Eleanor Dark

The novelist, Eleanor Dark (nee O’Reilly) was born in 1901 in Sydney and lived most of her life in Katoomba. Some of Dark’s works include Prelude to Christopher (1934), Return to Coolami (1936), The Timeless Land (1941) and Lantana Lane. Prelude to Christopher and Return to Coolami won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal for the best Australian novel for the years 1934 and 1936 respectively. In 1951 she and her husband Eric moved to Queensland, escaping the repercussions of both being named in Federal Parliament as communist supporters in 1947.

Eleanor Dark died in 1985.