Many people have mourned the passing of gentleman publishers such as David Myers. Yet Myers could point out that there are more books being published today than ever before, he could extol the virtues of vanity publishing and talk about the fun of launching small local books in the country.

Born in Wyong, Myers was educated at Manly High School and the University of Sydney, where he graduated with an arts degree. He had wanted to major in French but wandered into the wrong lecture room on the first day. He stayed, perhaps too embarrassed to leave, and graduated with first-class honours in German.

Myers joined the Department of Foreign Affairs, a natural choice for gifted linguists, but it took only six months for him to realise he was not cut out for diplomacy. He switched back to academia, took his PhD at Sydney and in Munich, and lectured around the world, including at universities in Toronto, Cologne, Adelaide and Freiburg.

In 1986 he became the dean of arts at the Capricornia Institute of Higher Education, now Central Queensland University, in Rockhampton. His academic interests had extended to Australian literature and he became professor of comparative literature there in 1991.

He wrote The Great Literacy Debate in 1992 and Reinventing the Humanities (1995), built links with Asia, learnt Japanese and set up Japanese student exchange programs. But it hadn't taken him long to discover, this time, that the subjects he taught were of decreasing interest to modern students.

In 1993 the Queensland government offered money for a regional publishing initiative. Myers secured a grant and established Central Queensland University Press, better known as Outback Books.

For 13 years he championed Outback as the only university press to specialise in bush books. He pioneered the use of the internet for book sales and today CQU Press and Old Silvertail's Outback Books has a mailing list of more than 5000 people.

At Outback, where he was affectionately known as "Old Silvertail", he edited and published hundreds of books, including thrillers, mysteries, biographies, gardening and popular culture titles. He also published jointly with the ABC, the Australian army, shire councils, businesses and individuals. He loved producing regional history and memoirs, and for this he was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2004.

CQU’s vice-chancellor, Professor John Rickard, said: "He travelled thousands of kilometres all over Australia and was not afraid to get his boots dirty whilst promoting his authors, who ranged from bushies to judges and politicians. He was as comfortable in a paddock as he was in a broadcast studio, boardroom or on a surfboard." Myers himself would say that the launch of a local book in Longreach or Cooktown was almost as popular as a rodeo.

Confessions and Memoirs: Best Stories Under the Sun 3, edited by Michael Wilding and Myers, was released in November 2006. The collection showcased Australia's emerging writers, top essayists and prize-winning novelists, including Thomas Keneally, Kate Grenville, Venero Armanno and Ian Callinan.

Myers described his autobiographical novel, The Bohemian Bourgeois (2004), as the "memoirs of a larrikin Casanova with foot in mouth disease". The Highly Unauthorised Old Testament will be published this year (2007).

Author, scholar, critic and raconteur, Myers is survived by his first wife, Diane, and their children, Barney and Holly, and his second wife, Jutta, and their children, Toby and Rachel.


This is an edited version of the obituary published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 2007.