Frank Clune was a Darlinghurst boy who grew up in Redfern, got himself wounded at Gallipoli, and then spent forty years talking Australia into the lounge room — tax accountant by day, travel writer by night, ABC’s Roaming Round Australia booming out of the wireless. Serenade to Sydney: Some Historical Landmarks (Angus & Robertson, 1967) is late Clune: a walk around the city’s markers, written the same year he took his OBE, amplifying the Council’s hundred historical plaques rather than inventing a new map. Campbell’s Stores, the Argyle Cut, Greenway, Simeon Lord, Busby’s Bore — the same plaques this blog already chases.
Clune’s histories are readable and sometimes embroidered; the Australian Dictionary of Biography is honest about that. He was born 27 November 1893 in Darlinghurst, lived at Vaucluse from 1930, and was buried at South Head after he died at St Vincent’s on 11 March 1971.
There’s more on Frank Clune and his book in my earlier post, Serenade to Sydney – Frank Clune.
Serenade to Sydney - Frank Clune
Frank Clune's A Serenade to Sydney presents the city through a historical and travel-writing lens. The post brings together Clune's observations with images of Sydney landmarks, offering a glimpse of how the harbour city was described to readers in the twentieth century.
