- Born
- Died
- Dora Birtles was born Dora Toll, 6th child of the founder of Toll industries Frederick Toll, in 1993. Her father was mayor of Newcastle as well as the founder of one of Australia's largest road transport systems. His daughter Dora was ahead of her time. She was intelligent and determined to be educated at a time when that was not considered important for women. She was famous as the subject of a poem written by the man she was to later marry, for which he was expelled and she incurred a 2 year suspension from Sydney University in 1923. The poem was called Beauty by Bert Birtles. Later she drew fame in her own right as author of the novel The Overlanders, turned into a motion picture starring Chips Rafferty in 1946. She was also the author North-West by North (1935); of an account of a sea voyage from Newcastle to Singapore. Dora was also the subject for a finalist portrait in the Archibald Prize of 1947 by Dora Toovey. Dora's husband Bert was a political journalist for the Daily Telegraph, a Sydney newspaper, retiring at the age of 71 in 1972. Along with Dora he also published travelogues i.e. Exiles of the Aegean (1938). Dora died in 1992 aged 88 years, after a life that was provocative and genuine.She and Bert were ahead of their time and also leaders in their time of the art and intelligentsia of Sydney, NSW. Read more about them by Dora's niece Deidre Moore in Survivors of Beauty, Memoirs of Dora and Bert Birtles, published 1996 by the Book Collectors' Society of Australia.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Val Boyd; great niece of Dora Birtles
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