Early life

Henrietta Frances York Drake-Brockman was born in Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

, Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 in 1901. She was educated in Scotland, the land of her mother, and at Frensham School]Frensham school for girls in Mittagong

Mittagong, New South Wales

Mittagong is a town located in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, in Wingecarribee Shire. At the 2006 census, Mittagong had a population of 7,460 people. The town can be seen as the gateway to the Southern Highlands when coming from Sydney. The town is close to Bowral, Berrima,...

. She studied literature at the University of Western Australia

University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...

 and art in Henri Van Raalte's Perth studio. She married Geoff Drake-Brockman, then Commissioner for north western Australia

North West Australia

The terms North West Australia, The North West and North Western Australia have been used as a regular label for the region of the North of Western Australia and the West of the Northern Territory.- Early 20th century gold rush:...

, in 1921.

Writing career

Both Henrietta and her husband wrote about their travels in articles for The West Australian

The West Australian

The West Australian is the only locally-edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia, and is owned by ASX-listed Seven West Media . The West is published in tabloid format, as is the state's other major newspaper, The Sunday Times, a News Limited publication...

. The travels were also sources for her novels. By the time the couple returned to Perth in 1926, Henrietta's reputation as a writer had become established. From her experiences of the North-West, she had written sketches and stories, and in the early 1930s published a serial, The Disquieting Sex. Blue North, an historical novel about life in the 1870s, was serialized in The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

 and published in 1934, while Sheba Lane used contemporary Broome

Broome, Western Australia

Broome is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, north of Perth. The year round population is approximately 14,436, growing to more than 45,000 per month during the tourist season...

 as its setting. Younger Sons was a carefully documented novel of Western Australian settlement and The Fatal Days (1947) focussed on Ballarat

Ballarat, Victoria

Ballarat is a city in the state of Victoria, Australia, approximately west-north-west of the state capital Melbourne situated on the lower plains of the Great Dividing Range and the Yarrowee River catchment. It is the largest inland centre and third most populous city in the state and the fifth...

, Victoria, during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Her last novel, The Wicked and The Fair (1957), centred on the voyage of the Batavia

Batavia (ship)

Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company . It was built in Amsterdam in 1628, and armed with 24 cast iron cannons and a number of bronze guns. Batavia was shipwrecked on her maiden voyage, and was made famous by the subsequent mutiny and massacre that took place among the survivors...

 in 1629. Her final book, Voyage To Disaster (1963), was largely a biography of the Batavia's captain Francisco Pelsaert

Francisco Pelsaert

Francisco Pelsaert was a Dutch merchant who worked for the Dutch East India Company, who became most famous as the commander of the ship Batavia, which ran aground in the Houtman Abrolhos off the coast of Western Australia in June...

. Her extensive research entailed the use of material from Dutch archives and of E. D. Drok's translations of Pelsaert's journals, as well as trips by sea and air to the probable site of the wreck. In an article in Walkabout

Walkabout magazine

Walkabout was an Australian illustrated magazine published from 1934 to 1974 combining cultural, geographic, and scientific content with travel literature. Initially a travel magazine, in its forty-year run it featured a popular mix of articles by travellers, officials, residents, journalists, and...

 in January 1955, Henrietta diverged from general opinion and closely estimated the Batavia's correct resting place. Eight years later she used an aqualung to inspect the wreck of the vessel off the Albrolhos Islands. She was also co-editor with Walter Murdoch

Walter Murdoch

Emeritus Professor Sir Walter Murdoch, KCMG was a prominent Australian academic and essayist famous for his intelligence, wit, and humanity. He was a Founding Professor of English and former Chancellor of University of Western Australia in Perth. Murdoch University, also in Perth is named after him...

 of Australian Short Stories.

Playwriting career

Drake-Brockman also wrote for the theatre in Perth during the 1930s and 40s. Claiming that she would rather have been a playwright than a novelist, and that there were almost no opportunities for Australian plays when she had begun to write, Henrietta did manage to have some of her plays staged. The Man from the Bush was produced in Perth in 1932 (and later in Melbourne), Dampier's Ghost was performed in 1934 and The Blister in 1937. In her best-known play, Men Without Wives, she extended her work beyond the one-act genre and won a sesquicentenary drama prize in 1938. Men Without Wives and Other Plays was published in 1955. Her plays, for the most part, depicted the people and isolated places of her earlier fiction. She admired and wrote on the work of Katharine Susannah Prichard

Katharine Susannah Prichard

Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.-Biography:...

.

Later life

Drake-Brockman joined the Sydney branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers

Fellowship of Australian Writers

The Fellowship of Australian Writers, also known as FAW, was established in Sydney in 1928. Its aim is to bring writers together and promote their interests...

 in 1939. She was one of the founders of the West Australian Branch, being the president in 1941 and also 1956-1957. She edited several collections of short stories and her own were compiled in Sydney or the Bush. She received an O.B.E

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 in 1967, one year before her death in 1968.

Further reading

• Adelaide, Debra Australian Women Writers: A Bibliographic Guide . London. Pandora. ISBN 0-86358-149-8
• Hetherington, John, (1962) Forty-two faces Melbourne : F.W. Cheshire: Profile of Western Australian author, with bibliography. p.60 - p.65