Graeme Barrow

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Graeme Thomas Barrow OAM (16 June 1936 – 15 May 2017)[1] was an Australian author best known for his bushwalking guide books and books on local history. Almost all his 28 books have been self-published through his business, Dagraja Press, established in 1977.

He was born in

Greymouth, New Zealand, on 16 June 1936 and received an education of sorts with the Marist Brothers, leaving school at 15 1/2 years of age. He became an apprentice hand compositor on the local newspaper, the Greymouth Evening Star, and later when he was 17 or 18 began writing articles for the paper while still an apprentice. He was encouraged by the editor George Gaffney and, following his interest and involvement as a player in the sport, became the paper's cricket
writer. Barrow covered local games played at weekends and wrote his reports on Sunday evenings. These were based on the match he had played in and on scorebooks he collected from other games, and published in the following day's paper.

About the time his apprenticeship concluded and he became a tradesman Barrow noticed an advertisement for a junior reporter on the Ashburton Guardian, published in the small town of Ashburton, south of Christchurch in New Zealand's South Island. He applied for the position and was appointed, taking up the job in January 1957.

In 2006 he won the non-fiction section of the

ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for his book Unlocking History's Secrets.[2]

Barrow was a Member of the Canberra and District Historical Society from 1976 to 2017 and editor of its journal Canberra Historical Journal from 1979 to 1986 and 2002 to 2007. He was awarded life membership in 2010.[3]

Barrow was awarded an

2017 Queen's Birthday Honours for "service to local history, and the community of the Australian Capital Territory".[3]

Works

[4]

References

  1. ^ "Graeme Thomas Barrow". Canberra Times Tributes. 20 May 2017. Archived from the original on 29 February 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  2. ^ ACT Writing and Publishing Awards, ACT Writer's Centre Archived 31 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ a b "MEDAL (OAM) OF THE ORDER OF AUSTRALIA IN THE GENERAL DIVISION" (PDF). Governor-General of Australia website. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  4. ^ "Graeme Barrow Books". Trove. Retrieved 23 May 2017.