Ray Debnam is a research bloodhound, seasoned with 25 years of experience unearthing facts for the
Royal Australian Air Force |
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Ray Debnam is a retired Senior Intelligence Officer from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). For over 25 years he engaged in the collection, collation, analysis, and reporting of intelligence information for the Australian Defence Force (ADF). He retired from the RAAF in 1991 but was recalled to full-time duty in 1995-96 to assist in the establishment of two new ADF organisations.
After retiring for the second time he continued to engage in research and analysis, but this time for himself, turning his attentions onto his family history. With a g-g-grandmother who was one of the initial 38 Irish Famine female orphans sent to Moreton Bay in 1848, and a g-g-grandfather who was a boy convict in 1835 and later became a bullock driver in the fledgling outpost of Moreton Bay, why wouldn’t he?
Using his many years of experience in intelligence research and analysis, for over ten years he delved into the archives, trawled the internet, and sifted through thousands of pages of information in the Queensland State Library - resulting in his first literary work, a three volumes series collectively titled The Feisty Colleens. The fourth, and final, volume of the series is under development.
He next wrote a 600 page historical novel on the first 70 years of the establishment of the Dalai Lama tradition in Tibetan Buddhism, The Guardian of the Lion Throne. Following the completion of that project he returned to non-fiction and wrote Convict 35/583 – the life and times of an Australian pioneer, which examines the convict and transportation system as experienced by his g-g-grandfather and subsequent events in Australian history between 1835 and 1889.
His latest book, inspired by the war-time employment of his father, is a study on the history and development of the North Australia and Central Australia Railways. Titled War Trains, it examines the trials and tribulations of both men and machines in their support of the Australian war effort during the Second World War.
Now a ‘senior’ citizen, he hopes to produce many more books, both fiction and non-fiction, over the coming years.
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