Alan Collins was born in Bondi, Sydney, Australia in 1928. His early childhood was far removed from the familiar, warm and loving Jewish up-bringing. His mother died in childbirth, leaving him in the care of a foolish father who was swept up in the chaos of World War II and unable to care for an infant. Alan was raised in the sometimes not-too-tender environment of children’s homes.
He spent his formative early teenage years in the Isabella Lazarus Memorial Home, a Jewish children’s home established to care for refugee youngsters from Europe. Here Alan met Jewish children from a very different background – Berlin rather than Bondi. Memories of this experience gave him much to write about in later years, particularly in his short stories and his novel ‘The Boys from Bondi’
At age 15 Alan became an apprentice printer, graduated to cadet on a Sydney newspaper and eventually editor of the ‘Sydney Jewish News’. In the early 1950s he left Sydney for Melbourne and from that time on worked in advertising. In 1972 he formed his own advertising agency which he deliberately kept ‘small’ so that there was always time to write.
His first book, ‘Troubles: 21 short stories’ was published in 1983 with the encouragement of Judah Waten. It was highly commended in the Victorian Fellowship of Australian Writers, Alan Marshall Award. The University of Queensland Press published three short novels, The Boys from Bondi (1987), Going home (1993), Joshua (1995) and in 2001 issued them in one-volume under the title A Promised land? Alva’s boy: an unsentimental memoir was published by Hybrid Publishers in 2008.
Alan is survived by his wife Ros (a librarian), his children, Daniel, Peter, Toby, Rhonda and John and his grandchildren, Joshua, Eli and Isaac