Xavier Herbert: shedworker

Xavier Herbert was one of Australia's leading 20th century novelists, the author in 1975 of Poor Fellow My Country, weighing in at 1,463 pages, making it the longest Australian novel (and of course by default the longest Australian novel written in a shed).

He lived for much of his later life in a cottage called Redlynch in Cairns, in the back garden of which was a shed which he built himself, known as "million dollar dog house". Here is how Lynette Warwick, member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Barron River, described it in the Australian Hansard in a speech on April 30, 1996:

"Xavier Herbert built a shed in which to write, while not away at writers' camps around Kuranda. It was an unpretentious iron structure, which local residents say was made from two small sheds taken from the Kuranda railway and moved on a rail car to Redlynch. The shed was reputed to contain a tool bench, some spartan luxuries, a camp stretcher, a deck chair and a low table on which he wrote using an ancient Remmington typewriter. There is also an electrical gadget of his own invention supposed to keep him awake... Poor Fellow My Country was typewritten in the shed."

Sadly it was demolished the summer of 1995. The photo above shows Herbert in April, 1938, on the day he found out he had won the Sesqui Centenary Library Prize. It may have been taken inside the shed. 

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