He was 79.Ĭourtenay is survived by his second wife Christine Gee and his children Adam and Brett.
I had been telling stories since the age of five and had always known I would be a writer some day, though life kept getting in the way until I realised that it was either now or never.īryce Courtenay died at his home in Canberra, Australia. I have lived all my Australian life in Sydney (the nicest place on earth) and, until I started writing fiction, made my career in advertising working as a copywriter and creative director.Īt the age of 55 I decided to take the plunge. Brett, who married Ann has given me three lovely grandsons, Ben now 14, Jake is about to turn 12 and Marcus is almost 6 years old. Benita gave me three splendid sons, Brett, Adam and Damon. I did, and soon after arriving in Australia, married her. While studying journalism, I met a wonderful Australian girl. One day the school hall was raided by the police who then branded me a Communist as they considered educating Africans a subversive act.
This was due to the fact that I had started a weekend school for Africans in the school hall of the prestigious boy's school I attended. I came to Australia because I was banned from returning to my own country. His was the best education I was ever to receive, despite the scholarship I won to a prestigious boy's school and thereafter to a university in England where I studied Journalism. Here I met Doc, a drunken German music teacher who spent the next few years filling my young mind with the wonders of nature as we roamed the high mountains.
At the age of five I was sent to a boarding school which might be better described as a combination orphanage and reform school, where I learned to box - though less as a sport and more as a means to stay alive.īut I survived to return to a small mountain town named Barberton in the North Eastern part of the country. It was a somewhat isolated community and I grew up among farm folk and the African people. I was born illegitimately in 1933 in South Africa and spent my early childhood years in a small town deep in the heart of the Lebombo mountains.
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