The Sapphire Coast

Distinguished and Famous people from The Sapphire Coast

📚 Olga Masters

Olga Masters was born at Pambula in 1919 and attended schools on the South Coast, including Cobargo Public School. Her early employment in a country newspaper began a long connection with journalism, but the fiction for which she became famous developed much later. Raising seven children and working part-time left limited room for that ambition until her fifties. Her first collection, The Home Girls, won a National Book Council Award in 1983; novels including Loving Daughters followed. Her career is a useful rebuttal to the idea that a writer must arrive fully formed in early adulthood. Pambula and Cobargo supply the verified local beginnings of that much wider literary life.

🌿 Guboo Ted Thomas

Yuin Elder Guboo Ted Thomas grew up at Wallaga Lake and became a leading advocate for land rights and the protection of significant South Coast places. After years as a commercial fisherman, he worked with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies to document cultural sites. His campaign helped secure the handover of Wallaga Lake title deeds to the Yuin people in 1983. He also opposed logging on Mumbulla Mountain, or Biamanga, which was gazetted as an Aboriginal Place in 1984. Music formed another part of his life: he toured with the Wallaga Lake Gumleaf Band, which performed at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932.