AustLit

'Esther Roland' spent her formative years in New South Wales at Barramba (near Tamworth), and in Sydney. Her family, the Crowleys, had been in the district since the 1860s, when her great-grandfather arrived in the area, and they owned a 12,000 acre station at Barramba called "Glen Ribble" from the late 1890s. Until Roland was nine she did not attend school, rather being home schooled at the property "Myralla" (near "Glen Ribble") and taking correspondence lessons, although she had an interest in reading and writing from an early age. When she was nine, her father sold "Myralla", and the family came to Sydney where they lived at Strathfield, and Roland completed her education at M.L.C. at Burwood.

She married Geoffrey Job in 1940, and while he was on duty with the armoured division in Western Australia and the Pacific Islands she lived at "Glen Ribble", and had a small number of short stories published in Sydney newspapers and magazines. Her novel, I Camp Here, was finished on 10 October 1945, ten days before the birth of her first child. In April 1946 she and her family moved to Indooroopilly in Brisbane, Queensland. Under the name Eena Job, Esther Roland is also the author of Eighty plus : outgrowing the myths of old age (1984), as well as several other books on ageing and sociology. She is the mother-in-law of Peg Job (q.v.).