"He who climbs a cliff may die on the cliff, so what? Always a risk-taker by nature, now I became one by intent." -- Ruth Park
Ruth Park AM (born 24 August, possibly 1923) is a New Zealand-born author, who has spent most of her life in Australia. She has won many literary awards. Her best known works are the novels The Harp in the South (1948) and Playing Beatie Bow (1980), and the children's radio serial The Muddle-Headed Wombat (1951-1970), which also spawned a book series (1962-1982).
"In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back in. This was not a spectacular event. The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew.""The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.""Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be."
She was born in Auckland as Rosina Lucia Park, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas. During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her. (Apparently the woman asked Ruth what she wanted to be when she grew up. When she was told a writer, the woman suggested she'd be happier as a servant.) Ruth Park claims that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.
When contracted in 1942 by Ida Elizabeth Osbourne to write a serial for the ABC Children's Session, she wrote the series The Wide-awake Bunyip. When the lead actor Albert Collins died suddenly in 1951, she changed its direction and The Muddle-Headed Wombat was born, with first Leonard Teale then John Ewart in the title role. The series ended when the radio program folded in 1970. Such was its popularity that between 1962 and 1982 she wrote a series of children's books around the character.
Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as scripts for film and TV. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).
Park has received awards in Australia and internationally.
1946 in the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald competition won the Best Novel award for The Harp in the South
1954 Catholic Book Club Choice selected Serpent's Delight
1961 in the inaugural Commonwealth Television Play Competition run by the Lew Grade Organisation the British award for television play won for No Decision, with D'Arcy Niland
1962 Children's Book Council of Australia Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for The Hole in the Hill
1975 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for Callie's Castle
1977 Miles Franklin Award for Swords and Crowns and Rings
1977 National Book Council highly commended for Swords and Crowns and Rings
1979 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for Come Danger, Come Darkness
1981 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award won the Playing Beatie Bow
1981 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize for young people's literature won for When the Wind Changed
1982 Parents' Choice Award for Literature won for Playing Beatie Bow, awarded by the Parents' Choice Foundation
1982 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Playing Beatie Bow
1982 International Board on Books for Young People (Australia) won the Honour Diploma for Playing Beatie Bow
1982 Guardian Fiction Prize (UK) runner up for Playing Beatie Bow
1986 Young Australians' Best Book Award for a picture book for When the Wind Changed (illustrated by Deborah Niland}
1987 Ruth Park (aka Mrs Niland) was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to literature
1992 The Age Book of the Year, Non-Fiction Award won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
1992 Colin Roderick Award won for A Fence around the Cuckoo, presented with the H.T. Priestley Meda(Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award)
1993 Tilly Aston Award for Braille Book of the Year won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
1993 Talking Book of the Year Award (Royal Blind Society) won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
1993 Talking Book of the Year Award (Royal Blind Society) won for Fishing in the Styx
1993 Awarded the Lloyd O'Neil Magpie Award for services to the Australian book industry
1994 Canberra's Own Outstanding List (CBCA COOL Award) won for Playing Beatie Bow
1994 Awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of New South Wales
1994 Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award won for Home Before Dark
1996 Bilby Award, Young Reader Award won for When the Wind Changed (illustrated by Deborah Niland)
2004 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards won the Special Award
2006 listed in the Bulletin's 100 most influential Australians
