- Born
- 27 June 1868
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - Died
- 7 July 1941
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Summary
Bedford was born at Sydney and went to school at Newtown, leaving at the age of sixteen to work in rural N.S.W. A short time later, in 1886, he had the first of some 200 short stories published in the Bulletin. Bedford worked extensively as a freelance journalist and travel writer, as well as a successful gold miner and a Queensland parliamentarian. In 1896 he launched the Melbourne-based Clarion, a mining and literary journal with some well-known contributors including A. G. Stephens, Norman and Percy Lindsay and their brother Lionel, who was also a co-editor. His mining and prospecting experiences informed many of his works, including the novels True Eyes and the Whirlwind (1903), The Silver Star (1917) and Billy Pagan, Mining Engineer (1911), which follows the adventures of a mining expert who works as a self-styled detective. An earlier version of 'Fourteen Fathoms by Quetta Rock' was published in 1910 in the Sydney Mail.