Illustrator and water colourist, Sturgess began his studies at the Melbourne National Gallery under the painters Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall when he was only 13 years old. He often went to the Melbourne Zoo where he would sketch the animals. This was his inspiration for the illustrations for W. M. Flemings's Bunyip Says So : A Tale of the Australian Bush (1922)
(Source: The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature,1993)
