Blackwood Valley

Distinguished and Famous people from Blackwood Valley

The Blackwood Valley's creative connections include a Bridgetown-born novelist and an artist working from a Boyup Brook farm. Country life supplies both a biographical setting and material for their work.

📚 Jon Doust

Jon Doust was born in Bridgetown into a farming and retailing family, and worked in both before pursuing other occupations. His route to writing included banking, travel, journalism and comedy. His novels include Boy on a Wire, To the Highlands and Return Ticket; the first was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His later life has been based in Albany, so Bridgetown's claim rests on his birth, upbringing and early work, rather than a present-day address.

🎨 Lori Pensini

Lori Pensini works from a studio on the Boyup Brook farming property she shares with her husband Warren. Her figurative painting draws on family, rural work and relationships with the land. Experience of the South West's 2024 drought informed Bare Earth, the painting that won the 2025 Collie Art Prize. She had previously lived and worked on a Pilbara cattle station. The Blackwood Valley connection is an established farming and artistic life, bringing observation in the paddock into work on canvas.