Ruth Park

Ruth Park is an author born in Auckland, New Zealand, who spent most of her life in Australia. She was born on 24 August 1923 in Auckland, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas.

Personal history
During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her. (Apparently the woman asked Ruth what she wanted to be when she grew up. When she was told a writer, the woman suggested she'd be happier as a servant.) Ruth Park claims that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.

Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Simple-minded critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She knew hers was the Poorman's orange: pale skin, not as sweet. She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created the Muddle Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).

Parks has received awards in Australian and internationally but she has not yet received wide-spread recognition in New Zealand.

She claims to be a descendant of Dr Mungo Park, the African explorer, though there is yet to be any evidence of this.

Apart from her writing she also brought up 5 children. Her two youngest, Kilmeny and Deborah Niland, are both successful Australian artists.

Awards

 * 1946 in the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald competition won the Best Novel award for The Harp in the South
 * 1954 Catholic Book Club Choice selected Serpent's Delight
 * 1961 in the inaugural Commonwealth Television Play Competition run by the Lew Grade Organisation the British award for television play won for No Decision, with D'Arcy Niland
 * 1962 Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for The Hole in the Hill
 * 1975 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for Callie's Castle
 * 1977 Miles Franklin Award for Swords and Crowns and Rings
 * 1977 National Book Council highly commended for Swords and Crowns and Rings
 * 1979 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award, highly commended for Come Danger, Come Darkness
 * 1981 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award won the Playing Beatie Bow
 * 1981 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize for young people's literature won for When the Wind Changed
 * 1982 Parents' Choice Award for Literature won for Playing Beatie Bow, awarded by the Parents' Choice Foundation
 * 1982 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Playing Beatie Bow
 * 1982 International Board on Books for Young People (Australia) won the Honour Diploma for Playing Beatie Bow
 * 1982 Guardian Fiction Prize (UK) runner up for Playing Beatie Bow
 * 1986 Young Australians' Best Book Award for a picture book for When the Wind Changed (illustrated by Deborah Niland}
 * 1987 Ruth Park (aka Mrs Niland) was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to literature
 * 1992 The Age Book of the Year, Non-Fiction Award won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
 * 1992 Colin Roderick Award won for A Fence around the Cuckoo, presented with the H.T. Priestley Meda(Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award)
 * 1993 Tilly Aston Award for Braille Book of the Year won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
 * 1993 Talking Book of the Year Award (Royal Blind Society) won for A Fence around the Cuckoo
 * 1993 Talking Book of the Year Award (Royal Blind Society) won for Fishing in the Styx
 * 1993 Awarded the Lloyd O'Neil Magpie Award for services to the Australian book industry
 * 1994 Canberra's Own Outstanding List (CBCA COOL Award) won for Playing Beatie Bow
 * 1994 Awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of New South Wales
 * 1994 Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award won for Home Before Dark
 * 1996 Bilby Award, Young Reader Award won for When the Wind Changed (illustrated by Deborah Niland)
 * 2004 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards won the Special Award
 * 2006 listed in the Bulletin's 100 most influential Australians

Novels

 * The Harp in the South, (1948)
 * Poor Man's Orange, (1949); also published as 12 1/2 Plymouth Street, (1951)
 * The Witch's Thorn, (1951)
 * A Power of Roses, (1953)
 * Serpent's Delight, (1953); also published as The Good Looking Women, (1961)
 * Pink Flannel, (1955)
 * One-a-Pecker, Two-a-Pecker, (1957); also published as The Frost and the Fire, (1958)
 * Swords and Crowns and Rings, (1977)
 * Missus, (1985)

Children's books

 * The Hole in the Hill, (1961); also published as Secret of the Maori Cave, (1961)
 * The Ship's Cat, (1961)
 * The Muddle-Headed Wombat series, (1962-1982)
 * Airlift for Grandee, (1962)
 * The Road to Christmas, (1962)
 * The Road Under the Sea, (1962)
 * The Shaky Island, (1962)
 * Uncle Matt's Mountain, (1962)
 * The Ring for the Sorcerer, (1967)
 * The Sixpenny Island, (1968)
 * Nuki and the Sea Serpent: a Maori Legend, (1969)
 * The Runaway Bus, (1969)
 * Callie's Castle, (1974)
 * The Gigantic Balloon, (1975)
 * Merchant Campbell, (1976)
 * Roger Bandy, (1977)
 * Come Danger, Come Darkness, (1978)
 * Playing Beatie Bow, (1980)
 * When the Wind Changed, (1980)
 * The Big Brass Key, (1983)
 * My Sister Sif, (1986)
 * Callie's Family, (1988)
 * Things in Corners, (1989) - short stories
 * James, (1991)

Non-Fiction

 * Der Goldene Bumerang, (1955), or The Golden Boomerang
 * The Companion Guide to Sydney, (1973)
 * Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island, (1982)
 * The Sydney We Love, (1983)
 * The Tasmania We Love, (1987)
 * Home Before Dark: The Story of Les Darcy, a Great Australian Hero, (1995), with Rafe Champion