Andrew Orr was born at Coleraine, County Derry in Northern Ireland. ‘Upon the completion of his college education he became a contributor of poetry and prose to the Londonderry newspapers and for some years he was attached as a correspondent to the staff of the Nation’.
Orr ‘arrived in Ballarat in 1857 and worked as a digger for several years’. He then took up the position of editor on the Grenville Advocate and ‘was subsequently appointed special correspondent of the Ballarat Star at Smythesdale’. He later returned to Ballarat as the Star’s chief of reporting staff and, later again, became that newspaper’s mining reporter and sub-editor.
Orr’s book of poems, The Feast of Reason, was published a year prior to his death.
Source: ‘Mr. Andrew Orr.’ Freeman's Journal, 13 August 1908: 17
Sighted: 05/09/2013