Ethel C. Pedley

Born in Acton, near London, on 19 June 1859, Ethel Charlotte Pedley moved to Sydney with her family as a teenager and grew up in a strongly musical household. She studied piano from an early age, later took up the violin, and returned to London in 1880–81 to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won a medal.

Back in Australia, she built a busy career as a musician and teacher. She performed, taught singing, and founded and conducted the St Cecilia Choir of ladies' voices, showing how seriously she was involved in Sydney's musical life.

Today she is best known for her only book, Dot and the Kangaroo, published in 1899 shortly after her death in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 6 August 1898. The story became an Australian children's classic, admired for its imaginative journey through the bush and for its appeal to kindness toward native animals.