Murray, Les

The Australian poet Les Murray was born as Leslie Allan Murray in Nabiac on the River Manning in New South Wales to a family that came to Australia from Scotland in the 1840s. He grew up on his grandfather’s dairy farm in the Bunyah region. Murray purchased parts of the estate in 1975, and he was living there since 1985. Moving to the countryside had no effect on his public persona – the media soon referred to him as "the bard of Bunyah". Murray continued to be a force within the literary scene and also speaked out about the problems of sparsely populated, rural areas, which has had an impact not only in Australia, but also in the rest of the world.