Dorothy Cottrell (1902–1957)

Ida "Dorothy" Ottley Cottrell, née Wilkinson, was born in Picton, New South Wales, Australia, a daughter of Walter Barwon Wilkinson and his wife and Ida Constance Fletcher. Dorothy contracted polio at age five and used a wheelchair for the rest of her life. When her parents separated, she was brought up by her grandmother and on her Fletcher uncles' stations, Elmina, near Charleville, and Ularunda, near Morven, where she trained sheep and cattle dogs to draw her wheelchair. She was educated at home by governesses until about 1915, then she attended the Royal Art Society of New South Wales. In 1920, she went back to live at Ularunda, and married Walter MacKenzie Cottrell, the station bookkeeper. She and her husband lived for a time in Sydney, and Dorothy sold cartoons to several magazines. In 1924, after the couple had toured New South Wales in a truck, they returned to Ularunda and Dorothy started to write fiction. In 1929, they moved to the USA, where she became a successful journalist and writer. Her first novel, The Singing Gold, had been published in Australia in 1928. Her children's book Wilderness Orphan (1936) was the basis for the feature film Orphan of the Wilderness. Other writings included Earth Battle (1930) and The Silent Reefs (1953), adapted into a film in 1959. She was also a frequent contributor to The Saturday Evening Post and continued to work as an artist and cartoonist.