author
George Dunderdale
1822–1903
A traveler, teacher, public servant, and storyteller, he drew on gold-rush Australia and frontier life to create vivid, energetic books about the colonial bush. His work blends firsthand experience with a taste for adventure and local history.
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About the author
Born in Lancashire in 1822, George Dunderdale was educated at the English College in Lisbon and later worked as a schoolteacher in the United States before sailing to Australia during the gold-rush years in 1853. He went on to build a public career in Victoria, serving in roles connected with the courts and customs while also writing about colonial life.
Dunderdale is best remembered for books such as The Book of the Bush and The Story of the Australian Bushrangers. His writing is closely tied to nineteenth-century Australia: squatters, diggers, convicts, bush travel, and the rough improvisations of early settlement all appear in his work. That background gives his books a lively, on-the-ground quality that still appeals to readers interested in frontier history and adventure.
He died in 1903. Today, he is mainly read as a chronicler of colonial Australia whose fiction and nonfiction helped preserve the voices, settings, and legends of the early bush.