At seven years of age, Ellis Campbell began school at Goolma Primary School. Six months at Goolma, four months at Gulgong Convent School and nine months at Coolah Convent School took him to nine when he began attending Tallawang Primary School. Tallawang school was situated midway between Gulgong and Dunedoo in NSW. There, one teacher tried to teach about twelve children in six different classes. Ellis, with his brother and sister, walked five kilometres each way, cross country to attend Tallawang school. He says he can still remember sitting in school all day with frozen feet after walking through the wet grass in winter.
One teacher, Mr Jackson, lived in a tent under a big apple tree in the school ground. A later one, Mr Pollock, boarded in Gulgong, 23 kilometres away, but did not have a car. He hitch-hiked to work. Cars were not plentiful in those days and, if no one picked him up before he had walked five or six kilometres, Mr Pollock turned around and walked back to Gulgong. On days when this happened - quite often - the Campbell children did the ten-kilometre trudge for nothing. Tallawang school closed when Ellis was thirteen because an average attendance of nine pupils daily could not be maintained.
Ellis was the eldest of six in a very poor family and stayed in the bush to help his father cut railway sleepers while his mother shifted into Gulgong to get the younger members of the family a little more education. He took up sheep shearing when he turned seventeen and followed this work for 33 years, working in four states of Australia. In the off season he cut railway sleepers, did farm work, built fences, cut timber for stockyards, broke in horses and trapped rabbits. He retired from bush work at age 50 and went to Dubbo to work as a gardener at Dubbo Base Hospital, where he worked for fifteen years before retiring.
Ellis always had the ambition to write but believed his lack of education was too much of a handicap. He did write a few poems to amuse the other shearers in the sheds, and then threw these away. Finally, in 1981 when he was 54 years of age, Ellis began entering his work in literary competitions around Australia. He has now won more than 550 awards, including 123 first prizes and 90 second prizes. Most of these awards have been won with his beloved bush verse or traditional Australian style poetry, but he has also won awards with free verse, short stories, performance poetry, novels, odes, sonnets, sestinas, haibuns, cinquains, tankas, tetractys, epigrams, limericks and Chaucerian style poetry.
In 1995, the NSW branch of the FAW admitted him to the degree of Writing Fellow. In 2004 Gibb Smith, publishers of Salt Lake City, published "Cowboy Poetry - The Reunion" to commemorate 20 years of cowboy poetry in USA and Canada. One poem each was selected from 76 poets. Only five Australian poems were included: Paterson's, "Clancy Of The Overflow", Ogilvie's "The Pearl Of Them All", Carmel Randle's "Vera", Marion Fitzgerald's "Banjo, May I Have This Dance" and Ellis Campbell's "Wanda Jill". Apart from Writer’s Voice Ellis also subscribes to FreeXpresSion, ABPA, Yellow Moon and Outback Writers. He was also made an Honorary Life Member of Metverse Muse - published in India and contributed to by poets from nearly every country in the world - several years ago.
Although Ellis will turn eighty this year he still follows Performance Poetry Festivals extensively, attending about seven per year. In July/August 2005 he spent two months in Queensland where he competed at the Bundy Bush Poetry Muster at Bundaberg and the Queensland State Bush Poetry Championships at North Pine. Ellis also judged performance poetry at Brisbane Royal Show and performed his poetry at various venues around the showground on two other days.
Ellis has four times performed his poetry live on Australia All Over and created much interest, resulting in many book sales. His poem Beach House Honeymoon is track 7 on the ABC CD Macca‘s Sunday Best.
Ellis's poetry has even been recorded in Hansard of the NSW Legislative Assembly.
Ellis has self published five books of verse and sold out of the first three. He still has The Gloss Of Bush and Shadows Of Yesteryear available. These books consist of all major award-winning verse.
Ellis has been married to Maureen for 48 years and has three adult children.
