Digging up a little bit about my Grandfather Ray Bean I found out just a tiny bit more about Walkabout Magazine, the magazine that he worked for. Over years I have collected a few of the magazines and by comparing them with the photos that are in the State Library of NSW I have gather that my grandfather probably worked for Walkabout from about late 1947/ early 1948 to 1957-58.

I don’t have much in the way of detail and will need to go through each of the stories to see if I can build some idea of what he was doing. But I do have one other insight into what Ray Beans life was like. In a Biography of Arthur William Upfield http://arthurupfield.com/attachments/TravisLindsey.pdf written by Lindsay, Travis B. there is this rather tantalising piece of information.

In June 1948, not long after An Author Bites the Dust was published, Upfield led an Australian Geographic Society-sponsored party of six on a 5000 miles tour of the north-west of Western Australia. The party included Michael Sharland, naturaqlist/ journalist; Ray Bean, Walkabout’s staff photographer, Harry Tate, motor mechanic and friend; George King, cook and Arthur’s long-time friend, Keith Ewers. The aim was to compile a photographic record of the route and to gather material for articles for the Society’s journal, Walkabout. The trek took them, in tow trucks, from Kalgoorlie and through Wiluna to Port Headland. From there they followed the coast to Broome and Derby, before turning inland through Fitzroy to arrive at Wyndham on the north coast. The return journey took the party back to Port Hedland, then right along the coast to Perth.

The trek itself was arduous, covering in ten weeks what Upfield though should have taken four months.

Umm, lots more to research and slightly off the Gransden family tree, but not off my personal family tree.