Leslie Rees
Australian writer
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"One of Australia's best loved children's authors"
Leslie Rees ~ an important literary figure of the 20th century
28 December 1905 ~10 August 2000
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Leslie Rees was one of Australia's important literary figures of the 20th century. A versatile and prolific writer across genres, a literary critic and historian, an editor and journalist, his body of work spanned 70 years and included children's books, fiction, plays, drama history, travel books, journal articles and radio documentaries. Leslie Rees played a central role in the development of Australian drama, through his 30-year role as Federal Drama Editor of the ABC and as Chairman of the Playwrights Advisory Board at a time when Australian writing was developing an authentic voice and radio emerged as a vital medium providing opportunities for writers, actors and producers to establish careers when there were few other channels available. Leslie Rees was awarded both the Order of Australia
and the NSW Premier's Prize for his services to Australian literature.
As a writer, Leslie Rees is most celebrated for his contribution to children's literature. His first children's book, Digit Dick on the Great Barrier Reef was published in 1944 and for the next 50 years his many titles and their various editions influenced generations of young readers to be more appreciative and more protective of their island continent and its unique wildlife. The Australian Nature Series by Leslie Rees was groundbreaking among books for children. Using scrupulously researched detail along with meticulous observation, his 'animal biographies' depict the life cycles of animal, bird, repitle and marine creatures within their own habitat. Wherever the story is set, the physical landscape - from its dramatic expanses to the delicate detail of insect or plant - is revealed in richly expressive prose. Leslie Rees established other new norms by bringing Indigeous Australians into his stories in a respectful way and through his children's books wove the lesson that human interference is the greatest threat to Australia's fragile ecosystems.
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The Leslie Rees Fremantle Lecture is held every year at The Literature Centre in Western Australia to honour the reputation and example of Leslie Rees as a writer of Australian Children's Literature (thelitcentre.org.au).
An extract from Karrawingi the Emu which won the first Australian Children's Book of Year Award in 1946
It was a crisp July night. The moon shone out of a frozen sky and hundreds of stars spangled the dark vault like splintered crystal. So clear was the night light over the breathelss bush that trees and shrubs stood out in precise outline as though seen through inky glass. Their shadows were monstrous sprawling shapes. Hoar-frost thick on the grass gleamed rigidly, whitely; rain puddles in logs froze; the bush seemed paralysed with cold.
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Out of the stilly silence, free so far from any sound of animal or insect, bird or human came a faint booming. It was a challenge. It grew nearer and now could be heard the regular thud of feet and the rhymic rustling of heavy feathers, like dry grass waving in the wind. It was Karrawingi, racing through the bush at midnight, proclaiming he was a father. The father of eighteen oval eggs.
Leslie Rees & Coralie Clarke Rees
~ a productive literary partnership
Coralie Clarke and Leslie Rees both showed literary talent from a young age and separately determined on becoming professional writers. Both born and educated in Perth, Western Australia, they effectively began their literary partnership as undergraduates when Leslie Rees was editing the University of Western Australia magazine The Black Swan and Coralie was his sub-editor.
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Both won post-graduate scholarships to study in London and they married there in 1931 and went on to establish writing careers, Coralie as a newspaper columnist and correspondent and Leslie as a Dramatic Critic on the theatre weekly, The Era. They returned to Australia in 1936 and settled in Sydney, joining the heady literary scene with Miles Franklin, Dymphna Cusack, Marjorie Barnard, Gwen Meredith, Frank Dalby Davison and other writers.
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By the mid-1940s they began travelling to rarely visited outback places - 'the Big Sky Country'- and creating radio documentaries about their adventures. These reached a wide audience on national radio. The material they gathered led to their first travel book, Spinifex Walkabout. As writers their interests focussed on people who lived and functioned in inaccessible parts of the country and on Indigenous Australians, then living on missions or in remote communities. It was a time when few Australians ventured far from urban centres and four wheel drives were rare and expensive. Coralie and Leslie Rees did not own a car. They constructed their adventures by using inventive means of transport ( luggers, road trains, mail planes) which led to them meeting fascinating characters whom they interviewed and wrote about in their books and documentaries.
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Coralie and Leslie found the most challenging part of their literary partnership was their characteristically distinct writing styles so they invented a system of writing separate chapters, identified by their initials under the chapter heading. In creating documentary scripts, they used two narrators - one female, one male - and often acted these parts themselves when the programme was broadcast. So, by this means they made the collaborative process less fractious. At the same time the arrangement enriched their work by allowing them to express different perspectives of their shared experiences.
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The Big Sky Country
~ Dymphna Rees Peterson
Leslie Rees titles
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Digit Dick on the Great Barrier Reef
Digit Dick and the Tasmanian Devil
Digit Dick in Black Swanland
Digit Dick and the Lost Opals
Digit Dick and the Magin Jabiru
Digit Dick and the Zoo Plot
Gecko the Lizard who Lost his Tail
Mates of the Kurlalong
Bluecap and Bimbi, Australian Blue Wrens
Mokee, the White Possum
Billa, the Wombat Who Had a Bad Dream
The Seagull Who Liked Cricket
The Story of Shy the Platypus
Karrawingi the Emu
Sarli the Barrier Reef Turtle
Shadow the Rock Wallaby
Kurri Kurri the Kookaburra
Koonawarra the Black Swan
Two-Thumbs the Koala
Aroora the Red Kangaroo
Wy-lah the Black Cockatoo
Russ the Australian Tree-Kangaroo
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TRAVEL (in collaboration with CORALIE CLARKE REES)
Spinifex Walkabout (Hitchhiking in Northern Australia)
Westward from Cocos (Indian Ocean countries)
Coasts of Cape York (Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait)
People of the Big Sky Country (Remote Australia)
The Big Sky Country
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DRAMA and THEATRE
Towards an Australian Drama
The Making of Australian Drama
A History of Australian Drama
~ Vol.1 The Making of Australian Drama
~ Vol.2 Australian Drama in the 1970s
Modern Short Plays (editor)
Mask and Microphone (editor)
Australian Radio Plays (editor)
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NOVELS FOR THE YOUNG READER
Quokka Island
Danger Patrol
Boy Lost on Tropic Coast
Panic in the Cattle Country
Here's to Shane
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Hold Fast To Dreams
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PLAYS
The Harp in the South ~ with Ruth Park
Sub-Editors Room
Mother's Day
Lalor of Eureka
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Some editions of Leslie Rees children's books
Coralie Clarke Rees ~ playwright, poet, travel writer and broadcaster
PLAYS
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Sheilded Eyes
Wait Till We Grow Up - a play for children
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POETRY
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Silent His Wings - an Elegy
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CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
What Happened After? Nursery Rhyme Sequels
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ADVENTURE TRAVEL ~With Leslie Rees
Spinifex Walkabout
Westward from Cocos
Coasts of Cape York
People of the Big Sky Country
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CORALIE CLARKE REES
23 October 1908 ~14 February 1972
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By the age of thirty, Coralie Clarke Rees had written a play and performed the leading role, had edited a feminist journal, had been a foreign correspondent and overseas columnist for Australian papers, and had travelled with Eileen Joyce, Australian virtuoso concert pianist, as her assistant and troubleshooter on the ABC's first national concert tour.
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After settling in Sydney Coralie wrote for radio, newspapers and magazines as well as being one of the first women to take a role in national broadcasting. In the 1940s she published a book-length elegiac poem, Silent His Wings ( a protest to the loss of young life wrought by the Second World War) and - with husband Leslie Rees - began travelling to remote parts of Australia, turning these experiences into radio documentaries and later successful travel books.
Coralie's play for child actors, Wait Till We Grow Up had many performances. Her children's book, What Happened After? Nursery Rhyme Sequels - was published shortly after her death in 1972.
Since 2000 the literary archive of Coralie & Leslie Rees has been managed by their daughter, Dymphna Stella Rees
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For copyright and publishing inquiries:
email: info@leslie-rees.com