Marjorie Barnard

thumb| Marjorie Faith Barnard OAM (16 August 1897 – 8 May 1987) was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian and librarian. Her collaborations with Flora Eldershaw were published under the pseudonym M. Barnard Eldershaw. Quotes A History of Australia (1962) Distance is the continual theme and has been one of the main conditioning factors in Australian history. She was distant and dependent, a continent swinging on a long chain in antipodean darkness. Isolation became something of a cult in Australia before the advances of applied science, particularly the cable and the aeroplane, broke it down. The Australians, as they early came to call themselves, felt protected by it. They were alone to grow in their own way, to make their mistakes in private. External links