AustLit

Educated at Knox Grammar School in Sydney, Devon Minchin began writing while serving as a fighter bomber pilot with the RAAF in the Western Desert. It was during this World War II period that he produced his first novel, The Potato Man (1944). Minchin's varied and colourful working life has included a period spent pioneering the timber industry in Sarawak (Malaysia) and later running an advertising agency in Hong Kong. After returning to Australia, Minchin established Metropolitan Security Services - an armoured car business which he founded in 1954.

Minchin retired in 1970 and subsequently turned his focus to writing his second novel, The Money Movers (1972), which was inspired by an armed robbery which took place at his Melbourne counting house.

While living in Sydney, he undertook studies at Macquarie University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1976. In 1981 Minchin moved to Queensland, started farming pineapples, bananas and pawpaws and became the owner of Noosa Cine Centre.

Sources indicate that Minchin also published a selected work, 'The Thirteenth Diamond and Other Wartime Short Stories', but this book remains untraced.