Hornsby Shire

Distinguished and Famous people from Hornsby Shire

🎨 Margaret Preston

Artist Margaret Preston lived at Berowra from 1932 to 1939, surrounded by bushland rather than the urban settings of her earlier life. Native plants that she had once bought from florists grew around her home, changing the immediate sources of her paintings and prints. The National Gallery describes simpler, larger compositions from this period, including Banksia cobs. Her Berowra residence gives Hornsby Shire a substantial working connection with an important modernist artist. The landscape was part of her daily environment and became visible in the work.

📚 Pat Wardle

Pat Wardle was born at Hornsby in 1910, the eldest daughter of entomologist Robin Tillyard and community leader Pattie Tillyard. The family moved to New Zealand when she was ten, and her later life developed chiefly around Canberra. Wartime administrative service, library work and historical research followed. She helped build the biographical register that supported the Australian Dictionary of Biography and kept diaries from childhood. Hornsby is her birthplace, rather than a claim that she carried out her later research locally. Her lasting contribution lay in preserving the details from which other people’s histories could be written.

🏫 Aubrey Pye

Aubrey Pye attended Barker College at Hornsby from 1915 to 1919, becoming school captain and leading both the first cricket and rugby teams. Medical study and surgical training followed, then a long career administering Brisbane hospitals while continuing clinical work. He also helped develop medical education and research institutions in Queensland. The Hornsby connection is sustained schooling rather than a passing visit. His college years record academic and sporting responsibility well before the considerably larger task of managing hospitals, staff and the constant demands of emergency care.