Audrey Oldfield

Australian children's writer and historian

Audrey Oldfield

Born| Audrey Phyllis Parkes
(1925-10-06)6 October 1925
Mullumbimby, New South Wales
Died| 27 October 2010(2010-10-27) (aged 85)
Miranda, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation| Children's writer and historian

Audrey Oldfield (6 October 1925 – 27 October 2010) was an Australian children's writer and historian of suffrage and republicanism.

A sixth generation Australian, Audrey Phyllis Oldfield was born in Mullumbimby, New South Wales, to butcher Joseph Parkes and Eileen, née Browne.[1]

She was educated at Grafton High School and won a scholarship to Sydney Teachers' College from which she graduated in 1945 and began her teaching career.[1] In 1949 she married Alan Oldfield and continued teaching until the birth of her children. She later became a teacher/librarian at Woolooware Public School and later still at Burraneer Bay Public School.[2]

Her first novel for children was published in 1970. Daughter of Two Worlds tracks the life of a part-Aboriginal girl and the challenges she faces at school in Perth.[3] Her second novel, Baroola and Us, covers a city family moving to the country and appeared in 1973.[4]

Her study Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? (1992) was warmly reviewed by historian Patricia Grimshaw as 'informative, judicious and persuasive', in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (vol 22, 2). Grimshaw wrote that it 'filled a vital place in the country's historiography, and in the history of the western suffrage movement'.[citation needed]

## Awards

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In 1993, Oldfield won a CH Currey Memorial Fellowship, giving her open access to original sources held in the Mitchell Library and the resources of the State Library of New South Wales as a whole.[5]

## Works

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* Daughter of Two Worlds (1970)
* Baroola and Us (1973)
* Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? (1992)
* Australian Women and the Vote (1994)
* The Great Republic of the Southern Seas: Republicans in Nineteenth-Century Australia (1999)

## References

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1. ^ a b Harrison, Sharon M. "Oldfield, Audrey". The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
2. ^ Walker, Shirley; Oldfield, Lynne (25 January 2011). "Words of wisdom for the rights of women". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 16 September 2020. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
3. ^ "Daughter of Two Worlds". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. The University of Queensland. Retrieved 4 May 2024.
4. ^ "Baroola and Us". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. The University of Queensland. Retrieved 4 May 2024.
5. ^ "CH Currey Memorial Fellowship". State Library of NSW. Archived from the original on 31 March 2016. Retrieved 4 September 2021.

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