Ethel Charlotte Pedley was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and musician.

Pedley's most well-known book is Dot and the Kangaroo

Dot and the Kangaroo

-Film adaptations:The book was adapted into a film in 1977 which featured a combination of animation and live-action. The main character, Dot, was voiced by Barbara Frawley. The film also featured Spike Milligan as the voice of Platypus. The movie featured an original soundtrack including several...

, which featured a little girl named Dot who becomes lost in the Australian outback, and is helped to find her way back home by a friendly kangaroo

Kangaroo

A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...

. The illustrations were drawn by Frank P. Mahony

Frank P. Mahony

Francis P. Mahony, also known as Frank Mahony, was an Australian artist and member of the Dawn and Dusk Club.Although christened "Francis Mahony", he later added 'Prout' and usually signed his work 'Frank P...

.

Pedley was a believer in the conservation of the Australian flora

Flora

Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...

 and fauna

Fauna

Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...

, and usually wrote her books from this perspective, singling out 'man' as disconnected from nature and the rest of the animals.

Ethel's preface to Dot and the Kangaroo is as follows:

To the children of Australia

in the hope of enlisting their sympathies

for the many beautiful, amiable, and frolicsome creatures

of their fair land,

whose extinction, through ruthless destruction,

is being surely accomplished

External links

• Pedley, Ethel Charlotte (1859 - 1898) Australian Dictionary of Biography