Thomas Beaton Hutchison Christie was born and grew up in Glasgow. He was an accountant by training. Prior to coming to Australia, he had at one point spent about a year in Canada, where he found employment as a schoolmaster at Otonobee, in Ontario. He then returned to Scotland, and some time later migrated to Queensland, arriving on the immigrant ship Chatsworth, in August 1862. In Queensland, Christie initially tried his hand at farming in the Logan district, however this venture proved unsuccessful. In 1866, he opened a school at Spring Hill, in Brisbane, known as Christie's Academy, which was later absorbed into the public education system. Christie subsequently joined the Queensland Education Department and held teaching positions at Gregory Terrace (his own former school), Kelvin Grove and Bundamba schools. He died in Brisbane in April 1879 following a brief illness.
Christie's Poems and Songs (1869) was the first book of poetry to be published in Queensland. Many of the poems it contains first appeared in the Brisbane newspapers of the period, particularly the Queensland Daily Guardian and its stablemate, the Weekly Herald.
Note that Christie is listed in D.H. Edwards's Modern Scottish Poets (1889). Here it is stated that before coming to Australia, Christie contributed poems to Scottish newspapers and journals, again under the name 'Ralph Delany'.
