Poets

Alice Guerin Crist , author and journalist, was born on 6 February 1876 at Clare Castle, Clare, Ireland, daughter of Patrick Guerin, chapel master, and his wife Winifred, née Roughan. Alice migrated with her family to Queensland at the age of 2. As her father was a teacher, she spent her childhood at small, south-eastern rural schools where he supervised her education and her work as a pupil-teacher. In 1896 she was appointed to Blackhall Range State School near Landsborough but after a transfer to West Haldon next year she was unfairly dismissed when an inspector found her en route to a wedding to retrieve truant students. She returned to her family at Douglas on the Darling Downs. On 4 October 1902 at St Patrick's Catholic Church, Toowoomba, she married a German immigrant farmer, Joseph Christ, who later changed the name to Crist. The couple moved to an isolated property at Rosenberg near Bundaberg in 1910 but returned to Toowoomba in 1913 when Jo began a fuel supply business there.

Alice pursued an active literary career despite significant periods when she had to concentrate on farm work and the care of her five children. A prolific writer of verse and short fiction, she published widely in the Australian secular and religious press including the Bulletin (Sydney), Worker, Steele Rudd's Magazine, Home Budget, Toowoomba Chronicle, Catholic Advocate and Catholic Press. Her devout Irish Catholicism was at first associated with democratic politics and in 1902 she joined t..