Award for distinguished service

A Pearl Beach resident Professor Emerita Jill Roe has been awarded the Australian Dictionary of Biography Medal for long and distinguished service.

Prof Roe has written a biography of Miles Franklin, an Australian writer and founder of the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian literature.

Prof Roe acquired a cottage in Pearl Beach which was modernised in 2003 and since then has been her permanent home which she shares with historian Ms Bev Kingston.

Ms Roe was a founding member of staff at Macquarie University, where she taught British, Australian, and social policy history and supervised numerous research theses.

She also served on many committees and was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University 1994-95 and later head of modern history at Macquarie, a position she held until retirement in 2002.

Her work on her personal history of the Eyre Peninsula where she was born, Our Fathers Cleared the Bush, was recently published.

Ms Roe's association with the Australian Dictionary of Biography dates back to her undergraduate days at the University of Adelaide.

Her first article for the dictionary on writer Ada Cambridge was published in 1969 when she was teaching history at Macquarie University.

Since then she has written another 19 articles on a wide range of characters.

Ms Roe was awarded the medal at a ceremony at Woy Woy Hospital.

Dr Chris Cuneen, from the Australian Dictionary of Biography Revised Project at Macquarie University, reading the citation said: "As an active member of the ADB's New South Wales Working party from 1988, Ms Roe has exercised exemplary committee skills in what was often a vigorous debating process.

"Ms Roe's long and distinguished connection with the ADB makes her a worthy recipient of the ADB medal."

Media release, 7 Dec 2016

Lynne Lillico, Pearl Beach