Donald Macdonald (journalist)

Donald Alaster Macdonald (6 June 1859 – 23 November 1932) was an Australian journalist and nature writer.

Macdonald was born in Fitzroy, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, the elder son of Donald Macdonald and his wife Margaret, née Harris. Macdonald was educated at the Keilor state school where he became a pupil-teacher in 1876. He later joined the Corowa Free Press and then the Melbourne Argus newspaper in 1881. On 26 February 1883 at Scots Church, Melbourne, Macdonald married Jessie Seward — their only daughter was born in 1885.

Writing under the pen name 'Observer', Macdonald established himself as a cricket and Australia rules football commentator. Macdonald "completely revolutionized cricket reporting" — he made the reports more vivid than the earlier over by over style.

Macdonald was first Australian war correspondent at the South African War; during the war he was besieged at Ladysmith. Macdonald's despatches from Ladysmith were eventually sent to Australia and published in the Argus. Later they were reprinted in a book How we kept the flag flying : the story of the siege of Ladysmith (1900).

Macdonald established a weekly column in the Argus called 'Nature Notes and Queries'; in 1909 it was extended to 'Notes for Boys'. Macdonald also published the Bush Boy's Book (1911), enlarged in four more editions in 1927-33; a Nature book for children, At the End of the Moonpath (1922); and his daughter made a selection of his writings in The Brooks of Morning (1933). Macdonald also compiled the Tourists' Handbook of Australia (1905) and wrote a novel, The Warrigal's Well (1901), in collaboration with John F. Edgar.

Macdonald died at Black Rock, Victoria (a seaside suburb of Melbourne), on 23 November 1932, and was survived by a daughter, Mrs Elaine Whittle.

External links

• How we kept the flag flying : the story of the siege of Ladysmith (1900) by Donald Macdonald at the National Library of Australia