PAGES FROM A WRITER'S LIFE

Anthony Hill saves the souls of all-but-lost children (Max Harris)

Anthony Hill was born in Melbourne on 24 May, 1942. In a varied career he has been a newspaper and television reporter, political journalist, antique dealer, speech-writer for Australia's Governor-General, and now full-time author and playwright.

After living lived in Canberra and district from 1972, Anthony  returned to Melbourne in 2020 with his wife Gillian.  They have a married daughter, Jane, who lives there with her husband Paul, and daughter Emily. They have  a step-grand-daughter, Lucy, now in New York pursuing her career as a dancer.

Anthony is published by Penguin Random House. He is a member of the Australian Society of Authors, the Children's Book Council of Australia. and Melbourne Writers Theatre.

Anthony attended Box Hill Grammar School (now Kingswood College) and Box Hill High School, before matriculating and starting work as a copy boy and later a cadet reporter with the Melbourne Herald in 1959. He was a court reporter, Town Hall and State political reporter. He also worked as a journalist for The Australian when it began in 1964, returning to The Herald when he and Gillian married in 1965. In 1972 they were sent to Canberra and the Parliamentary Press Gallery, where Jane was born. For more info go to Anthony's Q&A.

Early Books

After five hectic years as a political journalist at Parliament House, Anthony and his  family moved to a village near Yass, an hour's drive from Canberra, and opened an antique shop. They were there for five years, and the experience formed the basis of Anthony's first three books. For more info go to Anthony's Books >  Early Books.

First Success

Returning to Canberra in 1982, Anthony worked as a journalist at Capital 7 Television, returning briefly to the Press Gallery with The Bulletin, later as a press officer with the Australian Public Service, the Australian National University and the National Museum. In 1989 he was appointed speech-writer to the Governor-General Bill Hayden, whom he first met in Canberra, and his successor Sir William Deane. The next ten years gave ideas for many of Anthony's  books including the award-winning The Burnt Stick. For more info go to Anthony's Books > First Success.

Military Books

Anthony became a full-time writer at the end of 1998. But working for the Governor-General inspired his best-selling novel Soldier Boy, about 14-year-old Jim Martin, the youngest known Australian Anzac. It led directly two two more military books – Young Digger and Animal Heroes.

Anthony followed these with two more military novels, this time written specifically for an adult audience. The first  was The Story of Billy Young, A teenager in Changi, Sandakan and Outram Road (2012), and in 2016 For Love of Country: A true Australian family story of love, war and the ultimate sacrifice (Penguin/Viking). For more info click the book covers on this page or go to Anthony's Books >  Military Books.

Animal Tails

Family pets and Animal Tails provided two stories for younger readers, The Shadow Dog and Lucy's Cat and the Rainbow Birds. And Anthony brought a life-long love of history and research to Harriet, about an ancient tortoise, Animal Heroes (in war and peace) and also  River Boy. 

Home

In late 2020, in the middle of Covid, after 48 years in Canberra and district, Anthony and Gillian felt it was time to return home to Melbourne. It  seemed counter-intuitive, but both were approaching their 80s, the family bond in Melbourne has always been close, and if the move was delayed much longer it might be too late.

It has been more successful than they even dared hope. Anthony completed his last two historical novels, and has embarked on a new phase in his career as a playwright.

Historical Novels

Anthony has written two novels for adults based on aspects of Australian exploration and the convict era, and presently working on a third. The first was  Captain Cook's Apprentice, which took Anthony from a 10-day sail on the Endeavour replica to a session at the National Library with Captain Cook's hand-written journal. It was published by Penguin Books in 2008, with a new and expanded edition in 2018.

He has since written The Last Convict, a novel based on the last known transported convict to survive in Australia. He died in 1938.  The book was  to have been published by Penguin Random House in June 2020, but due to the Coronavirus pandemic has been deferred until 2021.

In 2023 Anthony published his last novel, The Investigators, about the circumnavigation of Australia by Matthew Flinders in HMS Investigator 1801-03. It is largely told through the eyes of Flinders' cousin Midshipman John Franklin, later Sir John Franklin, Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania and the famous Arctic explorer who died during the discovery of the North-west Passage.

For more info click the books covers on the home page.

Playwright

Anthony has always had a love of the theatre, having been stage stuck at the age of three when seeing his first play in kindergarten.

In 2022, in need of a new direction for his pen, and a member of the Mordialloc Theatre Company in Melbourne, he began a dramatisation of Soldier Boy, by far his most successful novel.

With the help of his cousin, the actor Laura Iris Hill, he completed the play, which has now been accepted by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. It is among six plays on the VCE 2025 Drama Playlist, one of which must be seen and assessed by Unit 3 students.

Soldier Boy The Play will be professionally performed at Theatre Works, St Kilda, Melbourne, in June-July 2025, produced by Dianne Toulson.

Anthony is now completing a dramatisation of Young Digger, a companion play to Soldier Boy as was the novel.