RAYMENT, PERCY TARLTON (1882-1964), apiarist, biologist and writer

Rayment also won some success as a fiction writer. In 1933 he published The Prince of the Totem, a collection of stories based on Aboriginal legends, first broadcast by Nina Murdoch in Children's Corner on 3LO. His novel The Valley of the Sky (1937), 'a romantic idyll of the pioneering of Gippsland' based on the life of Angus McMillan, won the British section of an all-nations novel competition. In 1945 he published Eagles and Earthlings, verse commemorating the allied air crews of World War II. Sometimes using pen-names, 'Ka-vai', 'Ralph Darling', 'Johan Moorst' and 'Moroka', he also produced fifty-four radio scripts and numerous short stories.

Print Publication Details: Kenneth L. Walker, 'Rayment, Percy Tarlton (1882 - 1964)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp 338-339.