John Sandes moved from Ireland to England in 1872 and attended school at Kings College, Somerset House, London. In 1874 he studied at Trinity College, Stratford on Avon, and later studied for a BA in classics and law at Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated with honours in 1885.
Sandes spent time travelling in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Developing a chest infection, he was advised by doctors to avoid English winters and so migrated to Australia. Sandes arrived in Australia in January 1887 and taught at a school in St Kilda, Adelaide, before moving to Melbourne to take up an assignment with the Argus newspaper in June 1888. He was one of the original writers in the short-lived periodical Bohemia and it was there that he befriended Davison Symmons and E. T. Fricker. With these two colleagues he inaugurated, in August 1891, 'The Passing Show' by 'Oriel', in the Saturday Argus. Sandes says: 'When Symmons left the Argus and Fricker took up other work, I was "Oriel" from 1898 to 1903.' Sandes' verse proved very popular during the time of the Boer War and was widely anthologised.
Sandes left Melbourne in 1903 to become leader writer and reviewer with the Sydney Daily Mail. He started the column 'A Bird's Eye View', and for sixteen years wrote leaders, articles, and dramatic, musical and literary reviews for it. In 1919 he became the Daily Telegraph's London correspondent but returned to Australia in 1922, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Source: A. G. Stephens 'Australian Autobiographies', vol.2. (Biographical information written in Sandes's own hand.)
