Tom Hungerford

Thomas Arthur Guy Hungerford, AM (5 May 191520 June 2011) was an Australian writer, noted for his World War II novel The Ridge and the River, and his short stories that chronicle growing up in South Perth, Western Australia during the Great Depression.

Early life Hungerford was born in Perth, Western Australia on 5 May 1915 to Arthur Townshend Hungerford and Minnie Hedley. One of four children, he grew up in South Perth, known then as the Queen Suburb, when the area was semi-rural, with market gardens. Hungerford recalled that "Perth was a much smaller enclave then. There was jungly bush all along that shore-streams, birds, swamps, gilgies (you call them yabbies). We used to go prawning, birdsnesting, fishing. We all had canoes-tin ones. We got money by paddling across the Swan to this side to sell the crabs we caught."

Hungerford was educated at South Perth State School, Perth Boys School and Perth Senior Technical College. In 1932 he joined the printing staff of the Perth evening newspaper the Daily News, working as a linotype mechanic.

World War Two Hungerford served with the Australian Army in Darwin, New Guinea, Bougainville and Morotai. He was a sergeant in 2/8 Australian Commando Squadron and was mentioned in despatches.

After the war, Hungerford joined the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, and remained with it from 1945 to 1947. After resigning from The War Museum, Hungerford freelanced and wrote stories for The Bulletin.

In 1951 Hungerford joined the Australia News and Information Bureau, where he stayed for 15 years; following which he worked as a freelancer. In the 1970s Hungerford worked as a press secretary to Western Australian Premiers John Tonkin and Sir Charles Court. Monash University's Robin Gerster told The Age in 2002: "Hungerford... wrote very perceptively and affectionately about the Japanese, which is not a bad effort for someone who fought them."

Hungerford's second novel to be written, Riverslake, came out of Hungerford’s experiences working in a migrant camp in Australia following WWII: "I saw a lot of the active xenophobia of the good old Aussie labourer. I watched uncouth, beer- sodden sots lording it over educated men. It made my blood boil. That's what Riverslake came out of." Sowers in the Wind (1954) Shake the Golden Bough (1963) Short stories Wong Chu and the Queen's Letterbox (1976) The Only One Who Forgot (1951) What Happened to Joseph? (2005, a collection of short stories & poems)

Drama Stories from Suburban Road The Day It All Ended

Children's books Swagbelly Birdsnatcher and the Prince of Siam

Autobiography Stories From Suburban Road (1983) A Knockabout with a Slouch Hat Red Rover All Over

Non-fiction Fremantle, Landscapes and People (with photographer Roger Garwood) (1976)

Book reviews Selby, David. Hell and High Fever – reviewed in Quadrant 1/1 (Sum 1956/57): 93, 95.

Prizes and other honours Hungerford won the Crouch Gold Medal for Literature (1951), the Patricia Hackett Short Story prize (1962), the WA Weekly Literature Prize for Fiction (1964), and the Patrick White Award (2002).

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987. A portrait of him, c.1963, by Kate O'Connor is in the National Library of Australia. In 2004, he was pronounced a Living Treasure of Western Australia by the Western Australian Government A portrait of Hungerford hangs in the National Library of Australia.

Michael Crouch wrote a biography of Hungerford titled Literary Larrikin and he was interviewed by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia.

The T. A. G. Hungerford Award is named for him and is awarded every two years to an unpublished author in Western Australia.