Davison was born in
Hawthorn, Victoria, and christened as Frederick Douglas Davison. His father was Frederick Davison, a printer, publisher, editor, journalist and writer of fiction; and his mother was Amelia, née Watterson. He was their eldest child. He went to
Caulfield State School, but left when he was 12, and worked on his father's land at
Kinglake in the mountain range north of Melbourne, before moving to the United States with his family in 1909. Here Davison was apprenticed to the printing trade, and first started writing. Between 1909 and the beginning of World War I, he travelled widely in North America and the
West Indies. However, with the beginning of the war, he went to England and enlisted, serving in France with the British cavalry. He met his wife Agnes (who was known as Kay) Ede in England while he was doing officer training at
Aldershot and they married in 1915. They had a son and a daughter. Davison and his family came to Australia in 1919 after the war ended, and took up a
Soldier Settlement selection near
Injune, Queensland. However, the farm failed, and, in 1923, he and his family moved to Sydney, where he worked in real estate and as an advertising manager for his father's magazines, the
Australian and
Australia. He had a romantic relationship with fellow writer,
Marjorie Barnard, through the late 1930s. Barnard used an inversion of his name "Knarf" for the hero of her
collaborative novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. During World War II, he worked in government departments in Sydney and Melbourne. His marriage, which had been failing for some time, was dissolved, and in 1944 he married Edna Marie McNab. In 1951, they bought a farm called "Folding Hills" at
Arthurs Creek, Victoria, where he wrote his last major work,
The White Thorntree (1968). Davison died in Melbourne on 24 May 1970. ==Writing career==