He is the only Australian winner of the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books, the 1971 award to Josh.Ī retrospective exhibition Southall A–Z: Ash Road to Ziggurat was held in the State Library of Victoria in 1998 and is available online. The non-fiction Fly West recounts his experiences in Short Sunderland flying boats during the Second World War.

Southall's best known children's novels include Hills End, Ash Road, Let the Balloon Go and Josh (1962 to 1971). He was one of the first to write specifically for young adults. Southall dealt in his books both with survival in the face of dramatic events such as fire and flood and with personal and psychological challenges. Several of these ventured into science-fiction, with space flight, aliens and lost humanoid races.Īfter 1960, Southall's career pivoted into the everyday world of children and teenage characters. Southall later published a version of this story for younger readers under the title Seventeen Seconds - the time available to run in case the fuse of the mine was accidentally triggered while trying to disarm it.įrom 1950 to 1962, Southall also wrote, for younger readers, adventure stories about a fictional brave pilot, 'Simon Black' - an Australian counterpart to W.E. Southall also wrote Softly Tread the Brave, describing the courage of Royal Australian Volunteer Naval Reserve bomb disposal officers, Hugh Syme and John Mould, who served in England disarming parachute mines. Later he published a version of this history as They Shall Not Pass Unseen and much later returned to his experiences of combat in Sunderlands in books for younger readers. Southall also wrote the official history of his Royal Australian Air Force squadron in the south of England, when he was pilot of Short Sunderland flying boats. Notably, he wrote the biography of Keith Truscott, an Australian fighter ace who served in England in the last stages of the Battle of Britain and the aftermath, and later in Darwin and at Milne Bay. Ivan Southall began his career as a writer primarily writing historical accounts for adults. Southall died of cancer on 15 November 2008 aged 87.

He remarried, to Susan Stanton, whom he met in 1974 on his United States visit to deliver the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture at the University of Washington. He met his first wife, Joy Blackburn, during the Second World War and they had four children, Andrew, Roberta, Elizabeth and Melissa. He tried his hand at farming at Monbulk, but the attempt foundered, so he became a full-time writer.

Head in the Clouds by Ivan Southall