AustLit

Editor's note: This is the first of two special articles written for 'The Australian Journal' by the well-known author, Jean Devanny, who recently spent some months on the Barrier Reef gathering material for a new travel book.

Editor's note: Not many people have ever seen a diving bell: very few women have actually descended in one. Jean Devanny is one of the adventurous minority who can tell you what it is like to sit at your ease and watch the citizens of the submarine world swim past your window. Miss Devanny hails from New Zealand, but, except for a trip abroad, has lived in Australia since 1929. She has more than twenty books to her credit, including several travel works and a number of novels, two of the latest being ‘Bird of Paradise,’ for which she gained a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship, and ‘Cindie,’ which deals with the Queensland Sugar Industry. At present, she is completing a book on Magnetic Island. (p. 13)