Casey’s Wife

pp. 293 illusts First Edition #0220Gavin Stodart Casey (1907-1964), author and journalist, was born on 10 April 1907 at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, second son of Frederick Arthur Casey, a native-born surveyor, and his wife Jean Stodart, née Allan, from Scotland. Gavin admired and was influenced by his father and by Frederick’s mates, and was to describe them as ‘strong, vigorous, hot-tempered, easy-laughing men’. Both his parents died before he was l7. Following a ‘pretty sketchy State school and School of Mines education’, he began a cadetship with the Kalgoorlie Electric Light Station, but left to work in Perth as a motorcycle salesman. In 1931 the Depression forced him back to Kalgoorlie where he took jobs as a surface-labourer and underground electrician at the mines, raced motorcycles and became a representative for the Perth Mirror. On 8 February 1933 he married Dorothy Wulff at the Anglican Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Kalgoorlie. Poverty plagued them, long after their return to Perth next year.With aspirations to be a writer, by 1936 Casey was publishing short stories in the Australian Journal and the Bulletin. In 1938 he was foundation secretary (president l941-42) of the West Australian branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. His collections of short stories, It’s Harder for Girls (Sydney, 1942), which won the S. H. Prior memorial prize in 1942, and Birds of a Feather (Perth, 1943), established his reputation. Realistic in their treatment of place and incident, his stories showed—beneath the jollity and assurance of his characters—inner tensions, loneliness, unfulfilled hopes, and the lack of communication between men and women.