Papers of Barney Roberts
MSS 037
Collection Title
Papers of Barney RobertsCollection Identifier
MSS 037Inclusive date(s)
1945 to 1987Extent and Medium
Creator(s)
Category
Subject: Person(s)
Collection Description
Correspondence, manuscripts and photographs
Administrative / Biographical history
Tasmanian writer and poet Barney Roberts was mainly educated by his mother who was a classical scholar and operated her own school in Victoria. His father was a farmer known for quoting from Ruskin, Wells and Emerson. Roberts went to high school in Burnie and worked as a bank clerk for three years before World War 2. Captured in Greece in 1941, he was a prisoner of war for four years, during which time he cut trees in Austria. At this time he also wrote, as he described, 'doggerel verse and several bad plays' (Directory of Australian Poets, 1980).
When he returned to Australia in 1947, he set up a dairy farm near Flowerdale living there until his death. These experiences provided a background to his activities as a conservationist, and a trustee and president of the Tasmanian Peace Trust. Roberts also had a nursery which was managed by two of his sons, Max and Bruce, after he retired. He undertook a writing course in the 1960s, writing a history of his town, Flowerdale to 1963 (1963), and had his first fiction published in 1972 with three of his entries in the FAW/Advocate Story Competition. He contributed to many magazines (Patterns, Overland, The Bulletin, Inprint, Walkabout, Mattoid and others) and newspapers (Canberra Times, Courier Mail, Advocate (Burnie), Mercury (Hobart)). Roberts was awarded an Honorary DLitt by the University of Tasmania in 2005. He also ran the publishing business 'Robin Books'.
Pete Hay in Tasmania Forty Degrees South (2006, Winter) said: 'He was Tasmania's own farmer-poet - our equivalent, if you like, of Robert Frost. He was a peerless writer of place and nature'.
Reference: Austlit - https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A18229
Acquisition Details
Scope and Content
This collection relates to Barney Roberts and contains correspondence, photographs, and typescripts of his poetry, fiction, essays and autobiography, including Where's morning gone?, The penalty of Adam, Where man ferns grow: Trees in Tasmania today and tomorrow, and A kind of cattle
Access Restrictions
Other
Access: Open Access
This collection contains a variety of copyright material. Copyright is held by the creator of each item. Specific conditions for this collection are listed below. If no conditions are stipulated then the standard terms of the Copyright Act apply for published and unpublished items. Digitised material from manuscript collections is provided to clients by UNSW Canberra in good faith for private study and research only, and may not be published or re-purposed without the express and written permission of the individual legal holder of that copyright. Refer also to the UNSW copyright, disclaimer and takedown policy.
Copying: Copying of material for private study and research is approved
Existence and Location of Orginals
Disclaimer
This collection contains a variety of copyright material. Copyright is held by the creator of each item. Specific conditions for this collection are listed above. If no conditions are stipulated then the standard terms of the Copyright Act apply for published and unpublished items. Digitised material from manuscript collections is provided to clients by UNSW Canberra in good faith for private study and research only, and may not be published or re-purposed without the express and written permission of the individual legal holder of that copyright. Refer also to the UNSW copyright, disclaimer and takedown policy.