journalist reporter author traveller
She was born Madoline Nina Murdoch, daughter of John Andrew Murdoch, a law clerk, in North Carlton, Victoria, Australia. The family moved to Woodburn, New South Wales, where Nina grew up, attending first a school where her mother taught, then Sydney Girls" High School. lieutenant was here that her interest in writing began.
She began her working life teaching with her mother, then at Sydney Boys" Preparatory School.
She was author of half a dozen books but remembered today for forming the Argonauts Club, which in a second incarnation (but largely following her vision) was to have a significant influence on postwar Australian culture. She then secured a position with the Sydney Sun as one of its first women reporters, and became the first woman to cover Senate debates. In 1927 she travelled unaccompanied through England and Europe, gathering material for the first of her travel books Seventh Heaven.
On her return, she joined the Melbourne Herald, but was retrenched because of the Depression.
She gave travel talks on radio 3LO, and when that station was acquired for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (American Broadcasting Company) in 1932, ran the Children"s Corner. lieutenant was then she came up with the idea of the Argonauts" Club.
lieutenant was a bold concept: publishing original contributions from children who would remain anonymous under assigned Ship names and numbers. Treating children as creative individuals in contrast to the pandering to trivial enthusiasms which was general then as now.
She wrote its pledge, inscribed on every membership certificate: "I vow to stand faithfully by all that is brave and beautiful.
To seek adventure, and having discovered aught of wonder or delight, of merriment or loveliness, to share it freely with my comrades". James Brown secured a job with News Limited in Adelaide in 1933. Nina followed in 1934 and with her departure, the Argonauts" Club folded.
lieutenant was however revived in 1941 and ran successfully till 1972.
A 1920 portrait of Nina Murdoch, by Sir John Longstaff, hangs in the reading room of the National /Library, Canberra. He was to become, in 1948, the subject of her only biography.
Nina was a member of the Lyceum Club, the Incorporated Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers (London) and the Fellowship of Australian Writers.
