Bruce Dawe


Donald Bruce Dawe was an Australian poet, considered by some as one of the most influential Australian poets of all time.

Early life

Bruce Dawe was born in 1930 in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. His mother and father were from farming backgrounds in Victoria and, like his own sisters and brother, had never had the opportunity to complete primary school. He always had encouragement from them and his mother, proud of her Lowlands Scots ancestry, often recited poems that she had learned in her 19th-century childhood. Dawe's father's ancestors came from Wyke Regis in Dorset, England, in the mid-19th century. Dawe attended six schools before leaving Northcote High School in Melbourne at 16 without completing his Leaving Certificate. Of the four children in the family, he was the only one to attend secondary school.
After leaving school at 16, he worked in a wide range of jobs: as a clerk in various firms as well as a labourer, sales assistant, office boy in an advertising agency and a copy boy at the Melbourne newspapers The Truth and The Sun News-Pictorial. He also worked as a labourer in the Public Works Department, as a tailer-out in various Melbourne saw-mills and as a farm-hand in the Cann River valley.
Dawe completed his adult matriculation by part-time study in 1953 and enrolled at Melbourne University on a teaching scholarship in 1954. He left university at the end of 1954 and moved to Sydney, where he worked as a labourer in a glass factory and later in a factory manufacturing batteries. Returning to Melbourne in 1956, he worked as a postman for two years and as a self-employed gardener.
He joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1959, initially as a trainee telegraphist but remustered as an education assistant. He was posted to Malaysia and returned to Melbourne after six months.

Teaching

Leaving the RAAF in 1968, Dawe began teaching at Downlands College, a Catholic boys college in Toowoomba, Queensland. After teaching English and history at the secondary level for two and a half years, he became a tertiary lecturer in English literature at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in Toowoomba.
He was appointed as a lecturer at DDIAE in 1971, became a senior lecturer in 1980 and an associate professor following the status change to the University of Southern Queensland. He was awarded the inaugural DDIAE Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988. He retired from full-time teaching in 1993 and was appointed as the first honorary professor of USQ in recognition of his contribution to the university. He taught University of the Third Age classes after his retirement from full-time teaching.
He held four university degrees, all completed by part-time study.

Personal life

Dawe married Gloria Desley Blain on 27 January 1964. Between December 1964 and July 1969, they had four children: Brian, twins Jamie and Katrina, and Melissa. Gloria died in 1997.
Dawe died in Caloundra, Queensland, on 1 April 2020 aged 90.

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