author
Hector Dinning
1887–1941
A journalist, war correspondent, and novelist from Queensland, he wrote with a reporter’s eye for detail and a strong feel for Australian life. His books range from vivid First World War accounts to fiction shaped by the landscapes and communities he knew well.
1 Audiobook
By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal
by Hector Dinning
About the author
Born in Maryborough, Queensland, in 1887, Hector William Dinning became known as an Australian author and journalist. He studied at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland, and before the First World War he combined academic work with coaching and freelance journalism.
During the war he served with the Australian Imperial Force at Gallipoli, in France, and in the Middle East. Those experiences fed directly into books such as By-ways on Service and Nile to Aleppo, which are remembered for their lively, observant accounts of soldiers’ lives and the places around them.
After the war, Dinning continued to write journalism and fiction, including novels and books about Australian life. He later worked in Queensland in public information and censorship roles during wartime, and he died in 1941 at the age of 54.