John Shaw NeilsonPrint Page

The John Shaw Neilson National Memorial Cottage was the birthplace of the lyric poet, John Shaw Neilson. The cottage originally stood in Racecourse Road, 2 miles north of Penola, South Australia and was re-erected here in 1972. The cottage is a vertical slab hut with shingle roof, cottage garden and ‘Myers’ pump.

John Shaw Neilson (22 February 1872 – 12 May 1942), was an Australian poet. Due to serious drought, Shaw Neilson moved with his family from Minimay to a spot just west of Nhill in 1889. He and his father worked at various jobs in the area and both published their poetry in local papers. Nielson left town in 1895.

For most of his life John Shaw Neilson worked as a labourer, fruit-picking, clearing scrub, navvying and working in quarries, and, after 1928, working as a messenger with the Country Roads Board in Melbourne. Largely untrained and only basically educated, Neilson became known as one of Australia's finest lyric poets, who wrote a great deal about the natural world, and the beauty in it.

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