author
Hector Dinning
1887–1941
An Australian journalist and World War I veteran, this writer turned front-line experience into vivid books about service, travel, and military life. His work is especially remembered for its lively, firsthand picture of Gallipoli, France, and the Middle East.
1 Audiobook
By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal
by Hector Dinning
About the author
Born in Maryborough, Queensland, on 10 September 1887, he was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland. Before the First World War, he led what he later described as an academic life mixed with coaching and freelance journalism.
He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1914, with his occupation recorded as teacher, and went on to serve at Gallipoli, in France, and in the Middle East. Those experiences became the basis for his best-known books, including By-ways on Service (1918) and Nile to Aleppo (1920), which bring together observation, humor, and the everyday realities of wartime service.
He was also known in Queensland as a journalist and author, and his death was announced in November 1941. Though not widely famous today, his writing remains a valuable and readable firsthand record of an Australian soldier-writer’s view of the war.