David Horton was born in 1945 and grew up in Perth, WA. He graduated from UWA with Zoology Honours in 1965, aged twenty, then had a disastrous year at University of Melbourne, six good years at University of New England, an unhappy year in York, England, and then twenty-four very mixed years at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (first as an archaeologist, then as a not insignificant figure in Australian publishing, then as the creator of the
Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia
). His research involved scincid lizards and biogeography (1966-1974); archaeozoology (sites from Cape York to SW Tasmania), Pleistocene occupation of Australia, Pleistocene extinctions, the role of fire in Australian ecosystems (1974 to 1984). He then ran Aboriginal Studies Press from 1984 to 1998. His major works include
Recovering the Tracks
(1991),
The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia
(both print and electronic,1994), and
Aboriginal Australia
(map, 1996). He gained a BA, MSc and two doctorates along the way plus major awards (most notably the prestigious NSW Premier's Literary Award 1995 Book of the Year 1994). After being forced to leave the institute, he published a book (
The Pure State of Nature
, 2000) on prehistory and ecology in Australia (notably considering the role of fire). He had also become a leading stud sheep breeder, and ran for federal parliament in the 2007 election. The following year saw the start of a run of bad health - a heart attack, then lymphoma developed in 2011 resulting in years of treatment, then a stroke in December 2020, then open heart surgery in February 2023. All of which he has survived. Married for fifty-four years, with two daughters and three grandchildren, he lives in retirement on his farm in the southern tablelands of NSW, where he writes and builds his stamp collection and records frog calls.