Jeannie Gunn

Jeannie Gunn (pen name, Mrs Aeneas Gunn) (5 June 18709 June 1961) was an Australian novelist, teacher and Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) volunteer.

Life Jeannie Taylor was born in Carlton, Melbourne, the last of five children of Thomas Johnstone Taylor. Taylor was a Baptist minister who went into business and later worked on the Melbourne Argus. Shortly after, in early 1902, they travelled to Darwin (then called Palmerston) and then to Elsey, an outlying cattle station on the Roper River, near the current town of Mataranka. After a year at the Elsey, Jeannie Gunn's husband died in March 1903 from complications of malaria and she returned to live in Melbourne. By 1990, over a million copies of the book had been sold. At the end of the conflict she began campaigning for the welfare of returned servicemen, liaising with government departments and becoming a patron of the Monbulk RSL (Returned and Services League of Australia), attending every event they organised over two decades. Although she never completed another novel, she did publish further stories about the characters from her previous works.

Jeannie Gunn died at Hawthorn, in 1961.

Significance of works We of the Never Never is regarded as being significant as a precursor of the 1930s landscape writers. Already in 1908, Australia was a significantly urbanised country. The book was seen to provide symbols of things that made Australia different from anywhere else, underwriting an Australian legend of life and achievement in the outback where "men and a few women still lived heroic lives in rhythm with the gallop of a horse" in "forbidding faraway places".

In 1991, Elsey Land Claim No 132 was lodged by the Northern Land Council covering all of the old Elsey cattle station, an area of 5304 km2 (2062 square miles). Judge Peter Gray, Aboriginal Land Commissioner, submitted his report on the Elsey claim to the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, John Herron, on 28 November 1997 and a copy to the Administrator of the Northern Territory. Justice Gray's report referenced Gunn's work in trying to establish who were genuine traditional owners of the land under question, and who were not.