Cirrus@Austlit

Bill Scott was the second of five children. He attended Brisbane State High School and then worked in various jobs before enlisting in the navy during the Second World War. He served for four years, mainly in the New Guinea area. After the war he worked in north Queensland as canecutter, prospector and steam train driver. He married Mavis Scott (q.v.) in 1949 and after working as a seaman on the lighthouse tender he worked in McLeod's Bookshop before joining Jacaranda Press in 1957. There he packed, sold and promoted books. He and Mavis later settled in Warwick.

Scott established himself as writer, poet and folklorist. His first poem was published in the Bulletin in 1944 when he was twenty-one. He compiled The Continual Singing: An Anthology of World Poetry (1973) and was a prolific correspondent with library archives testifying to his writing regularly to various Australian authors, including Colin Thiele and Max Fatchen (qq.v.). This trio was known affectionately as Portly (Fatchen), Pathos (Scott) and Tin Legs (Thiele). Zita Denholm published Corresponding Voices : The Letters of Bill Scott and David Denholm (2000), which anthologised the many letters exchanged between Scott and Zita Denholm's husband David Denholm (q.v.).

Scott also published a number of pamphlets, including Queensland in Its Literature (1968) and Portrait of Brisbane (1976). He wrote a number of Australian folk song classics, including 'Hey Rain!" and 'Where the Cane Fires Burn'.