AustLit

A schoolteacher by profession, Sutchkoff endured imprisonment in Siberia before fleeing as a political refugee to Australia. He took up farming in the Circular Head area before enlisting in the AIF in October 1916. Sent to France the following year, he was captured during the 1918 German offensive. Following his repatriation, Sutchkoff eventually returned to Tasmania and settled on a farm near Edith Creek, in the State's far northwest, where, during the 1930s, he successfully grew a crop of tobacco. An unfavourable market, however, led to the abandonment of the project. This is not unrelated to themes in his unpublished short story "The Potato King"; the tale of a farmer doggedly facing the changing fortunes of the potato market, found amongst Sutchkoff's papers by his executors following his death.