ANNOUNCEMENT: Stephen Orr Long-Listed for the DUBLIN Literary Award

THIS EXCELLENT MACHINE long-listed for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Awards

We’re thrilled to announce some exciting news from across the seas this week, as the long-list for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award is released. Amongst a host of stellar books sits our very own Stephen Orr and his marvellous This Excellent Machine. Read on to find out what the judges are saying …

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Wakefield Press and Love Your Bookshop Day

Love Your Bookshop Day is all about celebrating what makes local bookshops so great (and so important)! Here at Wakefield Press, we’re celebrating by opening our shop on Saturday 10 August, but the celebration is about more than just one day.

As our fearless leader, Michael Bollen, considers the daunting ‘For Official Use Our little old shopOnly’ headers that have plagued his inbox as late, he also ponders his own official use as a publisher. In Diary of a Publisher, a brilliant new series launched on InDaily, Michael talks about publishing as a whole, and Wakefield Press’s ever-evolving role in the world of books.

Publishing, as Michael (and dictionaries) say, is the act of ‘making things known’. Information and stories that authors and publishers bring to the world, to make known facts, fictions, and half-lie-half-truth tales that captivate and inform us. It’s quite a grand and romantic thought then, when you really think about it. As publishers, it’s our goal to bring important stories to the fore, from South Australia’s women’s suffrage movement and the little-known woman who got it started for our small colony, to the art of absurdity and silliness, to flowers and art in Australia.

For us, Love Your Bookshop Day is a great way to meet with our customers, both old and new, and to showcase the amazing range of books we publish every year. It’s also vital to our existence; without our customers, we would not be. If we don’t exist, South Australian stories will struggle to find the spotlight they so deserve.

Local bookshops live and die by the sword of the customer, so word of mouth, events, and being different are vitally important to us. This Saturday 10 August, Wakefield Press will be open from 1.0 pm to 5.00 pm. We’re running our classic 3 for 2 special, and have a great range of new arrivals and reprinted favourites ready and waiting to be cherished. Around the traps though, there’s plenty going on. Consider supporting one of South Australia’s other independent bookshops (and huge supporters of Wakefield Press).

Imprints Booksellers

on Hindley street will have bubbles, cake, music and giveaways all day, as well as their wonderful range of niche and hard-to-find books in their cosy, welcoming store. You might even be lucky enough to see Wakefieldean Jo working her bookselling magic there. Ask her for a book recommendation, or see what she’s been reading recently over at InDaily.

Matilda Bookshop

is the Adelaide Hills favourite bookstore, although we could be a little biased. Gavin and his team will be open all day on Saturday – pop by for a great range of food and gardening books, including our own Tori Arbon and Lolo Houbein’s Magic Little Meals.

Dillon’s Bookshop

in Norwood has recently undergone a facelift, with their already expansive children’s section growing further. The addition of a reading tree means kids young and old will fall back in love (or more in love) with the magic of books.

Dymocks Adelaide

in Rundle Mall is a booklover’s dream; an emporium-like cave full to the brim of a huge range of books, it’s an old faithful for many of us. Check out the little Wakefield window in the front of the shop, and browse their wares all day. If you’re super keen, Dr Karl’s new book is launching Saturday evening as well – head to their website for more details.

Most importantly though, don’t forget the other 364 days of the year that your local bookshops exist! We love to see customers returning and telling us about books they’ve loved, or would love to see. We love getting these stories to our readers, and expanding our own knowledge and experiences, but most of all we love being here, existing, making things known.

Wakefield Press is open from Monday to Friday, 9.00 am – 5.00 pm every week, and will be open from 1.00 pm – 5.00 pm on Saturday 10 August.

An Interview With: Poppy Nwosu

In this latest author interview series, work experience student Sian Beatton interviews Poppy Nwosu, author of Making Friends with Alice DysonPoppy’s story came runner up for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award, but here at Wakefield press we thought her story too good to go unnoticed. Poppy’s book is a romantic story about rumours, friendship, and discovering who you really are.

Poppy Nwosu

How do you keep a book interesting?

This is a great question!

For me, I think the biggest key to writing a book that is interesting the whole way through is to keep assessing whether I myself actually find what I’m writing interesting. I am a bit of a selfish writer, so I definitely write the kind of stories that appeal to me and that I find interesting personally, and I think that does make it easier to ensure my story is satisfying (for me at least! Ha!).

The flipside of this is that of course through the process of writing and editing a book, a writer is forced to read it through a MILLION times, so definitely don’t get worried if you end up finding your manuscript less interesting as time goes on. That doesn’t mean your work is no good, it just means you have read it a MILLION times, and that is totally okay.

Did you base any characters on yourself or people you know?

Although I do take tiny snippets from everyday life, I don’t think I have ever based a character entirely off myself or someone I know.

One of the main joys of writing for me is the opportunity to explore the things that make people tick, and often when I begin writing a story I don’t even know a huge amount about the characters myself! It then becomes part of that process of writing just to explore who they are and figure them out.

Actually, one of the most interesting things that has come out of the release of my debut novel, is that I have realised a LOT of people have presumed that the protagonist in my novel is based on me and my high school experience. Funnily enough, this is definitely not the case, and I actually had a lot of fun writing a character like Alice who is quite different to me in almost every way.

Making Friends with Alice Dyson CVR V6.inddDid you base the story on something?

I did!

The original idea was sparked by a cute viral video I watched on the net a few years ago, which featured a caught on camera goofy impromptu dance on the street by two teens walking home from school. I saw the video and just couldn’t stop thinking about who they were and what their friendship might be like, and that really morphed into this love story.

From there I was also influenced greatly by the cute romantic animes (Japanese animation shows) I was watching at the time and also by a book I adore, which is fun and light and moving all rolled into one (Jaclyn Moriarty’s fantastic #LoveOzYA novel Finding Cassie Crazy).

What did you learn from writing this novel?

This is another excellent question, and it made me sit down and think, because actually I’ve never stopped to wonder what I learned!

Probably the biggest challenge for me with writing ALICE was in figuring out how to ensure that the romantic tension between Alice and her new friend Teddy lasted the whole book. I think one of the most difficult parts of writing a love story is in keeping readers invested in that romance until the end of the book. That was a major challenge for me, and I hope that I learned how to accomplish it with this novel.

What do you want your readers to learn form this novel?

To be completely honest, although in hindsight I can see there are themes in ALICE about standing up for others and not buying into stereotypes etc. when I was actually writing it I never thought much about trying to teach anyone anything. There are ideas in it that I definitely wanted to explore myself,  but none that I felt like I wanted to teach.

In a lot of ways, and this may sound bad or weird, but I don’t know if it matters to me if readers can learn anything or not from what I write. I have always been of the mindset that fiction should make you feel something, and that is what I mostly set out to do. By writing the kind of story that I find realistic and romantic, that makes me feel happy, I think I hoped to make readers feel happy too.

How do you put emotion into your characters?

Right here you have hit on my absolute most favourite element of any story! Actually, I am obsessed with getting emotion across within my work, and one of the hugest parts of writing ALICE for me was to develop a love story that felt ultra possible and realistic, and create characters whose emotions readers could recognise and identify with.

I think every writer probably has different story elements that they most identify with and that they most want to bring out in their work (for instance, twisty plots or interesting fresh ideas etc.) but for me, embedding emotion into my characters and stories is always highest on my list. The easiest way I have found to do that is to really think deeply about a character’s reactions and actions, and think about how everything that occurs within the story might truly impact them and make them feel if they were real.

I think a great way to almost ‘learn’ emotions is also to read other books and watch movies and tv, and start analysing the character’s reactions within their stories. I often think, if that person was real, as in truly alive and real within that world, would they truly react that same way or would their emotional reaction be different?  This is actually the thing that can make or break a story for me. For instance, a story could have the most interesting satisfying plot in the world, but if the emotions and emotional arcs of the characters don’t ring true, if it doesn’t make me feel anything, then I won’t be able to love it.

Sometimes I think the stories we read or watch can almost occur in heightened realities, and therefore emotions in those stories can sometimes lose their grounding and depth, and end up feeling less impactful because they don’t feel true. I think that is okay to have stories like that, but personally I am always more moved by, for instance, a love story that feels grounded in true emotion, where the characters feel like they might actually continue to love each other long after the credits roll or the final page.

Gosh what a huge answer! Sorry! But you got me started on a very special topic! 🙂

How do you come up with an interesting ending to your stories?

Oh, this is a fun one to answer! Endings for me are very difficult, because I usually have only a very vague idea of where the story is going to end up when I begin writing it, and definitely no end scene or final plot point in mind. Which means I am usually left in a state of indecision by the time I make it to the end, wondering how to make it work and how to keep it interesting.

With ALICE, I really didn’t know how I was going to end the story, but I guess for me, as we discussed above, it does always come back to the emotion in the narrative. Most of all I wanted to write an ending that had a good emotional resolution for the characters, and when figuring out how to finish the story, I focused mostly on what felt right in terms of the character’s journeys, their emotional arcs and the love story itself. In some ways, I suppose the plot came second, and I figured it out later as a framework to prop up how I wanted the emotional side of the story to end.

Now that I think about it, I suppose that is the way I usually approach the ending of all the stories I write!

Want to experience the journey of Making Friends with Alice Dyson? Visit Wakefield Press at 16 Rose Street, Mile End SA 5031 or shop for the book online.

Keep an eye out for an interview with Sian, coming to the blog soon! In the meantime, follow Poppy’s writing journey over on her blog.

ANZAC Day titles for the historian in us all

ANZAC Day is a solemn reminder to generations young and old of the pain and loss of war. But with the number of surviving veterans declining, it’s important for younger generations to keep their memory alive. With that in mind, here are five historical titles to read this ANZAC Day.

 

Don Longo, Pens and Bayonets: Letters from the Front by soldiers of Yorke Peninsula during the Great WarPens and Bayonets, Don Longo

Pens and Bayonets gives voice to the young Australia soldiers who volunteered to fight for our freedom in the Great War. They answered the call willingly, with many thinking it may be all over before they got there. How wrong they were. Author Don Longo gathered many of the moving letters sent to the fronts, and set them in their historical context, to bring these soldiers back to life.

 

 

Allison Reynolds, Anzac Biscuits: The power and spirit of an everyday national icon

Anzac Biscuits, Allison ReynoldsAnzac biscuits, baked in Australia and New Zealand for over a century, have a powerful connection to the national identity and culture of both countries. But what is the story of this national icon? Were they eaten by troops during the First World War? When did coconut make an appearance?

Author Allison Reynolds traces the origins of the humble Anzac Biscuit, delving into war files and family cookbooks to investigate the provenance of this extraordinary everyday biscuit.

 

 

Cheryl Williss, Miss Marryat’s Circle: A not so distant past

Miss Marryats Circle, Cheryl WillissIn 1915, the second year of the Great War, Mabel Marryat joined the newly-formed League of Loyal Women. Mabel was active in the League’s emergency corps, ‘women who are prepared to give their service in any need that may arise’.

This book gives voice to the women of South Australia’s first 110 years of European settlement and opportunity to reflect on the changing position of women in society. But the spotlight shines on Mabel. Her long and devoted community service – particularly to her ‘Diggers’ – was extraordinary.

 

Sharon Cleary and Robert Kearney, Valour and Violets: South Australia in the Great War

Valour & Violets, Sharon Cleary and Robert kearneyClose to 35,000 South Australians enlisted for service overseas during the Great War. Around 5500 never came back. Countless more returned with physical and psychological injuries that would affect them for the rest of their lives.

Drawing on the work of the many who have written on the subject previously, Valour and Violets provides a wholly South Australian perspective on the impact of the Great War on individuals, on families and on our state’s coastal, regional, and outback communities.

 

Melanie Oppenheimer, Margaret Anderson, and Mandy Paul, South Australia on the Eve of War

Sa on the Eve of War, multipleIn August 1914 South Australians – much like their fellow Australians around the country – enthusiastically displayed their patriotism when war was announced. It’s a story we know well, but what do we know of South Australia in the lead up to the First World War? What was it like to live there at the time? What were South Australians talking about?

South Australia on the Eve of War considers unique aspects of the state in this pre-war period, including the political reverberations of Federation, the town planning of what was then Australia’s third-largest capital, Adelaide, and the shifting social positions of women, Indigenous Australians and minority groups.

lest we forget

 

To read more about any of these books, or to find other related titles, find our entire history list here on our website.

To purchase copies of any of these books, visit us in our Mile End bookshop, give us a call on (08) 8352 4455, or find them in our online web shop.

Book Review: Making Friends with Alice Dyson

Our intern Jessica Hartman reviews debut author Poppy Nwosu’s Making Friends With Alice Dyson, the first in Wakefield Press’s dedicated Young Adult Fiction list led by Margot Lloyd.

Making Friends with Alice Dyson CVR V6.indd

 

Whilst reading this text I have fallen in love with, become exasperated by, and completely related to Alice Dyson, the protagonist Poppy Nwosu has so artfully created. The text delves into issues of social anxiety, peer pressure and bullying, self-identity, the feeling of being trapped on a path that you are unsure that you want to go down, and the ability to be brave and be yourself in the face of all of it. And of course, young love.

The catalyst of the plot revolves around one Teddy Taualai, who in his endeavour to enter Alice Dyson’s life upsets the balance with her friend May, her relationship with her demanding parents, and Alice’s carefully-planned future.

 

Throughout the novel Poppy threads through brilliant one liners that give her characters and their struggles an achingly realistic relatability. The characters practically jump off the page. It is these one liners that are both humorous but also incredibly real, that allow her to tackle hard issues like bullying in such a way that feels less like you are being lectured rather than you are getting a glimpse behind the curtain of adolescence.

But I do decide I need to do something. May holds her head high every day even when she’s bullied… and it makes me want to be brave too.

Alice’s personal growth is the shining light of the story, and her commitment to her own feelings and desires, while flawed, feels incredibly real. Her relationship with Teddy Tauali is awkward and gentle and incredibly genuine, and Teddy’s character is the sort of person many readers will find themselves wishing they had a chance to meet. This is a beautiful, tender story about endeavouring to be true – to your friends, to your family, but most importantly, to yourself.

View Wakefield Press’s other Young Adult Titles here and here. Stay tuned for an interview with Jessica, coming soon!

New Release: Adelaide Central Market

Adelaide Central Market book

Wakefield Press’s new book, Adelaide Central Market: Stories, people & recipes, captures the memories and stories of the traders of the past and the current familiar faces that visit the Adelaide Central Market throughout the past 150 years. It shows how important the market is to Adelaide and how it brings together the community with delicious seasonal-driven recipes from stallholders’ families, producers and chefs around the state.Vending machines are great options as they provide the accessibility to the customers to quickly purchase the food and other products. If you are looking for Perths leading vending machine supplier, contact Royal Vending for a free vending machine service for your business or visit https://www.royalvending.com.au/vending-machines-perth/.

This book is filled with incredible stories, recipes and images that demonstrate the world-renowned culture and enlightenment the Adelaide Central Market brings to the city of Adelaide. Here you’ll find delicious seasonal-driven recipes from stallholders’ families, producers and chefs around the state.

Read on for a recipe for a surprisingly simple warm-weather meal from the Summer section of the book. Recipe by Karena Armstrong, Chef at the Salopian Inn, Mclaren Vale.

Garfish with tomato, eggplant and tamarind salad

Preparation time: 25 minutes • Cooking time: 5 minutes • Serves: 6

 

Garfish with tomato, eggplant, and tamarind saladINGREDIENTS  

Salad

  • 2 long eggplants, sliced into 1/2 cm rounds
  • 2 teaspoons salt flakes
  • 3/4 cup (180 ml) vegetable oil
  • 2 punnets (500 g) ripe cherry tomatoes, washed and halved
  • 3 red shallots, finely sliced
  • 2 long red chillies, sliced
  • 1/2 bunch coriander, washed and leaves picked
  • 1/2 bunch Thai basil, washed and leaves picked
  • 1/2 bunch mint, washed and leaves picked
  • 1/2 cup (50 g) fried shallots

Dressing

  • 1 tablespoon tamarind paste
  • 1/4 cup (60 ml) lemon juice (approx. 2 lemons)
  • 11/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1/4 cup (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil

Garfish

  • 12 garfish fillets
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • Salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

METHOD

Firstly, place sliced eggplant in a colander and sprinkle with salt, tossing to combine. Set aside for 5 minutes, before rinsing well with water and patting dry with kitchen paper.

Heat oil in a large heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Add eggplant in batches, cooking until soft and golden. Place cooked eggplant on a plate covered in kitchen paper to drain before setting aside in a large mixing bowl.

Add the halved tomatoes, shallots and chillies to the cooked eggplant, tossing to combine. Combine herbs and fried shallots in a separate small mixing bowl.

For the dressing, mix all the ingredients together in a small mixing bowl. Pour dressing over the eggplant and tomatoes, tossing to combine.

For the garfish, heat a barbecue to high or place a chargrill pan or heavy-based frying pan over high heat. Brush garfish with oil and season with salt and pepper. Place fillets skin down on preheated barbecue and cook for 1–2 minutes. Carefully turn the fish and cook for 30 seconds, then remove immediately.

To serve, place cooked garfish on a platter. Add the fried shallots and herb mixture to the eggplant salad, tossing to combine, then pile salad onto the platter with the cooked garfish, drizzling any leftover dressing over the fish.

Adelaide Central Market

Adelaide Central Market: Stories, people & recipes also features trader profiles for every stall in the market, as well as hundreds more delicious seasonal recipes. Our publicist, Ayesha, also has her beautiful ceramics featured in the book. 

Perfect for a Christmas gift for yourself, or the foodie in your life, copies are available now and rushing out of the door. To purchase a copy, visit us in store in our Mile End bookshop, or find the book online. You can also read a larger extract of the book by clicking the link here.

Interested in other cooking titles new and old? Follow the link here to see the rest of our wonderful culinary titles.

 

New Release: The Day They Shot Edward

Front cover of The Day They Shot Edward

Cover of the book

Wendy Scarfe’s second novel, The Day They Shot Edward, tells a tale of a family in turmoil, set against the political mess of the First World War. Told from the perspective of a nine-year-old Matthew, the narration has an air of innocence, making the horrors of what is to come all the more confronting.

About the book:

It is 1916. The Australian community is riven over a referendum to conscript more troops for the killing fields of Europe. Nine-year-old Matthew’s family, divided politically and sinking into poverty, reflects the social conflict. Handsome, generous Edward is at the centre of the family friction. Gran hates the war as Edward does, Mother flirts with him to escape the misery of her marriage, and young Matthew adores him.

As patriotic frenzy takes hold, police informers spy on Edward and track his anti-conscription activities. Sabotage and anarchism are meaningless words to Matthew. Absorbed in childhood fantasies, he is unaware that he too is helping draw the net around Edward. It is left to Matthew’s German headmaster to teach him that, like music, people grow with love.

Praise for The Day They Shot Edward:

The Day They Shot Edward is a beautiful and compassionate story. The deep sense of mystery and heightened awareness of emotion, which are the spiritual gifts of the child, become lenses for examining fundamental issues of life, death, peace, and what it means to love.’ – Di Bretherton

Praise for Wendy Scarfe’s Hunger Town:

‘A powerful evocation of an era which is soon to lose the last of its witnesses … trust me, it is a compelling page-turner; it’s riveting reading.’ – Lisa Hill, ANZ Litlovers

The Day They Shot Edward is being launched at Brightbird Espresso in Warrnambool on Tuesday 13 February. For more information, visit our website.

Both The Day They Shot Edward and Hunger Town are available for purchase online, or at our bookshop in Mile End.

Mallee Boys Excerpt

Mallee Boys front cover

The cover of the book

Life as a fifteen-year-old boy is difficult for Sandy Douglas, who’s not only facing the challenges of girls and friendship, but battling the gut-wrenching grief that came from losing his mother.

With his brother Red, who is constantly filled to the brim with rage and his dad, who, despite his best efforts, struggles with their situation, Sandy endeavours to define himself in the Mallee.

 

Below is the first chapter of Mallee Boys. To read more, or to purchase the book, follow the link to our website, or visit us at our Mile End bookshop.

 

Chapter 1: Sandy
New Year’s Day

You know, when you walk into a murky river you could step on anything. I’ve never understood how easily some people will just leap on in when they can’t see a thing. I suppose it’s like life; maybe I could do with just stepping in more and looking less.

We’re staying at Uncle Blakey’s shack. We’ve been coming up here every summer for years. The breeze is baking today but at least the air is moving. It’s too hot to even go for a walk, almost too hot to swim, but the lure of the river is tempting, so I’m thinking about it.

‘Sandy, get your arse in here. It’s fine!’ Dad’s yelling from way out in the water.

He’s bright red. His big bald head bobbing on his big round body. A cheerful, bloody snowman. For a farmer he’s a surprisingly good swimmer. In fact he loves it. When we’re at the shack he gets up early and swims for hours against the flow and then drifts back with the current.

I decide to go in.

I wanna be part of the crowd.

The river is a soft brown colour, a perfect mix of water and mud. There’s absolutely no possibility of seeing anything. The mud squelches between my toes as I inch away from the bank. I’ve deliberately chosen the least reedy stretch but even here I can still feel the slippery stalks stroking my legs. I launch off. I’m not out very deep so the slimy bottom skims my bare chest. Yuck. I kick faster and harder to get away.

I swim like a dog, my neck stuck out as far from the water as I can manage.

‘Put your head in, Sandy!’ I can hear Dad heckling me before he fearlessly ducks down.

No way. Walking and swimming in this is bad enough without getting my head in.

I remember when I was learning to swim Dad used to hold me under and I never really got over it. ‘I’m gonna count to three. Here we go. One … two … three.’ His voice was all muffled as he pushed my head down. My body arched hard against his hand, pressing up, praying he wouldn’t mess up the count. So now that I can swim I never put my head in.

The water is cool and it does feel good. I feel clean, washed free of the summer dust. I roll over onto my back. I’d forgotten, since last summer, how nice it is just to float. To let something else do the work.

Dad’s shouting for me to swim over to him but I pretend I can’t hear him. I know if I go over he’ll start tossing me around and pulling my legs under. Then my head will be in for sure. I can hear laughing. Uncle Blakey and Big Joe Barrel have jumped in. They’re all splashing and carrying on, three old farmers acting younger than me.

‘That boy’s got an old head on young shoulders.’ If I had a dollar every time someone said that about me I’d be pretty cashed up by now. Apparently my mum, Ellie, even said it about me when I was baby. I didn’t have those weird rolling eyes that most babies had. I just looked hard and straight at her with my clear blue ones, which never did turn brown like the rest of them. So, why the bloody hell did they call me Sandy?

Think of someone called Sandy and I bet they couldn’t look less me. For a start I’m a boy. I was told the name comes from some rellie back in Scotland but secretly I think it comes from Dad’s first dog. So do I have blond or red hair? No. Do I have a big friendly smile? Nah, not really. My eyes are still blue, my hair nearly black and I’m tall but not filled out yet. I do smile but it’s one of those shy, less-teeth-showy smiles. I’ve left that to my older brother Red. His real name is Josh. Imagine him: a big handsome redhead.

So, un-sandy Sandy I am.

‘Get back over here, mate!’ Blakey calls.

I’m not going over to them. They wanna duck me, for a laugh. I push the back of my head deeper into the water and scull away from them, cocooned in the muffled silence. I don’t really think of sculling as swimming. It’s keeping me up but it’s more like flying, using little flaps of my hands as I look at the sky.

I’ll be sixteen in July, and Year Ten starts in a few weeks. I can’t believe it. This year is a big one, the last before things really change. Our country school is too small to offer much choice in Year Eleven and Twelve. We either have to leave, do some correspondence study – like that’ll ever happen – or go to boarding school in Adelaide or Melbourne.

I decided long ago I wasn’t going to Melbourne: too many bad memories. I flap out a little further into the river. What the hell am I gonna do next year?

I quite like school, not that I’d tell anyone, especially Red. He couldn’t wait to get out of the place and caused a lot of trouble on his way through too. But for me it’s been alright, once they realised I was nothing like my brother. I like looking at things, taking them apart, trying to figure out how everything works. It doesn’t seem hard. In a funny kind of way school makes more sense than a lot of outside stuff.

‘Sandy!’

Dad’s yelling at me. Off they go again. I can hear them all

through the heavy wet.

‘Sandy, shift your arse! Quick! Hurry up!’

The tone is unusual, not the normal knockabout teasing. There’s a bit more urgency.

I roll over onto my stomach and then I see it. What the hell?

‘Sandy, get out of the way!’ But the warning is too late. The big brown thing is gonna hit me.

I launch into a pathetic dog paddle trying to get away. My legs kick in a frenzy beneath me and my neck stretches out like a llama. I feel a bash on the back on my head and it pushes me under. All the shouting from the bank softens. My heart is pounding as old memories of being ducked as a kid kick in. I can’t get the thing off me. I can’t see anything. I push up with my hands and they find something soft but really heavy. My head keeps butting up into it, trying to ram a way through. I panic. My brain doesn’t know what to do. My lungs are bursting. I’m desperate for a suck of clean, fresh air but don’t dare open my mouth. The burning is excruciating.

I can’t believe I’m gonna drown. Not today, surely?

There’s a jerk on the bottom of my legs. Something is yanking me under. This is too much. I can’t fight it anymore. I surrender with one last kick and then my mouth opens, hungrily gulping in water. My body wants it like air and it pours in.

Everything pauses.

There’s a bashing on my back, heavy and urgent, shaking me around. I’m floppy, with no resistance. My body stiffens. Rigid. Then the water comes splaying out of my throat and my chest heaves as it sucks in real air. Too desperate, I cough and splutter. I’ve got no control. My mouth sucking too hard competes against the spasms of my lungs spewing the water out. Eventually the craving and the coughing subsides enough and my heart settles.

Exhausted, I take a calmer breath. As I open my eyes I see I’m still in the river.

‘Ya right? Ya right?’

It’s Dad. He turns me round to face him, holding me afloat. I see how terrified he is. He hugs me so tight I start coughing again.

‘Bloody idiot, I had to bash the crap out of you.’

But there are tears in his eyes. He just holds me safe and strong till I settle. As his panic and mine begin to subside, he pushes me away slightly. It seems a bit awkward now for a grown lad to be clinging to his wet Dad in the middle of the river. We both get it at the same time and grin.

‘You’ve always been a crap swimmer, Sandy. Sometimes you get so lost in your own bloody head you don’t know what’s going on around you.’

True.

‘Was it a log or something?’ I ask. ‘I just didn’t see it coming.’

‘No, it was a bloody dead cow! Looks like it died upstream and got washed down.’

I hear cheers and moos from the bank. Looking down the river I see the dead cow.

Bloated, floating and limp from trying to kill me.

Available as both a paperback and ebook, Mallee Boys is the winner of the 2016 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award. It is Charlie Archbold’s first publication inspired by her time living in the Murray Mallee region in Australia.

Melancholic Meanderings through ‘The Vanished Land’

Richard Zachariah’s Vanished Land is an ode to what once was within the picturesque Western Districts of Victoria. His rich language frames anecdotes of rose-tinted childhood musings alongside despairing soliloquies on the modern state of the once majestic region. With a balance and pace that immerses the reader within the author’s thoughts and understanding, Zachariah opens up a world that has been lost.

 

A keen July wind touches us. I’m standing at the entrance to Hexham Park, which my old friend David Armstrong sold at a time of rural recession a decade ago. The paddocks are invisible under a plague of pine trees. A hundred and fifty years of the Armstrongs’ Western District hegemony has faded like a rainbow in the sky. The Camelot of my boyhood dreams is gone. No one at this moment feels safe from talk of grief.

When he greets us, David is amiable and brave. Artist Robert Whitson is there with me to paint what is left of the beloved place.

David’s key to the gate doesn’t work. The locks have been changed by the new owners, one of the timber companies whose tax-driven tree ventures have disfigured the Western District. Hexham Park, once a haven of undulating paddocks and river flats, is now a vivid scar of pine trees over sprayed weeds.

David is apologetic as we climb the locked gate and walk the mile long red gravel drive to his forsaken birthplace.

When I think of the towns to the northwest, the contrast is stark.

As a teenager, I knew Streatham, Skipton and Lake Bolac as the heart of a grazing and cropping nirvana, but today those towns are bereft and sinking, while proximity to a big city has handed Birregurra freshly painted cottages, organic cafes, a destination restaurant and a burgeoning future in lifestyle real estate.

Then I see the miracle of crops. Vast areas of sheep country have gone under the plough, defying traditional claims that the wet, heavy soil would drown any monetary return. Farmers have confounded the rules by raising the beds 15 centimetres and creating depressions between them to drain water. Once drained, the rich volcanic soil pushes up white and red wheat in unprecedented quantities interspersed with ripening canola in swathes of ludicrous hi-vis yellow.

Steel mammoths with rubber legs rumble through widened gates where utes once bumped along. Workers give way to machines ruled by laptops and satellites, driven by GPS-RTK auto steer, replacing manpower and emptying the towns.

Visiting outback Australia, the English writer Bruce Chatwin discovered the Aboriginal custom of measuring a journey in songs rather than kilometres. Out of this visit came The Songlines (1987), which lit up an ancient culture by interpreting the dreamtime as a parallel reality that exists alongside our quotidian existence, preceding us and lasting long after our deaths. Chatwin believed that our time-challenged lives would be enhanced if we discarded the angst of measuring kilometres so that a destination became a way of seeing and redefining ourselves.

The Songlines mythology came to me travelling in a car with Peter Learmonth, a fifth-generation Western District dictionary of ownership, bibliography of people and compendium of history. In the spirit of Chatwin, he measured our trips by properties passed and people remembered. Kilometres were irrelevant, never mentioned.

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