Stanton Library Literary Awards

Every year for the past few years I’ve been involved in judging the Bill Coppell Young Writers’ Awards run by the Stanton Library in North Sydney. I have a great affection for this library as it was the first library my family and I used when we moved to Australia many years ago. I spent many happy hours there---some of them spent researching my first book---so it’s always good to be invited back. And one of my sons now works there.

This year there were five of us judges, each judging stories and poems from a different age range. Mine were the works of eleven and twelve year olds and I was hugely impressed by the kids’ writing. As always, it was hard to pick the winner, the Highly Commended, the Commended and to award various merit certificates. Pictured above are the winners of the top awards in each of the age categories. From left to right: Becky Bunting, Elizabeth Lim, Niall Gifford, Madeleine Zurowski and Phoebe Cook. (I’m the old guy at the back.)

A Week of Crow Dancing

It’s not by accident that someone thought up the name Woop Woop for an imaginary place somewhere in the Australian outback. Australia has a number of real double-barrelled place names such as Yarra Yarra, Gool Gool, Mooney Mooney, Kurri Kurri, Gumly Gumly, Book Book and many more but Wagga Wagga must be the best-known of all of them. I just spent a week visiting schools in and around Wagga Wagga. Wagga, as everyone calls it, is a country town which declared itself a “city” in 1946. It’s a mystery why a lovely town would want to associate itself with the crime, grime and ugly tall buildings of a city. I can only guess that someone had just visited New York, New York, and thought they’d get in on a good thing.

After exhaustive research I found that the word “wagga” means “crow” in local Wiradjuri Aboriginal language. Said twice it means a lot of them. So before the place was a town and then a city there must have been lots of crows in the trees around the Murrumbidgee River that flows through it. But further pains-taking research (isn’t Google fun?) revealed something else. “Waggawagga” may actually have come from the word to dance or “to reel like a drunken man”, possibly a description of the local indigenous dance. Either way, Wagga Wagga could do well to adopt the New York, NY, slogan: “a name so nice, you’ve just gotta say it twice.”

While I was in Wagga there was a move afoot to start a Dame Edna Everage Museum devoted to the “housewife gigastar’s” memorabilia. According to her creator, Barry Humphries, Dame Edna was born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga. Would such a museum attract hordes of Dame Edna frock-watchers to Wagga? Or would Wagga be the butt of Dame Edna’s humour along with her long-time Melbourne suburb, Moonee Ponds?

During a very cold week, I couldn’t have been more warmly welcomed by the kids. I read my stories and talked about my writing. In some of my sessions I brought out “Amy” the Amazon Twitching Spider (see the story “Selby Spiderdog” in the book Selby Splits). Amy usually delights my audiences but, very occasionally, she frightens someone. It’s a natural reaction to a big hairy spider even if you’re not an arachnophobe.

In Temora, Amy terrified little Elizabeth (pictured). Fortunately, Elizabeth plucked up her courage and before long she was handling the spider like a seasoned spider-wrangler.

Close to nature's heart

"Keep close to Nature's heart...break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." Or so said John Muir, the Scottish-born American writer and conservationist. Having just spend three days doing day-walks in the Blue Mountains, I couldn't agree more.

The days were clear and cool and in the evenings my wife and I retreated---with spirits washed, dried and neatly ironed---to a log fire in a cottage to read and listen to the possums scurring across the roof. Okay so the logs were fake and it was a gas fire but it was still warm and toasty.
We are lucky in Sydney to be so close to so many national parks including: Ku-ring-gai Chase, Royal National Park, Lane Cove National Park, Sydney Harbour National Park and theBlue Mountains National Park where we were. And being there mid-week when it wasn't school holidays, we had it all to ourselves. Much as we love the city, it is good to get out into nature and replace the city's sounds with bird calls. The only high-rises in sight were built by termites.

It was also a good time to try out my new digital camera. Try as I did to get a good photo of a Supurb Lyrebird--and there were plenty of them about---all I managed was one blurry photo. (One of these days I'll read the manual and learn how to use the camera properly.) But, feeling sorry for me, various other birds came by and posed, including some Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and a male and female Australian King-Parrot.

Norman Lindsay Festival 2

In my previous post, on the Norman Lindsay Festival in the Blue Mountains, I omitted to mention all the fun things the Festival provided for the kids on Sunday, the kids day, including some very creative face painting. Yes, there were the usual cat faces etc but this was the first dog face I'd seen. Certainly the first Selby face.


This year the organisers had an event for adults onSaturday evening. This consisted of a panel chaired by long-time children's books editor and publisher Margaret Hamilton and with cartoonist Dave Hackett, mountaineer Lincoln Hall and myself talking about our lives and our books


Lincoln Hall (in green in the photo) was in the news a few years ago when he "died" on Mount Everest. At least he was left for dead but revived in the night and was eventually rescued. He's written extensively about this as well as other high-altitude mountaineering adventures.


I've always been fascinated by mountains and mountaineers. Here I am hiking with two friends in Switzerland at the age of fifteen. I'm on the right in both photos. (Tell me I haven't changed.) These days I'd rather enjoy the mountains from the warmth and safety of my loungeroom curled up with a book like Lincoln Hall's harrowing account of his near-death experience, Dead Lucky.

Norman Lindsay Festival

I never read Norman Lindsay's famous book, The Magic Pudding, until until I was an adult so I have no idea if I'd have liked it when I was a kid. But I'm grateful to Norman---who was a writer, illustrator, painter, sculptor and newspaper and magazine cartoonist---for writing the book because without it there wouldn't be a Norman Lindsay Children's Literature Festival. The festival is held every year at his home at Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and is now the Norman Lindsay Gallery & Museum which is run by the National Trust. This year I was invited, as was "Cartoon Dave" Hackett, writer Frances Watts and illustrator David Legge. Frances and David did their own special pirate song and dance number while talking about their new picture book, Captain Crabclaw's Crew. During a break between my talks, I got to handle "Princess", a diamond python. I didn't realise it when the photo was being taken but Princess was more interested in a branch of the tree above me than in me. Fortunately, her handler managed to unwind her and get her back down.

A welcome release

Authors' lives are not the most exciting lives. In my case, I spend a lot of time at my desk either writing or answering emails or just doing all the many non-writing things that have to be done. In the days before I finished writing Selby Sprung I realised that for three days I hadn't set foot outside my house. But the last week I got out and about.

On Tuesday I went to the opening of The Face of Australia, a portrait showby members of Portrait Artists Australia. the portrait that Jules Sevelson did of me is in the show and it was the first time I'd seen the completed painting. He did a wonderful job. If you're in Sydney you can see the show at NSW Parliament House. It's on from Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm until April 29th---and it's free. It would be a good time not only to see all the paintings in this show but to tour this lovely old building.

Last wednesday I was invited to speak at the Newington College Literature Festival . I had an audience not only of Newington boys but boys and girls from other schools. It was a lot of fun. Festivals are a great time to talk to kids but also to catch up with other authors and illustrators.

Books in Homes

There's a charitable organisation in Australia and New Zealand called Books in Homes. Their mission it is to give away new books to kids who might not have any books of their own in order to promote the love of reading and to improve kids' literacy skills. Publishers donate books to Books in Homes and the books are then given to the kids at a presentation ceremony with the help of a "Role Model". I'm a Books in Homes Role Model so I am sometimes asked to visit a school and to help give out the books. Recently I was at Alexandia Park Community School in Sydney where we gave away boxes and boxes of books. Here's a photo of me with, Ms Young, the wonderful librarian at the school and a few of the kids holding some of the books they were given.