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Bertha Southey Brammall (Australian writer)

A direct descendent of English Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, Bertha Southey Brammall wrote material for children's radio programs as well as poems, novels and short stories for adults. She was born in Hamilton on Forth, Tasmania, in 1876, the daughter of the Rev Henry White Adams, school teacher and Katherine Adams (nee Southey). She was widely considered to be Tasmania's own poetess and novelist.

Her writing career commenced at the age of 16 with the publication of her first novel, Dusky Dell in 1898. Set in northern Tasmania, it tells the story of an orphan taken in by a large family, where she is harshly treated before being rescued by her long-lost parent. Her only full length novel, The Mystery of Four Corners, was published in serial form in the Weekly Courier in 1918.

In 1905 she married Thomas Colin Brammall, later of the Hutchins School Hobart. They moved to Melbourne for a time before returning to Hobart following her husband's appointment as a Master at the Hutchins School. Thomas Brammall was later a tutor at Christ College and was associated with the college and the University of Tasmania until his death in 1945.

In 1928 she began hosting a children's radio program as The Authoress on Hobart's radio 7ZL, reciting original Australian fairy tales and poems for children. Broadcast twice a week the program was very popular, with Mrs Brammall receiving letters from all over Australia and as far away as New Zealand and South Africa. The program only ended when she left to nurse her sick husband.

She was intensely interested in the theatre and adapted parts of many English classics to the stage, often producing and acting in them herself. In 1935 she won second prize in an Australian Broadcasting Commission play-writing competition with her play, Flickering Candles, one of nearly 400 entries received. She was also a consistent winner in the old Lyceum Club literary circle in Hobart and was a regular contributor of short stories and poems to a number of Australian periodicals and women's magazines.

Mrs Brammall died in Sydney on 10 February 1957. She was survived by five sons, two of whom became well-known Australian journalists, Mr C C Brammall and Mr Angus Garett Brammall.