Roger McDonald

Roger McDonald was born at Young, NSW, and educated at country schools and in Sydney. For many years he has lived on farms (no farm animals except poultry and a corrugated iron sheep these days) in southern NSW, with intervals spent in Sydney and New Zealand.

His first novel was 1915, winner of the Age Book of the Year, and made into an eight-part ABC-TV series. His account of travelling the outback with a team of New Zealand shearers, Shearers' Motel, won the National Book Council Banjo Award for non-fiction. His internationally bestselling novel Mr Darwin's Shooter, was awarded the New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian Premiers' Literary Awards. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and South Australian Festival Prize for Fiction. A long story that became part of When Colts Ran was awarded the O. Henry Prize (USA) in 2008. A companion novel, The Following (2013) attracted readers as a eulogy to country life at the close of a hard era. His other novels are Slipstream, Rough Wallaby, Water Man, and The Slap. His most recent novel is A Sea-Chase (2017).

Roger McDonald reviews 'Tirra Lirra By The River' by Jessica Anderson, 'Bend to the Wind' by Nene Gare, 'The Phallic Forest' by Michael Wilding, and 'Packaging at its Apostrophe Best' by Damien White

November 1978, no. 6 • 01 November 1978

Tirra Lirra By The River by Jessica Anderson Macmillan Australia, 141 pp, $8.95 hb, 0 333 25133 4In Tirra Lirra by the River, an elderly woman, Norah Porteou, returns to live in her childhood home in Brisbane after forty years as a ‘London Australian’. The house is empty, so is her life. Norah is a ‘woman whose name is of no consequence’. She is sensitive, vaguely artistic, slightly s ... (read more)