Northern Areas Who's Who
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Distinguished and Famous people from Northern Areas
📚 C. J. Dennis
C. J. Dennis spent important early years in Gladstone and Laura, where his father kept hotels. At Gladstone Primary School he produced a short-lived school publication; later, after employment in Adelaide, he worked for a Laura solicitor. His first published verse appeared in the Laura Standard when he was nineteen. Work behind the bar at the Beetaloo Hotel added another local occupation before journalism and poetry took him further afield. The future author of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke had already shown a taste for language and for observing other people. His early employment also supplied a warning for ambitious readers: an Adelaide firm dismissed him for enjoying Rider Haggard during working hours. Literary enthusiasm was evidently more welcome on the page than on somebody else’s payroll.
