Cirrus@Austlit

An adopted child, Ward McNally became a juvenile deliquent at the age of nine. Still illiterate at the age of twenty, he learned to read and write in prison. In 1950 he arrived in Australia as a stowaway. He began writing in 1947 and had articles published in New Zealand, Australia and overseas. McNally gave numerous speeches on rehabilitation at clubs and on television programs. As well as fiction, biography and autobiography, he wrote a number of non-fiction works, including Australia, the Challenging Land (1965), New Zealand : The Which-Way Country (1966), Australia, the Waking Giant (1969), Goodbye Dreamtime (1973) and The Angry Australians (1974). He also contributed text to Ron Bentley's book of photographs, To Broken Hill and Back (1975).