Marshall was born in
Noorat, Victoria. At six years old he contracted
polio, which left him with a physical disability that grew worse as he grew older. From an early age, he resolved to be a writer and, in
I Can Jump Puddles, he demonstrated an almost total recall of his childhood in
Noorat. The characters and places of his book are thinly disguised from real life: "Mount Turalla" is
Mount Noorat, "Lake Turalla" is
Lake Keilambete, the "Curruthers" are the Blacks, "Mrs. Conlon" is Mary Conlon of Dixie,
Terang, and his best friend, "Joe", is Leo Carmody. During the early 1930s. Marshall worked as an accountant at the Trueform Boot and Shoe Company,
Clifton Hill, and later wrote about life in the factory in his novel
How Beautiful are Thy Feet (1949). In 1937, he completed his first novel,
How Beautiful Are Thy Feet, which remained unpublished until 1949. Marshall wrote numerous short stories, mainly set in
the bush, and also wrote newspaper columns and magazine articles. He also collected and published
Indigenous Australian stories and legends. He travelled widely in Australia and overseas. His literary friends and associates included
John Morrison and
Clem Christesen. Australian poet and contemporary,
Hal Porter, wrote in 1965 that Marshall was:
... the warmest and most centralized human being ... To walk with ease and nonchalance the straight, straight line between appearing tragic and appearing willfully brave is a feat so complex I should not like to have to rake in the dark for the super-bravery to accomplish it. Marshall married Olive Dulcie Dixon in May 1941 and they had two daughters, Katherine and Jennifer. The couple divorced in 1957. For many years he lived in the Melbourne bayside suburb of
Sandringham. Marshall died on 21 January 1984, in a nursing home in
Brighton East, Victoria, where he had been a resident for the previous two years. ==Television series==