Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

John Owen Amos (Owen) was born in November 1912 in San Francisco, California. His father had been working for the American transport company, Wells Fargo, in Sydney and went to California for a short time as Receiving and Despatch Manager of the Pacific Ocean Department.

Owen left school at 14 and was employed as an office boy at the Sydney department store, Bebarfalds, in George Street opposite the Town Hall. He later became an advertising copy writer for Bebarfalds, which started his career in the advertising industry. His artistic ability was very beneficial in his early career, enabling him to creatively design the illustrations for advertisements, which almost entirely appeared in print media.

Owen was working at the Sydney radio station 2GB during the early years of World War 2. For part of that time, he worked as the station’s news censor.

Owen enlisted in the Australian Army in January 1942 and was posted to 7 Australian Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery in Townsville. While in Townsville, Owen spent some of his off-duty time composing stories for his young daughter, Judith, in Sydney and the odd one for the Army newsletter. Owen’s letters to Judith were illustrated with pen sketches of the fairies, gnomes and native animals in the stories. The original letters are now held by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Owen’s main interest was sailing and he eventually built his own Flying Fifteen yacht. However, a heart attack in 1959 forced him to give up sailing and he turned his hand to art and landscape painting. Many of his paintings were of scenes around central coast and rural New South Wales. He continued this interest until his death in 1977 during his only visit to his birth place, California.