Artist, poet, author, musician, photographer and inventor Charles Ludlow, was a gifted student, graduating dux of Stanthorpe State High School in 1938. After leaving school he travelled to Brisbane where he became a cadet technician for Telecom finishing his training in 1939. During his career with Telecom, he was involved in the development of teletype, an innovation for telegrams. Ludlow retired in 1986.
As an artist,Ludlow's first public showing of four watercolours, was in 1945 at the Royal Queensland Art Society's 57th Annual Exhibition. His formal training in art began in 1959, at Brisbane's Central Technical College, and in 1962 he became a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society, until the late 1990s.
In 1987, Ludlow published a collection of poems and his art works in Brisbane's River: Watercolours and Words which was launched at an RQAS exhibition by former Brisbane Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson.