4] An English designer of warplanes, concerned that Australian pilots would be too tall to fit in the cockpits, asked his daughter for the heights of Bruce's characters Jim Linton and Wally Meadows.