An Adventure in Grief

Catherine de Courcy grew up in Dublin and graduated in history from UCD in 1979. She became a professional librarian and worked in libraries in Ireland, Papua New Guinea and Australia. She travelled the Australian outback with her husband, John, and wrote several guide books. When working in the library of the National Gallery of Ireland in the early 1980s, Catherine began a project to archive and document the early history of the Gallery. Contributing to the Gallery's active publishing programme at the time convinced her that writing was something she was keen to pursue. In 1985, her book Foundation of the National Gallery of Ireland was published and that same year another project, also commissioned by the Gallery was issued, Fifty views of Ireland. In 1985 she travelled to Papua New Guinea and worked in the University of Papua New Guinea Library, working on the special New Guinea library collection. In 1987 she moved to Australia where she continued to work in the library profession in the National Gallery library, a College library and then the State Library in Melbourne. Catherine continued writing throughout her time in Australia, publishing a range of travel books. In the nineties she became involved in writing about zoos and published Zoos of Australia (commissioned by the Australia Post) , The Zoo Story: The Animals, The History, The People (Penguin) and Zoological Gardens of Australia (commissioned by CRC Press for an international history of zoos). She developed a reputation as one of the foremost experts on Australian zoological history and continued to publish in that area over the next decade. Her passion for these subjects, Zoological History and the Australian Outback, became a way for Catherine to further integrate herself into her new homeland and the country and familiarize herself with the incredible landscapes she was surrounded by. Catherine met her husband John, a Vietnam War Veteran, in 1986 and together they wrote Australian travel guides including Desert Tracks: Exploring Australia's Deserts by Car and River Tracks: Exploring Australia's Rivers by Car. In 2000 Catherine's husband John, who had been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for many years following the Vietnam War, took his own life and life as she knew it stopped entirely for her. However, faced with this overwhelming grief Catherine took on the greatest challenge of her life, to face this tragedy head on and come through it and out the other side. Eventually she arrived at a deeper sense of self, which has reinforced the joys of living despite the tragic death of the man she loved. After leaving the library profession in 2003, several years after John's death, Catherine returned to Ireland. Here research and writing became the focus of her professional life and she now writes full-time. Catherine is currently writing a history of Dublin Zoo, scheduled for publication in September 2009 by The Collins Press.