AUTHOR / JOURNALIST

Josef Vondra was born in Vienna, Austria, and came to Australia when he was ten years old. He spent fourteen months at a migrant camp in New South Wales where he learnt his first words of English. On moving to Melbourne, he had his first short story published at the age of fifteen.

Since then he has been a published writer of one kind or another for most of his life. He has worked in journalism, including a cadetship with the Sun News Pictorial, as a sub-editor with Radio Australia, a columnist with The Age and as a contributor to various newspapers and magazines, including Readers Digest. His first novel PAUL ZWILLING was published in 1974, and he was awarded a Senior Writer's Fellowship through the Australia Council the following year.

Josef has a particular interest in people who are displaced from their country of birth, as he and his family were displaced from post-war Europe. Because of his own background and his experiences with people of different cultural backgrounds in Australia and overseas, he is aware of the emotional and linguistic duality of migrant and how this impacts on their lives. His two books GERMAN SPEAKING SETTLERS and HELLAS AUSTRALIA reflect his experience of the migrant situation.

He has also has several travel books published, including TIMOR JOURNEY. His interest in Timor stems from his work with Radio Australia in the 1960's when he, together with fellow journalist Graham Turpie, was one of the first newsmen to be allowed full travelling rights within Portugese Timor.

Josef's first children's book NO-NAME BIRD: A STORY OF EAST TIMOR (Puffin, 2000), tells the story of a young boy, Jose, who is trying to make sense of what is happening around him, as the long threatened invasion of Portugese Timor by Indonesia becomes a reality in 1975.

Josef now lives in Lorne, on Victoria's Great Ocean Road where he runs his own magazine publishing business and is working on two new stories for young adults. He is keen to talk to students about his writing and his many travel and cultural experiences.

Link: www.puffin.com.au

"NO-NAME BIRD is a sensitively written story which draws upon universal themes such as a young boy facing difficult decisions and separations as he grows into manhood, and of a mother facing the torment of long term separation from he child because she knows it is the only way for him to have any kind of future. The setting and background to the story is also important and is written with knowledge and understanding of the culture, history, and peoples."
- Anne Hanzl, Reading Time Vol 44 No3