Cirrus@Austlit

Roger Vaughan Carr wrote extensively for children, including school reading texts and novels for adolescents, and contributed stories to the Victorian School Paper.

The son of an overland drover, Carr attended various primary schools across Victoria, and was a boarder at Brighton Grammar School. He completed his schooling at Frankston High School at fifteen. Illness prevented him from a sporting career and he saw writing as the most creative avenue for himself. His first short story was published in the Sydney Bulletin in 1957, he contributed children's stories for the Victorian School Paper and his first adolescent novel, Surfie, was published in 1966.

In the late 1960s Carr wrote television scripts for the ABC drama Bellbird and comedy sketches for In Melbourne Tonight. During the 1970s he wrote over 28 children's books, mainly school readers, and the screenplay of the telemovie Dead Man's Float from his book of the same name. Carr's most successful children's book was Firestorm! written as a result of the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires which destroyed his home in Aireys Inlet.