Hesba Brinsmead, an innovative writer of fiction for children, was born in 1922, the fourth and youngest child of Ken and May Hungerford, who had been Seventh Day Adventist missionaries in Indonesia. She grew up in Berambing, a remote part of the Blue Mountains on the Hawkesbury River, where her parents, and her father's brothers' families, who lived nearby, farmed and ran a saw mill; her mother grew flowers to sell commercially. Hesba received a limited formal education - she was mainly taught by her mother at home - but managed to become a school teacher in her late teens. She taught in a number of small rural schools before marrying Reg Brinsmead, also of a Seventh Day Adventist background, when she was twenty.

She worked with Reg in the pest control company he owned and managed, which involved travelling and living in various states including Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia. The couple had two sons and Hesba took on the main caring role as well as working for the company. During this time, she completed a journalism course by correspondence and began to write - something that she had long dreamed of doing. It is clear from oral history interviews that she resented having to squeeze her writing time between her work for the company and domestic duties, but she clearly became adept at it. Her first book, Pastures of the Blue Crane, was published in 1964, when she was forty-two. It won the 1965 Dame Mary Gilmore Medal and the 1965 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award, establishing her almost immediately as an important Australian literary figure. From then on, she was prolific, publishing another twenty-four novels before osteoporosis forced her to give up writing in her sixties.

Brinsmead's writing was ground breaking in many respects. She is generally classified as a children's writer, but her books are aimed more at the teenage market, 'young adult' writing, which, in the 1960s, was not seen as a distinct genre. They dealt with issues of identity, self-discovery and growing up, but at the same time were very clearly located in place. Environmentalism, sexism and racism were recurrent themes. Pastures of the Blue Crane, which remained her most popular book (and in 1969 was made into ABC TV's first miniseries), focuses on an orphaned teenage girl from Melbourne who goes to live on the cane fields of Queensland after her father's death. The clashes of culture, gender and race are dealt with sensitively yet directly, unusual in fiction of this period. Australian history and national identity feature in the background of most of her books, particularly the semi-autobiographical Longtime trilogy. She was also deeply involved in the environmental movement and passionate about stopping the destruction of wilderness, particularly in Tasmania. Her 1972 novel, An Echo in the Wilderness, deals with the submergence of Lake Pedder, a topic also addressed in her only book for adults, the non-fiction I Will Not Say the Day is Done, published in 1983.

These concerns for protection of the environment brought her into some conflict with her husband's career in pest and weed control. They divorced in the 1990s after a long separation, but remained close friends. Hesba Brinsmead died in 2003 in Murwillimbah, Queensland. Her final book, a collection of short stories titled The Silver Train to Midnight and Other Stories, was published in 1993.

Archival Resources

National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection

• Papers of Hesba Brinsmead, c. 1906 - 1989, MS 4557; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. Details

National Library of Australia Oral History Collection

• H. F. Brinsmead interviewed by Hazel de Berg for the Hazel de Berg collection, 4 July 1965, ORAL TRC 1/106; National Library of Australia Oral History Collection. Details
• Hesba Brinsmead interviewed by Suzanne Lunney, 11 June 1975, ORAL TRC 350; National Library of Australia Oral History Collection. Details

Published Resources

Books

• Pollak, Michael and MacNabb. Margaret, Days Never Done: The Life and Work of Hesba Fay Brinsmead, Unity Press, 2002. Details

See also

• 'Brinsmead, Hesba', The Australian Women's Register, National Foundation for Australian Women, http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4995b.htm. Details