Born Colin Johnson at Cuballing in Western Australia in 1938, Mudrooroo left Perth for Melbourne in the 1950s. He studied at night while working in the Motor Registration Office and State Library. He wrote Wild Cat Falling (1965), which was welcomed as the first novel by an Aboriginal writer, then left Australia to travel in Asia, where he studied Buddhism and became a Buddhist monk.
Returning to Melbourne in 1976, he worked at the Aboriginal Research Centre at Monash University, studied at Melbourne University and taught at Koorie College. He has more recently been a lecturer on Indigenous/black Australian writing at Murdoch University and the University of Queensland. His groundbreaking study of Aboriginal literature, Writing from the Fringe (1991) was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Award and the Stanner Award in 1992.
He formally changed his name from Colin Johnson to Mudrooroo in 1988.
Mudrooroo is the author of over a dozen literary works, including the novel Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983), which has been published around the world and is now regarded as a modern Australian classic. His poetry collection The Garden of Gethsemane, was double winner of the WA Premier’s Award in 1992 and was also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Awards.
His last novel published in his lifetime was Balga Boy Jackson (2017), and an autobiographical volume, Tripping With Jenny, was published posthumously, following his passing in 2019.
