David Burke, journalist and railway enthusiast, wrote two children's books in the late 1970s. He attended primary schools in Melbourne and St Laurence's Christian Brothers College in Brisbane. His first job was at the North Melbourne steam locomotive depot where he developed a lifelong interest in railways. Later he worked for a Melbourne radio serial producer but he anticipated a decline in radio drama with the introduction of television, and switched to journalism.

He worked for the Melbourne Sun, then the Heriald-Sun in Sydney. He made three trips to the Antarctic during the 1950s. On his final trip he and Dr Phillip Law (q.v.) became the first people to fly direct from Australia to the geographic South Pole. In his two children's books, he draws primarily upon his knowledge of railways and journalism.