Edwin Colin Simpson (4 November 19088 February 1983), known professionally by his pen name Colin Simpson, was an Australian
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
, author and traveller.
[Simpson, Edwin Colin (1908–1983)](_blank)
''Australian Dictionary of Biography
The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's ...
'', adb.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 24 March 2022.[Virginia Madsen]
Radio Documentary
austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 24 March 2022.[John Hetherington, "Colin Simpson would rather gamble with writing than anything else", (Australian Writers in Profile), '']The Age
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...
'', 4 February 1961, p. 18.["Obituary: Mr Colin Simpson, journalist and author", '']The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'', 9 February 1983, p. 15. After a successful career as a journalist with Sydney newspapers and a writer of
radio documentaries
A radio documentary is a spoken word radio format devoted to non-fiction narrative. It is broadcast on radio as well as distributed through media such as tape, CD, and podcast. A radio documentary, or feature, covers a topic in depth from one or ...
for the
Australian Broadcasting Commission
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owned ...
, he became a freelance writer of "popular
travel books
The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period ...
"
which sold more than half a million copies.
He was "instrumental in securing the
Public Lending Right
A Public Lending Right (PLR) is a program intended to either compensate authors for the potential loss of sales from their works being available in public libraries or as a governmental support of the arts, through support of works available in pu ...
legislation"
for Australian authors.
Early life and education
Simpson was born Edwin Colin Simpson in
Petersham, a suburb in the inner west of
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
. His parents were Henry Frank Simpson, a mechanic, and his wife Margaret Olive, née Langby, a nurse.
Simpson moved with his mother to live in the small
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
gold mining
Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface ...
town of
Hill End, where he would spend most of his childhood. He attended the
Kogarah
Kogarah () is a suburb of Southern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Kogarah is located 14 kilometres (9 miles) south-west of the Sydney central business district and is considered to be the centre of the St George area.
Loca ...
Intermediate High School.
Career as journalist
His first job was as a
copywriter
Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or ...
in the
advertising agency
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
, Catts-Patterson Co. Ltd., and he then worked as a journalist, contributing to Sydney newspapers including ''
Daily Guardian'', ''
Daily Telegraph
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'', ''
Smith's Weekly
''Smith's Weekly'' was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. It was an independent weekly published in Sydney, but read all over Australia.
History
The publication took its name from its founder and chief financer Sir ...
'' and the Sunday newspapers.
In 1931 his long poem "Infidelities" was published in ''Trio'', a "slim but elegant"
book of poetry to which the poets
Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor (27 March 190130 June 1971) was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences int ...
and Harley Matthews also contributed.
In 1938 he helped establish the Australian pictorial magazine ''
Pix'' and the "Fact" supplement of the Sydney ''
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
'' newspaper.
In 1941 he and Tess van Sommers were responsible for an article in ''The Suns "Fact" supplement exposing the
Ern Malley literary hoax.
In 1944 he went to the United States to report on the foundation of the United Nations organisation and to study American
magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...
publishing techniques. While there he conducted interviews with celebrities including
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis (February 12, 1880 – June 11, 1969) was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the d ...
,
Claire Booth Luce,
Billy Rose
Billy Rose (born William Samuel Rosenberg; September 6, 1899 – February 10, 1966) was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. For years both before and after World War II, Billy Rose was a major force in entertainment, with sh ...
,
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
and
Henry Wallace.
In 1947 Simpson began a three-year stint working for the
Australian Broadcasting Commission
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owned ...
. He travelled to all parts of Australia, to the nearby islands of the
South Pacific and to
Borneo
Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...
, gathering materials and writing radio documentaries mostly for the ABC's ''
Australian Walkabout
''Australian Walkabout'' is a TV series made for the ABC and BBC by director Charles Chauvel. It was the last project completed by Chauvel prior to his death.
References
External links
* ''Walkabout''at National Film and Sound Archive''A ...
'' programme.
For a 1948 documentary he visited British North Borneo, retracing the trail of the
Sandakan-Ranou death marches during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and later recording the memories of six survivors. The script was later published as ''Six from Borneo'' (1948).
For another documentary in the same year he joined the anthropologist
Charles P. Mountford
Charles Pearcy Mountford OBE (8 May 189016 November 1976) was an Australian anthropologist and photographer. He is known for his pioneering work on Indigenous Australians and his depictions and descriptions of their art. He also led the American ...
's
American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land
In February 1948, a team of Australian and American researchers and support staff came together in northern Australia to begin, what was then, one of the largest scientific expeditions ever to have taken place in Australia—the American-Australia ...
during which he taped Australian "
Aboriginal rituals and songs never before heard on Australian radio..., along with Australian
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
life".
Career as writer
His employment with the Australian Broacasting Commission came to an end in 1950 when his contract was not renewed due to budget cuts instituted by the Australian government's treasury department.
He decided to write books for a living. Inspired by his travels for ''Australian Walkabout'', his first book was ''Adam in Ochre'' (1951) concerning the
Australian Aborigines
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...
and that was followed by ''Adam with Arrows'' (1953) and ''Adam in Plumes'' (1954), both on the peoples of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea).
It is a simplified version of ...
. Those books sold very well. They were not "authoritative contributions to
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
" but simply aimed to "interpret" these
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
"to the layman".
In 1952 he had written a novel ''Come Away, Pearler'' which sold out its first edition of 6,000 copies and was twice
optioned
In the film industry, an option is a contractual agreement pertaining to film rights between a potential film producer (such as a movie studio, a production company, or an individual) and the author of source material, such as a book, play, or s ...
for adaption as a film, but he did not write any further novels.
From the mid fifties he became a freelance travel writer and wrote a series of travel books on overseas countries, including ''The Country Upstairs'' (1956) on Japan, ''Wake Up in Europe'' (1959), ''Asia's Bright Balconies'' (1962), ''The Viking Circle'' (1967) on
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
and ''Blue Africa'' (1981). In these books, written for the international market, he wrote "from a distinctively Australian point of view"
but he "rejected strident Australianness of writers such as
Frank Clune
Francis Patrick Clune, OBE, (27 November 189311 March 1971) was a best-selling Australian writer, travel writer and popular historian.
Early life and career
Clune was born in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney in 1893, and grew up in Redf ...
. He preferred to project a sophisticated image of himself, as a person with an interest in the world at large and in
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
and "frank about sex".
During his lifetime his books "sold more than 500,000 copies"
and were republished in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Japan and the Scandinavian countries, and in many translations.
In 1963 Simpson was a founding member and for a period vice-president of the
Australian Society of Authors
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) was formed in 1963 as the organisation to promote and protect the rights of Australia's authors and illustrators. The Fellowship of Australian Writers played a key role it its establishment. The organisat ...
(ASA)
and he was a supporter of Australian authors'
public lending right
A Public Lending Right (PLR) is a program intended to either compensate authors for the potential loss of sales from their works being available in public libraries or as a governmental support of the arts, through support of works available in pu ...
s (PLR), with that right being achieved following the Australian federal government's enacting of the Public Lending Right Scheme in 1974.
The ASA established the annual Colin Simpson Lecture to commemorate "the journalist and author Colin Simpson, a founding member of the ASA, the driving force behind the introduction of Public Lending Right in 1975, and an accomplished travel writer and television host". A range of "illustrious... luminaries" from the Australian writing, publishing and journalism communities have delivered this lecture.
Honours
* 1981:
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
(OBE) – For service to literature and journalism.
Colin Simpson
austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
Personal life and death
In 1938 Simpson married Estelle Maud "Claire" Waterman, a graphic artist
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, p ...
, who would during his career contribute illustrations to his published books. She predeceased him in 1976.
He died on 8 February 1983 in Kirribilli
Kirribilli is a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. One of the city's most established and affluent neighbourhoods, it is located three kilometres north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area administere ...
Private Hospital. He had two daughters, Julie and Vivien.
Bibliography
Early works
* ''Trio : A Book of Poems'', Sydney : Sunnybrook Press, 1931. Joint contributors: Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor (27 March 190130 June 1971) was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences int ...
and Harley Matthews.
* ''The Caesar of the Akies : The Life Story of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith
Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (9 February 18978 November 1935), nicknamed Smithy, was an Australian aviation pioneer. He piloted the first transpacific flight and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand.
Kingsford Smith was b ...
, M.C., A.F.C.'', London : Cassell, 1937. Written in collaboration with Beau Sheil.
* ''Six from Borneo : Documentary Drama of the Death Marches'', Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1948; online cop
here
(State Library Victoria
State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the ...
)
Australia and Melanesia
* ''Adam in Ochre : Inside Aboriginal Australia'', Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1951.
* ''Come Away, Pearler'', Sydney: Angus and Robertson
Angus & Robertson (A&R) is a major Australian bookseller, publisher and printer. As book publishers, A&R has contributed substantially to the promotion and development of Australian literature.Alison, Jennifer (2001). "Publishers and editors: A ...
, 1952. With decorations by Claire Simpson.
* ''Adam with Arrows : Inside New Guinea'', Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1953.
* ''Adam in Plumes'', Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1954.
* ''Islands of Men : A Six-Part Book About Life in Melanesia'', Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1954. Illustrated with 12 colour-plates, other graphs, and with line decorations by Claire Simpson.
The wider world
* ''The Country Upstairs: Japan Today with a Philippine Interlude'', Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1956. With decorations by Claire Simpson.
* ''Wake Up in Europe : A Book of Travel for Australians and New Zealanders'', Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1960.
* ''Show Me a Mountain : The Rise of an Australian Company, Ampol'', Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1961.
* ''Asia's Bright Balconies : Hong Kong, Macao, Philippines'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1962. With decoration drawings by Claire Simpson.
* ''Take Me to Spain, including Majorca and with a Sampling of Portugal'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1963. Maps by Josephine Mayo, line decorations by Claire Simpson.
* ''Take Me to Russia and Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1964.
* ''The Viking Circle : Denmark, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland'', London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967.
* ''Greece : The Unclouded Eye'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1968.
* ''The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia'', London: Nelson, 1969; London: Panther, 1971. Joint author: Phillip Knightley
Phillip George Knightley (23 January 1929 – 7 December 2016) was an Australian journalist, critic, and non-fiction author. He became a visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and was a media commentator on the ...
.
* ''The New Australia'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1972.
* ''Bali and Beyond'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1972.
* ''Off to Asia : Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau'', Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1973.
* ''Pleasure Islands of the South Pacific'', Sydney: Methuen, 1979.
* ''Blue Africa : Travel in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, plus Indian Ocean Islands of Mauritius, Madagascar, Reunion, Seychelles'', Cammeray, N.S.W. : Horwitz Grahame, 1981.
See also
* '' Books and Authors''
References
External links
Colin Simpson interviewed by Hazel de Berg
at National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...
Papers of Colin Simpson
at National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Colin
1908 births
1983 deaths
20th-century Australian journalists
Australian travel writers
Australian Officers of the Order of the British Empire