Marg Carroll is a story teller with a sense of adventure. She loves the land, its people and life.
Not only is she an author of three inspiring books, but a woman who is deeply committed to those who live in the bush, people currently creating our heritage.
Marg Carroll grew up in the beautiful isolated Murga valley in central western New South Wales. Curiosity about people and places took her to Sydney University to study geography, followed by post-graduate degrees in town and country planning and social ecology. When she married Marg moved back to central New South Wales and the Carroll family farm. From there she has worked off-farm in local government, health and housing and established innovative projects in the central west, including the first Abbeyfield family-style house for older people in New South Wales, ORANGESEARCH healthy cities project and the Central West Rural Financial Counselling Service. During the 1990s, based in NSW Agriculture in Orange, she set up and coordinated the statewide Rural Women’s Network for seven years.
Marg and husband Bill run ‘Redbank’ at Molong. Together they founded the Upper Mandagery Landcare Group. A prized women’s scholarship on the Australian Rural Leadership Program in 1997/98 was the catalyst for Marg to photograph and write about people who make their mark in rural Australia. Her first book Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives was supported by the Centenary for Federation and published in 2001. It celebrated a rich diversity of unheralded women and men across Australia who were in their middle years. In 2008 Marg concentrated on the issues of youth in Reinventing the Bush ~ inspiring stories of young Australians. So finally she decided to complete the trilogy and write about wise elders - The Man Who loved Crocodiles and stories of other Adventurous Australians, published by Allen and Unwin in 2011.
She has been recognised in the 2015 Australia Day honours with an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for her life's work which includes being a rural women's advocate, a youth mentor, establishing a housing complex for low income older people and writing three books. Read more
Marg now interviews for the National Library, still capturing fascinating Australian stories but as part of our national oral history