Trixie Whitmore, Author (1935-2020)

Trixie was born 1935 in the Bexley/Hurstville area but her grandparents lived at Mount Colah where she visited often. Her love of the bush was fostered by the next-door neighbour, who took her for many, many long bushwalks, identifying flora and fauna and quite often they would find themselves temporarily lost in the many surrounding valleys.  Hence her delight in our natural bush and desire to encourage us all to know more about the wonderful, unusual, fauna and flora around us.

As children, every time she took us on a bushwalk she constantly pointed out all the names of every bush we passed! That love inspired her to create this heart-warming poem one afternoon in 1994 driving home to St Ives, where she lived on the edge of the Ku-ring-gai National Park. She then spent the next few years researching the many species of fauna and flora and finding her wonderful illustrators Claire Yerbury, who painted all the fauna and Marlene Nash who painted the landscapes. Finally “Kokey Koala and the Bush Olympics” was published in 1999/2000 for the Sydney Olympic Games and was a recommended resource by the NSW and Western Australian Education Departments during this time.

Sadly, Trixie passed away in 2020, so we wished to bring a bit of Trixie’s soul back to life by republishing the book as a tribute to her courageous spirit, determination, and infectious go-getter attitude.

Twenty years on, we are excited to share “Kokey” with a new generation of children for them to delight in the wonders of the Australian bush.

From Elizabeth (daughter), Lauren and Grace (granddaughters).