AustLit

Walter E. Wynne lived his entire life in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, apart from a couple of visits to Ireland and nearly three years service during the Second World War. He attended North Kalgoorlie State School and then night classes at the School of Mines where he failed his exams for a decade. Despite this Wynne earned his living as an assayer and metallurgist around Kalgoorlie. After the death of his father he supported his mother from an early age.

Wynne had his first short story, 'Old George', published in the Bulletin in 1931 when he was twenty-one, and wrote for only a few years before putting aside his typewriter. His success in being published in the Bulletin inspired his lifelong friends, Gavin Casey and Ted Mayman (qq.v.) to also become writers. Wynne never married and had few aspirations. He retired in midlife to live a spartan existence on small investments. Wynne quoted Montesquieu: 'Happy the peoples whose annals are tiresome. Happy the people whose annals are vacant.'

(Source: 'Introduction', View From Kalgoorlie ed. Ted Mayman (1969): xi-xviii)