The text below is a snippet from the Australian Dictionary of Biography by Cheryl Taylor. Click on the link below to read the full article to appreciate the content of this book.
McLaren, John (Jack) (1884–1954)
Working his passage to North Queensland, McLaren in 1902-11 engaged in various romantic occupations in tropical places. He worked as a miner, mule-driver and rabbit-poisoner. He searched for pearl-shell out from Thursday Island, for bêche-de-mer and tortoise shell on the Barrier Reef, and for sandalwood on Cape York. In Malaya, the Solomon Islands and Fiji he worked as an overseer, and sometimes a labour-recruiter, on coconut plantations. He visited Java and the Ellice Islands, and was shipwrecked in the Gulf of Papua. In New Guinea he ran trade stores, prospected, transported copper overland to Port Moresby, and hunted birds of paradise. My Odyssey (London, 1923) tells part of the story of these years.
