Cirrus@Austlit

Ornithologist and author Pauline Reilly was born in Adelaide but moved to Melbourne, Victoria, with her family and attended Korowa Grammar and Melbourne Girls Grammar. Rachel Faggetter and Brock Reilly, in their obituary for Pauline Reilly, report that Reilly's 'first literary outing was a contribution to the [Melbourne Girls Grammar] magazine, which fired her ambition to write.'

Illness and family financial difficulties meant Pauline Reilly left school early. She studied shorthand and typing and became a secretary before using her secretarial skills in army intelligence in World War II, where she met her husband Arthur Reilly. After the war and marriage the Reillys farmed in Tasmania. A virus destroyed their crop and they moved to Colac in Victoria.

Pauline Reilly joined the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (Birds Australia) in 1956 becoming president in 1972. In retirement she, with her husband, moved to Fairhaven in Victoria where she continued her work in conservation, community activities and local government. Her field notes and writings were destroyed in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfire but despite this huge setback her Penguins and Earthly People, the story of the thirteen years she and a team of volunteers spent studying and recording information about fairy penguins on Victoria's Phillip Island, was published in that same year.

Pauline Reilly published more than 40 books. Most were on birds, with some on Australian wildlife and many for children. She also wrote readers in the Orbit series of English language books for adolescents, as well as Picture Roo Books, a series of books for children on Australian wildlife. Her later books were published by her own publishing company Bristlebird Books and were illustrated by Kayelene Traynor (q.v.).

Other works of non fiction include Fairy Penguins: A Brief Life History (1972), and Private Lives: Ages, Mates and Movements of Some Australian Birds (1988). She co-authored Atlas of Australian Birds (1984) a cross-continental project established during her time as president of Birds Australia and wrote of her husband's illness with cancer in Cannabis and Cancer : Arthur's Story (2001). In later life Pauline Reilly continued her interest in renewable technologies and computers. Her awards include the RAOU John Hobbs Medal, 2001 and the Roy Wheeler Medallion 2005.

Source: Rachel Faggetter and Brock Reilly, 'Bird Watcher Undeterred by Setbacks', The Age (5 July 2011): 16.