Mary Grant Bruce was an Australian author and reporter for children who was born on May 24, 1878, and died on July 2, 1958. She was also known as Minnie Bruce. All of her thirty-seven books were big hits in Australia and other countries, especially the UK. But the Billabong series, which followed the Linton family's adventures on Billabong Station in Victoria and in England and Ireland during World War I, made her famous. People thought that her writing had a big impact on how Australians thought about their national character, especially when it came to ideas of the Bush. It was full of fierce patriotism, vivid descriptions of the beauty and dangers of Australia's scenery, and funny, slang-filled conversations that praised the craft of yarning. Bruce saw Bruce's books as important because they fought for what he saw as the most Australian Bush values: independence, hard physical work (for men, women, and children), friendship, the ANZAC spirit, and Bush hospitality, against more indulgent, self-centered, or stiff British and urban values. In her books, she both praised and lamented the way Europeans slowly settled, cleared, and developed Australia's wildness.
