Now available on the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library news website at James Cook University is the manuscript of the unpublished book New Zealand author Jean Devanny (1894-1962) wrote about her time on Magnetic Island, North Queensland .
The daughter of a miner,in l929, she and her miner husband Hal Devanny, who had been strongly involved in union activities, moved to Australia for the health of a child .
Some of the Devanny archival boxes(above) in the university's Special Collections section. In New Zealand she he had been a member of the Labour Party , but she and her husband found it too right wing, so they joined the Communist Party.
Deeply involved in the Depression struggles and active in early literary groups in Sydney ,she and Hal moved to Townsville and so began the association with nearby Magnetic Island .
Her novel Sugar Heaven, published in 1936, dealt with the role women played in a North Queensland sugar cane strike.She also wrote about race relations in the North and was expelled from the Communist Party. Upon her death in Townsville, from leukemia ,railway workers formed a kind of guard of honour as her body was transported by train south for cremation. More details about her life have been run in Little Darwin.
Deeply involved in the Depression struggles and active in early literary groups in Sydney ,she and Hal moved to Townsville and so began the association with nearby Magnetic Island .
Her novel Sugar Heaven, published in 1936, dealt with the role women played in a North Queensland sugar cane strike.She also wrote about race relations in the North and was expelled from the Communist Party. Upon her death in Townsville, from leukemia ,railway workers formed a kind of guard of honour as her body was transported by train south for cremation. More details about her life have been run in Little Darwin.
