AustLit

Chesney Gardner broadcast regularly over ABC Radio from Newcastle, New South Wales, for more than twenty years. As a very young man he worked on outback Australia, a period which provided the experiences he drew on in his broadcast stories about what he called 'the old Australia'.

From the outback he returned to the city and during the Depression started writing, and selling short stories. He worked as a journalist on a country newspaper then took a job with an advertising agency. In 1941 he went to Newcastle and joined the Commonwealth Steel Company where he worked in the publicity department until his retirement.

Gardner was born in Corowa, New South Wales, and educated at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). He worked as a jackaroo in the Riverina, Liverpool Plains, northern Queensland and the north-west of Western Australia. (Source: Outback Tales back cover)