Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1959-1965. (Creation)
Level of description
Item
Extent and medium
6 items ; 24 cm. and smaller.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Ernestine Hill was born in 1899 in Rockhampton, Queensland. She was educated at All Hallows School and Stott & Hoare's Business College, Brisbane. After working briefly in the public service she joined the staff of Smith's Weekly, Sydney, in 1919, as secretary to its literary editor J F Archibald. Hill subsequently became sub-editor of the paper and consolidated her career as a journalist during the 1930s when she travelled extensively across Australia writing articles for Associated Newspapers and other publications such as Walkabout. Her articles were widely read and sometimes controversial: her reporting of a gold strike in the Northern Territory in 1931 contributed to financial ruin for some and was branded irresponsible; another, a front page story for the Sunday Sun, 19 June 1932, marked the beginning of a long and sometimes turbulent association with Daisy Bates. Hill's major published works arose out of her travels during this period - The Great Australian Loneliness (1937), Water into Gold (1937), Flying Doctor Calling (1947), The Territory (1951) and Kabbarli, a personal memoir of Daisy Bates, published posthumously in 1973. Her only published novel was the immensely successful My Love Must Wait (1941), based on the life of Matthew Flinders Between 1940 and 1942. Hill was editor of the women's pages of the A.B.C. Weekly and from 1941 to 1944 she was a commissioner of the A.B.C. After her resignation from this position she resumed her travels, working constantly on ideas for future novels, plays, travel and historical books and radio and film scripts. Apart from The Territory (1951) and a few articles none of these were ever published. Hill was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fund fellowship in 1959, which provided her with a small pension but the last years of her life were dominated by financial hardship and ill-health. She returned to Brisbane in 1970 and died there on 21 August 1972.
Name of creator
Biographical history
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Six letters and cards, holograph and typescript, including a sepia photograph 9 x 14 cm. of Ernestine Hill and Audrey Moss's aunt, Millie McAskill (nee Ryan.)
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Arranged chronologically.
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Unrestricted access.
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
- English
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Alma MMS ID
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
- Hill, Ernestine, 1899-1972 (Subject)
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Migrated
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
Migrated from LMS: April 2019, P.A.