Frank Sheldon Anthony (1891-1927)

Author Frank Sheldon Anthony was born at Matawhero near Gisborne in 1891, the son of Frank Sheldon Senior (1863-1935) and Anna (Annie) Jane Anthony (1866-1953). The family moved to South Taranaki a few years later where Frank Senior ran the Manutahi Hotel. In 1902 he bought a farm at Whakamara so the young Anthony went to school at Kakaramea and Whakamara. 

After a couple of years at Hawera High School, Frank Junior left New Zealand in 1909, spending a decade at sea and travelling the world. When the First World War broke out he joined the Royal Navy, serving on the British destroyer Opal, where he was seriously injured in an accident which affected his lungs. He returned to New Zealand in 1918 and the following year bought a 76-acre (30-hectare) rehab farm on Denbigh Road near Midhirst. The farm, which he named Opal Farm, turned out to be only partially cleared, swampy and difficult to develop and was immortalised as Mark Henrick's Mossy Road farm.

It was during these farming years that Anthony wrote ten classic Me and Gus stories, about two young friends breaking in a backblocks property. They were published in the New Zealand Herald and Weekly News and delightfully captured the somewhat squalid and arduous conditions that many Taranaki cow-cockies of the time had to endure. After struggling for five years Anthony finally sold the farm in 1924 and went to England to develop his writing.

Suffering from constant ill-health as a result of his accident and tuberculosis, Anthony spent the next two years revising Follow the Call and writing a novel based on the Me and Gus stories - Gus Tomlins. By 1926 his health had deteriorated badly and his TB, aggravated by the British climate, finally claimed him. He died in a boarding house near Bournemouth on 13 January 1927.

None of Anthony's work appeared in book form during his life, but his mother arranged the printing of Follow the Call in 1936 and in 1938 his Me and Gus articles were published by the Hawera Star in a now-rare booklet.

Frank Anthony's best-known books were the series, based on Me and Gus, which were rewritten and supplemented for radio broadcasts in the 1950s by Francis Jackson and illustrated by cartoonist Nevile Lodge - Me and Gus (1951) More Me and Gus (1952) and Me and Gus Again (1955). All three books ran to several editions and sold many thousands of copies. ''Gus" was, of course, Gus Tomlins and "Me" was either Mark Henrick (of the 1938 stories) or Mark Hendrick (of the 1950s stories).

It was 1977 before the novel Gus Tomlins was finally published along with the original 1920s Me and Gus stories, reprinted by Auckland University Press. In 1975 the Auckland University Press also republished Follow the Call. Both were edited and introduced by Terry Sturm.

It was generally accepted locally that a neighbour of Anthony's on the Denbigh Road, Ralph Charles Carroll, was the inspiration for the "Gus" of his stories.