Bruce Dawe
| Bruce Dawe | |
|---|---|
| Born | Donald Bruce Dawe 15 February 1930 Fitzroy, Victoria |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable awards | AO |
| Years active | 1947- |
Donald Bruce Dawe AO (born 15 February 1930) is an Australian poet, considered by some as one of the most influential Australian poets of all time.
Bruce Dawe was born in Fitzroy, Victoria, in 1930. His mother and father were from farming backgrounds in Victoria and, like his own sisters and brother, had never had the opportunity to complete primary school. He always had encouragement from them (the younger of his two sisters also wrote poetry) and his mother, proud of her Lowlands Scots ancestry, often recited poems that she had learned in her 19th century childhood. Dawe's father's ancestors came from Wyke Regis in Dorset, England, in the mid-19th century. Dawe attended six schools before leaving Northcote High School in Melbourne at 16 without completing his Leaving Certificate. Of the four children in the family, he was the only one to attend secondary school.
After leaving school at 16, he worked in a wide range of jobs: as a clerk in various firms, as well as a labourer, sales assistant, office boy in an advertising agency, and a copy boy at the Melbourne newspapers The Truth and The Sun News-Pictorial. He also worked as a labourer in the Public Works Department, as a tailer-out in various Melbourne saw-mills, and as a farm-hand in the Cann River valley.
Dawe completed his Adult Matriculation by part-time study in 1953 and enrolled at Melbourne University on a teaching scholarship in 1954. He left university at the end of 1954 and moved to Sydney where he worked as a labourer in a glass factory and later in a factory manufacturing batteries. Returning to Melbourne in 1956, he worked as a postman for two years and as a self-employed gardener.
He joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1959, initially as a trainee telegraphist but re-mustered as an education assistant. He was posted to Malaysia and returned to Melbourne after six months.
Leaving the RAAF in 1968, Dawe began teaching at Downlands College, a Catholic boys college – Dawe became Catholic in 1954 – in Toowoomba, Queensland. After teaching English and history at secondary level for two and a half years, he became a tertiary lecturer in English literature at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in Toowoomba.
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