AustLit

Arthur Groom was the second child of Arthur Champion Groom, the Federal Member for Flinders, and his wife Eva Rosabelle. When Arthur was about three years old, his parents moved their young family to Julia Creek, North Queensland, where they settled on a property they named 'Rosabelle Downs'. Growing up here, Arthur received a 'bush'-oriented education and he went on to work as a jackeroo in the Northern Territory, and later as a journalist with the Brisbane Courier Mail.

In 1930 he wrote, and had published, his first book, a novel entitled Merry Christmas. A passionate environmentalist, in this same year he also became the first honorary secretary of the National Parks Association of Queensland, and in 1933 he helped to establish Binna Burra Lodge, on the edge of Queensland's Lamington National Park, where he subsequently worked as manager and guide.

In addition to writing social commentary and fiction, Arthur Groom also wrote books about travelling in Australia: One Mountain After Another (1949), Wealth in the Wilderness (1955), and I Saw a Strange Land : Journeys in Central Australia (1977).