Arthur Hoey DavisPrint Page

The monument commemorates Arthur Hoey Davis or "Steele Rudd" (1868 - 1935), a writer of humorous sketches and novels, was born at Drayton on 14th November 1868.

Davis was the eighth child in a family of 13. His father later took up a selection at Emu Creek and Arthur was educated at the local school, leaving before he was 12 to work at odd jobs on a station. Arthur wrote under the name of Steele Rudd, derived from the steel rudders of ships. In 1938 Margaret Curran began her plans for a memorial to the writer, who had so vividly captured the life and times of the early selectors of the Darling Downs. 

A memorial to Arthur Hoey Davis ('Steele Rudd') was unveiled at Drayton yesterday by Professor J. J. Stable before a large crowd. The monument stands in the grounds of the Drayton State School, and marks the spot where the home of the authors' parents once stood. The memorial bears the words "To Australian life and letters he brought the rich gift of honest laughter— with undertones of the struggles and sorrows of the pioneers."

The Steele Rudd memorial committee president (Mrs. M. Curran) said that the memorial had been erected only a few yards from the very birthplace of a native genius. The Toowoomba Literary Society had begun the movement to provide a memorial as early as December 1945, because it "did not choose that the land from which Rudd sprung should be shamed by utter forgetfulness."
The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 20 November 1950.

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