Prom Country

Distinguished and Famous people from Prom Country

📚 Alison Lester

Alison Lester was born at Foster in 1952 and grew up on a farm overlooking the sea. Horses, family and the natural world later became recurring ingredients in her books for children. After training as an art teacher, she began illustrating in 1979 and subsequently writing her own books. Her Fish Creek gallery retains a direct connection with South Gippsland. Alongside publishing, she has helped children and adults make books about their own lives, including through work with remote Indigenous communities. In 2011 she and Boori Monty Pryor became Australia’s first Children’s Laureates, sharing the inaugural appointment.

🌿 Celia Rosser

Celia Rosser’s Fish Creek home and gallery followed an extraordinary botanical undertaking: painting the banksia species known during a project lasting more than twenty-five years. Working with botanist Alex George at Monash University, she produced life-size watercolours published in three volumes as The Banksias. George’s continuing discoveries meant that the task could grow even while she worked towards finishing it. Botanical precision and artistic judgement had to share the same page. A banksia was later named Banksia rosserae in her honour, a fitting reversal after so many years spent learning the names and details of the plants she painted.