With Rex Sadler and Cliff Powell, Tom Hayllar has co-edited more than sixty textbooks for secondary schools, including drama, poetry and and short story anthologies, and has done much to encourage students to enjoy and appreciate literature. The anthologies include works by Australian and non-Australian writers, and some plays by Hayllar himself; among them 'The Pied Piper' in Mainly Humorous (1979) and 'The Canterville Ghost' in Plays for Pleasure (1984) and 'Dracula' adapted for radio in To Kill a Mockingbird (1996).
Many of these educational texts are available in braille and sound recording formats.
He is a member of the Explorers' Club and a member of the Sydney Speleological Society. He has done marathon walks supported by his wife and friends, and has walked around Australia, across Australia from Cape Byron in the east to Steep Point in the West, and diagonally from Wilson's Promontary to the Kimberleys.
His wife also writes, under her birth name Marygai McNamara.
