AustLit

'Esther Roland' spent her formative years in New South Wales at Barraba (near Tamworth), and in Sydney. Her family, the Crowleys, had been in the district since 1836, when her great-grandfather arrived in the area; they settled at Cobbadah Station in 1856, and owned a 12,000 acre station at Barraba called 'Glen Riddle' from the late 1890s. Roland was born at 'Myralla', but moved, with her parents and siblinga, to the neighbouring property, 'Glen Riddle', when her grandparents died.

Until Roland was nine she did not attend school, rather being home schooled under the supervision of a governess at 'Glen Riddle', although she had an interest in reading and writing from an early age. When she was nine, the family came to Sydney where they lived at Strathfield, and Roland completed her education at M.L.C. at Burwood.

She married Geoffrey Job in 1940, and while he was on duty with the armoured division in Western Australia and the Pacific Islands she lived at 'Glen Riddle', and had a small number of short stories published in Sydney newspapers and magazines. Her novel, I Camp Here, was finished on 10 October 1945, ten days before the birth of her second child. (Her first child had been born in 1943.) In April 1946, she and her family moved to Indooroopilly in Brisbane, Queensland. Under the name Eena Job, Esther Roland is also the author of Eighty Plus : Outgrowing the Myths of Old Age (1984), as well as several other books on ageing and sociology.

She is the mother-in-law of Peg Job, the aunt of Pippa Kay, and the mother of Janita Cunnington.