Pedley, Ethel (1859-1898), was an English-born Australian author, musician, and music teacher. Pedley is best known as the author of Dot and the Kangaroo. The book was published in 1899, after the author’s death. It was Pedley’s only children’s book. The novel, with illustrations by the Australian artist Frank Mahony, has become a classic of Australian children’s literature. The book was adapted for the stage in 1924. Several animated films based on the book were created, beginning with Dot and the Kangaroo (1977).
In Dot and the Kangaroo, a girl named Dot becomes lost in the bush, the term Australians use for the remote countryside. Dot is befriended by a kangaroo looking for its lost joey (baby). The kangaroo puts Dot in its pouch and returns her to her settler parents after Dot meets such bush creatures as a platypus, a koala, and a kookaburra. The story was the first to portray humanized animal characters that were Australian rather than European. In the book, Pedley includes a plea for the conservation of Australian wildlife.
Ethel Charlotte Pedley was born in Acton, near London, England, on June 19, 1859. She moved with her family to Sydney, Australia, in 1873. Pedley showed a talent for music as a child and returned to London to study voice and the violin in 1880 and 1881. She began teaching singing and the violin in Sydney in 1882. With her friend Emmeline Woolley, she founded the St. Cecilia Choir for women’s voices in 1884. The choir gave many charity concerts, with Pedley conducting. Pedley died on Aug. 6, 1898.
