Go Local, Go Well

I won’t name the bakeries ignorning my early enquiries about supplying plain scones. In desperation, I turned to Drakes, Coles, and Woolworths, but theirs were all buttermilk. I thought of Baker’s Delight, whose scones are tasty but misshapen, a bit big and have ‘flies’ as my father used to call sultanas and raisins. I finally asked Dulwich Bakery in Bath Street, Glenelg, who graciously accepted my special order of plain scones for Devonshire Tea, and they were clouds of perfection. Caruso’s on Jetty Road delivered plump, South Australian strawberries in time to put them fresh on the plate to complement strawberry jam and cream.

What a party for my new book, They Who Nicked the Sun. The day overflowed with goodwill for my second novel being launched into the world of readers.

A Dedication

I dedicated this book to my dear friend Margaret Luginbuhl. We met in the high-rise housing tower setting of No 25 King Street back in 2004. Although I returned to Adelaide in 2005, we stayed in close touch. In 2020, COVID forced Margaret to cancel her advanced plans to return to France to live near her daughter, Albertine.

By the time Melbourne’s lockdowns lifted, Margaret’s health had declined, and her loving daughter travelled from France in 2022 to take her mother to Paris to care for her there. Sadly, and ironically, within three months, Margaret died of COVID, aged 83. I miss her wry humour and wisdom still.

This photo of Margaret’s farewell shows her seated by her walker between Melbourne friends, with Albertine on the far right. Below is the sunken lawn at Princes Gardens that Margaret and I loved. You can see our building through the trees, and if you look carefully at the book, you will see this photo etched on the back cover.

The Launch

Nigel Ford was our generous and genial MC on launch day. He has kindly been the MC for five of my seven book launches, including my first-ever poetry collection at his Fleurieu Poets gig in Victor Harbor on my 75th birthday in 2018.

This photo features the well-known Adelaide author and poet Valerie Volk delivering her launch speech. With Valerie’s permission, I cite a couple of excerpts below as she introduced the setting and the story.

We meet Misha, the old Russian pigeon feeder, and watch Ruby build a rapport with the three ‘old girls’ from the adjacent public housing block, Annie, Mary, and Marge...It's a world that Lindy, a well-respected Adelaide poet, conjures up well for us in her introductory poem to the book. It’s done so evocatively that I’m going to read the poem, because this world is central to the book.

We see Misha and his pigeons, Esther and her chicken bones, Danny and his art classes, Thomas and Muggins, Mary and the booze, and we feel for them. Not just people, but also places and scenes. Dogs are often the focus, and Lindy evokes the surroundings vividly.

"As she walked, the sun flickered through the oaks and plane trees, and she heard the songs of dark and light leaves dancing again. Workers still hurried this way and that through the park to catch their morning tram or bus. When their numbers diminished, professional dog walkers turned up. The strain of so many dogs would take a lot of work to manage. Retirees shuffled around with their ageing pets a little way behind. Alma Park was different from Princes Gardens, where all age groups mingled, young and old, with dogs short and tall, purebred and mutt, like the diversity of people on Chapel Street do: young, old, rich and poor." (pp.234-5)

Our Attentive Audience

We held the launch in the Common Room of Manson Towers in Glenelg, where I live. It is a lovely room. The audience was wonderfully appreciative as the late afternoon sun washed over their smiles, interest, and applause. It was a joyful occasion, and I thank everyone who made the time to attend.

My Talk

In the weeks before the launch, two items appeared on my Facebook feed and found their way into my talk, and I quote, starting with Anne Summers.

The story touches on a theme from one of my favourite feminist authors, Anne Summers of Damned Whores and God's Police fame. In 1975 Summers’ landmark book identified encompassing female sterotypes in Australia. We read this week that young boys in private schools still grade women from cutie and wifey to unrapable. Little has changed except Summers now has emblazoned in pink on her Facebook Cover Photo, the words, 'CHOICE, Violence or Poverty' which is precisely the choice my protagonist makes as many women still must.

If I felt that Summer’s Facebook textual image conferred relevance, that sense was augmented by a recent article in The Conversation by Carol Lefevre, a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of English and Creative Writing at my Alma Mata, Adelaide University, who writes —

If older women move through the world with a sense of being unseen, in the world of books, and especially in contemporary fiction, they have all but been erased. So pervasive is their absence that it is nearly impossible to draw up a list of novels featuring older women as main character.

Of the older women who do make it to the page, most will have been reduced to stereotypes: the demented, the eccentric, the quarrelsome, the devoted yet sidelined grandmother, the meddling mother-in-law, the faded beauty, the disappointed spinster.

My 60-year-old red-headed protagonist, Ruby Marie Wilson, is no stereotype.

PS

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the book table and one of me holding a copy with a triumphant smile — the usual fodder. Instead, here’s a little video of our first guest, which features me, the book table managed by my daughter, Vanessa and Nigel, pensive by the window, and our first guest.

I thank everybody for making the day a success — Valerie and Nigel, of course, for honouring me as they did. I thank Kuma for his photos, Pat for her help and this video, Veronica Cookson for writing a blurb, selling books, and all-around support, Deb Stewart, who couldn’t attend but wrote a second blurb, and Inez, who conducted the lucky door prize. And thank you to my darling daughter, Vanessa, who supports her old mum in all ways.

Where to Get the Book

I’ve already received some lovely feedback on the story. If you are local and would like a copy from me, please touch base in the comments below or on Facebook Messenger. The paperback is available from Dymocks, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. The ebook is on Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo. It is also now the SA Libraries Catalogue.

Happy Writing

Wattletales

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Lindy

Preface

I wrote a bad poem a while ago, so my TramsEnd Poet friends told me, and I took their suggestion to turn it into my first short story. I wanted to call it Edth and Joan Do Coffee, but it was not a good title for SEO (search engine optimisation). The current title is supposed to be more searchable and, funnily enough, talks more about the story of two old girls being supplanted in life anyway.

The Baby SUV Invasion

Edith fondled the glass, waiting for her latte to cool, thinking, if you had coffee in a ceramic mug, it’d be half bloody cold, so why is it so hot in glass? At her age, she fancied hot coffee, preferably without burnt fingers. Still, her latte was delicious. She never believed the young barista who once told her that milk burns coffee beans and sours the taste if it is too hot.

‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Never mind, I ordered anyway. What are you having?’ Edith stifled an urge to tell Joan to her face that she was always bloody late. The woman’s frivolous apology irritated her.

‘I’m going to try Caramel Macchiato. It’s Starbucks, for heaven’s sake. We might be pushing 80, but I reckon we should expand our horizons, don’t you think?’

‘Excuse me.’

Edith and Joan swung around in unison as a young mother pushed past them with a bulky, black pram on large pneumatic wheels. Her infant mewled under blue blankets beneath the hood. They gave each other a knowing look as if to say that young mothers should park their monstrous SUV prams outside.

Joan remarked that young mothers no longer seemed to want to hold their babies. ‘And, did you notice? The infant’s face was florid and beading with sweat under all those blankets. Someone should tell her we’re in a hot Australian summer, not the middle of the Arctic Circle. Crikey, look out, Edith, here comes another one.’

By the time a waitress brought Joan’s Caramel Macchiato to the table, Edith and Joan were transfixed as the two pram-wielding mothers moved tables and chairs to make room for more mums filing through Starbucks’ glass doors. The ensuing circle of mothers rocking prams with their faces turned to each other, away from their babes, created a veritable spinning wheel of grizzling babes in SUVs

Edith and Joan concluded that the young mothers’ overly loud chatter and high-pitched laughter hinted more at desperation than fun.

A waitress approached to ask if Edith and Joan were okay. They thought the girl looked about twelve and kindly said they were fine. They appreciated the thoughtfulness.

~

When Joan arrived at Gloria Jeans as arranged the following week, Edith forced her lips into a smiley shape when her friend finally sat opposite her, huffing with exertion, saying, ‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Never mind, I ordered anyway.’ There was no point in pouting or turning a cold shoulder, as Edith wanted to do.

‘I’m tempted to have a sweet treat today, not just coffee. Can I buy you something, Edith?’

‘Joan, how come you’re offering to buy my coffee when you’re the one on a pension? Feeling guilty?’

‘Guilty for what?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it. ‘ Edith’s irritation was rising. ‘What sort of bloody cakes have they got here? Starbucks was all doughnuts and muffins.’

‘You’re right. It’s not much better here — Gloria Jean’s is all mud cake and banana bread, heavy, thick stuff. Still, I like Gloria Jean’s coffee. I’ve ordered a chai latte, but you know what I mean.’

 ‘That’s what I got, too. But I’ll give Gloria’s gut-binding cake a miss, thank you very much.’

The old friends stopped talking to enjoy their chai till Edith broke the silence. ‘Do you know what I really fancy? A slice of rich black forest gateau with layers of chocolate sponge, sour cherries, syrup and cream. You can’t find that anywhere nowadays.’

‘Oh! Yum. It’s hard to find a decent carrot and walnut cake, too, slathered with cream- cheese icing. The best I ever had was in the Yarra Valley years ago. The icing was about half an inch thick, and the cake was tantalisingly moist. I’d happily drive to Victoria tomorrow to taste that again.’

Edith snorted. ‘Neither of us drives any more, you silly old git.’

‘Oh, well,’ Joan prattled on. ‘A girl can dream.’

Edit changed the subject. ‘Have you ever tried the pies and pasties here? They are the worst. I guess it’s an Australian shop with American recipes.’

Joan picked up the cake thread as if Edith hadn’t spoken. ‘Chain coffee shop cakes are as bad as all that soft bread the supermarkets force us to eat nowadays. Do you ever wonder what happened to hot bread and crumbs all over the kitchen floor, from cracking through the crust to the soft, warm dough inside? Did you ever pull the dough out to eat on the way home when you got a half loaf still warm from the baker? Mum used to yell at me when I did that.’

‘As for pies’, Edith refused to let Joan hijack the conversation. ’Once upon a time, you could get a Balfours or Mrs Mac’s pie or pastie in any Adelaide petrol station — or garage as we used to say — which would have stocked Villies pies and pasties too. These new servos make their own. I’ve never tried one. Not once. The pastry is too thick. You can tell by looking at them through the pie-warmer glass, which nobody ever seems to clean properly. The pies we got at school were the best, Balfours, I think.

As they finished their chai, Edith and Joan watched a parade of youngsters and middle-aged women with adult children filing in and out of Glenelg’s Gloria Jean’s café. Edith broke the silence. ‘My daughter took me to a posh lunch in Port Adelaide the other day. I fancied Pavlova. She ordered it, and bugger me, it turned out to be a deconstructed pavlova. Have you ever heard of such a thing, Joan? It was a piddling little serve of crumbled left-over pav shell, with a few bits of fruit cut so small you could hardly tell which was what, and a small dollop of cream.’

Joan banished the disturbing frown that tried to wrinkle her forehead earlier and fell into line. ‘I know that place, along the main road. I had an expensive green leaf confection there that I wouldn’t feed to a rabbit. Drowning in vinaigrette, it was, but with not enough substance to be called a salad.

Edith’s forehead was less compliant listening to Joan when rattling on about the snitty, a dish that evolved from the Weiner schnitzel. ‘We used to sprinkle it with a lemon quarter to mitigate the fat, but now, they drown the dish in gravies and sauces until the crunchy golden crumbs are sodden.’

‘The thing is…’ Edith interrupted. The thing is, every chef in every pub, restaurant, and café now invents or reinvents food presentation. It’s all about visuals and photographs since nouvelle cuisine became the rage and the internet. Schnitzel doesn’t really fit that scenario, does it?’

The two women emptied their cups, tightened their smiles, and stood to leave. They arranged to meet next week in the afternoon for a change at The Grand Hotel in Glenelg, where they serve high tea.

~

‘Sorry, I’m late.’

‘Joan, do you realise we’ve met for coffee on Wednesdays for at least 35 years, and you’re always friggin’ late. I do not recall a single occasion when you were on time.’

‘Don’t be like that, Edith. You always start without me anyway, and you’re halfway through your coffee before we even say hello.’

‘I’ll be whatever I like, but here’s the deal. Next week, l will wait for you no longer than 10 minutes past the appointed time. If you are not there, I’ll leave, and you will never see me again.’

‘Well, if we are going to be honest, I’m fed up with you being the one who thinks she always knows best.’

‘What?’

‘You did it last time with the pies.’

‘The pies?’

‘I wanted to talk about bread, and you insisted on yapping on about pies. You’ve always thought you’re better than me because you married an engineer and my husband was a tradie, but I remember well whose husband treated who better.’

Edith stared at her friend, mouth agape.

‘That shut you up, didn’t it? You and your David treated my Gary and me like we were not quite the full quid sometimes. Did you think we didn’t notice?’

‘Well, you should have learned how to cook properly. We used to make sure we’d eaten before we came to your place for dinner. You couldn’t cook a roast to save yourself: wet, overcooked cabbage, squishy pumpkin, dry meat. Your roast potatoes were never crisp, and you used Gravox. ’

Joan burst into tears. ‘You were just jealous of Gary and me. I always thought you fancied my husband, and all the while, your up-himself David, used to try to put his hand down my shirt or up my skirt if ever he found me alone in a corridor or the kitchen while you were swanning around showing off your world’s best gravy.’

‘Me? fancy Gary? You must be joking. The man’s fingernails were never clean.’

Joan stood up abruptly, still crying and ran out of the café.

Edith apologised to the staff for Joan’s behaviour, saying as she paid the bill, ‘My friend’s a bit mentally loose. She’s getting on a bit.’

~

A few days later, Joan’s heart missed a beat when she discovered Edith’s funeral notice in The Advertiser’s obituaries, which she read every day. There it was, in black and white. Edith was dead. It read, ‘Beloved wife of David and mother to James, Carry and Barbara, died peacefully at home on 11 February. The funeral will take place on 16 February at the St Peters Anglican Church in Glenelg at 2 pm, followed by cremation at Centennial Park.’

So much for high tea.

Joan decided her eulogy, were she to go to the funeral, would be: ‘Edith and I were lifelong friends who grew up together on a Housing Commission estate. We shared birthdays, weddings, births, and deaths. We outlived our husbands, and our children long ago fled the coop. We were two women defined by the lives of others. We said we were friends but had nothing in common. We simply clung together from habit over a waft of caffeine.’

Happy Writing

Wattletales

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Ignorance

Children are naturally curious; they are, let’s say, biologically driven to learn. The joy of discovering fingers and toes and nose indeed drives them on. At school, the intense curiosity of childhood is channelled in definitive directions. It is where we all risk becoming the same or failing because we are not. Adulthood further cramps us as we discover, without trying, how little control we ultimately have over our lives. However, acknowledging the depth of our ignorance can spark our curiosity again, like magic.

When I write, I start at the surface, but as I put words on the page, others follow, taking me in directions that would otherwise not have come to mind. Clarity, for me, takes time to emerge on the page. If I think I know where I’m going before I write, I’m wrong. I discover what I want to say as I write, and that’s because I start in ignorance, which is pretty much how I’ve lived my life. Ignorance is, to me, the premise from which curiosity springs,

Wait Till You Get There

When I taught at Adelaide University, I learned something important from students who would come to me terrified at the beginning of their Honours year or as PhD students about to go abroad to do extended fieldwork. 

Honours students had great expectations of themselves to ‘be an honours student’. They felt they had to be more than who they were, someone who’d just achieved a first degree with distinction. They thought they had to be something they couldn’t yet grasp. In other words, they wanted to be what they would become at the end of their honours year before they started. That’s a pretty scary thing to do to yourself, trying to be the future in the present. It creates a gut hole called panic.

Postgrads had a similar temporal displacement thing going on. Mostly, they did not know the country they were going to and, once there, had to find people to work with. That fear is similarly about trying to control the future when we simply cannot. That’s it. It’s not possible. We may be able to plan, but plans can go awry. In those pressured moments when the gut hole appears, we need to remember our decision-making capacity will be with us wherever we go. Preparation aside, trying to control what we can’t know is useless.

My philosophy is that we should avoid yearning to be who we’ve yet to become by staying in the here and now and starting everything from where we are. And that means starting in ignorance of what we are about to learn. That also goes for the act of writing. Whether we write an essay, a report, prose or poetry, we have to start somewhere, but the question is, are we inscribing what we know intellectually or creating something new? The latter must start from ignorance.

Years ago, an artist friend told me she had no idea what she was doing but kept doing it until her work manifested in an installation she could later ‘read’ and understand.

Different Types of Knowledge

As Executive Officer at the Darwin Menzies School of Health Research many years ago, I worked with the head of the Indigenous Department to help doctors and scientists understand that doing research is a privilege, not a right, especially when working in communities.

Our course challenged everyone. We were talking to senior health and medical professionals accustomed to gathering knowledge-as-object and being the knower. They liked to collect facts, put them in a pocket and walk away satisfied, whereas to work effectively with First Nations people, they needed to learn about themselves to understand others, especially in communities. We were not popular. The school soon brought in consultants to replace us.

We know that fact-finding is objective science at work, but it turns humans into objects and denies that the researcher’s humanity is integral to the resulting body of knowledge. Objectivity like this is part of patriarchy.

This quotation is from therockle.com. Read about Patrick Rothfuss here.

Collecting facts and data is very popular nowadays. Experts stand outside of whatever they are researching, which means measuring. Once upon a time, researchers measured the heads of tribal babes and deduced that larger or smaller heads meant intelligence or its lack. Nowadays, doctors measure old bodies on a routine basis (BP, oxygen saturation, height, weight, bloods), but they do not understand aging. Statistical results create a bodily mean, an average that we are all measured against, but we are more than our bodies.

The Magic of Words

When we write, each word on the page asks what comes next. Here is a poem I wrote many years ago in a workshop. We were asked to write about home. I knew my poem would not be full of nana-made marmalade, gardening and knitting, but I didn’t expect what emerged.

Looking back on one’s life produces a different effect. In the former example, the word ‘home’ was a trigger; in the following poem, The title’s question, The Game (of life), sent me on an archaeological expedition.

Staying open produces something else entirely. Where Home was a topic and The Game a question, I have no idea where Unco came from except that I heard the word and let it do the digging. Unlike the other two poems, Unco has nothing to do with my life. I include it here because it points to being forever in the moment, ignorant, uncoordinated, and unable to predict the future — as in life itself.

We Are All Different

Saying that we are all different is hardly novel. We all have different creative processes. I wrote this blog post because I wanted to know what I think. I trust my intuition, but when it comes to explaining how I come to clarity, I have to dig.

Writers speak of being a plotter or a pantser. Although I’m organised, I am, in essence, a pantser. I go where the moment suggests and learn what I’m trying to say along the way. When I wrote essays at university this was pronounced. I could never write an introduction until I’d found the conclusion. Other people know what they want to write and plan or plot accordingly. They are inscribers. Those with visual memory may be more like sculptors. Some writers may have no interest in how they get words on a page.

I’ve neither researched nor studied how my mind works nor why I sometimes write such odd poems. As for the following poem, I seem to recall it came about from the phrase, ‘she married in a drip-dry dress’ that popped into my mind out of nothing, which is to say, ignorance, but it took my fancy, and away I went, using it to excavate.

Happy Writing in 2024

Wattletales

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Ideals are not Real

Let me start by wishing everyone the happiest festive season for 2023. I hope you have friends and family to get together with and enjoy. However, I know you’ll agree that this time of year is not called the Silly Season for nothing. I’ve therefore decided to talk about my odd Christmas history. It is probably good that my previously prepared post on this topic was lost with Wattletales’ first big crash this past week because it may have been a tad miserable. So, I’ll press ahead with this somewhat less salubrious and less well-thought-out tale.

As you can see, I’m a koala, gum tree and wattle girl this Christmas. While I don’t mind a roast (with salad) on Christmas Day, it really doesn’t suit our usual hot weather at this time of year. The traditional ideal of red and white, reindeer-in-snow images of other worlds have never appealed to me. We got our own flag down under, we chose the bilby for Easter and will one day become a republic. It might be too much to want to see our Christmas iconography change my lifetime, but I can wish.

On Being Alone

As we know, many people are alone at Christmas time for various reasons. I have personally spent quite a few years far from family and friends. I’ve had a few pity invites over the years. I only accepted once but found it increased my sense of having nobody. That was years ago.

Once, I took myself to a hotel for a slap-up Christmas lunch (Christmas Dinner as it used to be known), but the long stares penetrated with a degree of patronising sympathy I found uncomfortable. And I paid for it! Since then, I have celebrated my solitariness whenever the need arose without succumbing to self-pity that my life was seen by others to be falling short of mandatory merriment and gifts.

A Publican’s Christmas

Those who know me have heard me say I was born and bred in pubs many times. I also worked in hotels of various degrees of status, from receptionist to cabaret-night and dining room hostess to waitress, housemaid, cook and bottlewasher, both full-time and part-time until my mid-forties.

My last two jobs were as a kitchen hand and waitress at the Ensenada Motor Inn on Colley Terrace in Glenelg and the Atlantic Tower Motor Inn, where I cooked breakfast and cleaned rooms on weekends, then vacuumed the entire space of the tower’s revolving restaurant. Those jobs gave me extra money for my postgraduate fieldwork in Sri Lanka, where I took my three lovely kids.

The thing about being a publican’s daughter in my day was the tradition — I don’t know if things have changed — for the publican’s family to serve staff a feast after the crowds went home. As a family, we had small private moments to exchange gifts first thing in the morning. New Year’s Eve was as busy, and the world stayed busy until February when life returned to normal. I still feel as though the year doesn’t get properly under way till then, although earlier Easter marketing sometimes spoils that.

Where to Go?

A lot of folderol accompanies decisions about where to go and who will entertain at Christmas time. Families may fight about these things, for often, there are conflicting demands and jealousy between siblings and generations.

We were lucky. My in-laws were Dutch, and they celebrated St Nicholas on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day, so we could celebrate with both families without concern. After the divorce, and as the children got older, my parents, my kids and I would more often go to a great Chinese restaurant that used to be nearby on Brighton Road for Christmas Day, particularly when my brother visited us from Canberra.

Over the Years

It’s impossible to categorise a lifetime of Christmases. My three children scattered to the winds, my eldest living in London and the USA for many years, the others interstate. Before they left home and both of my parents were still alive, the kids and I visited my father, then living in the War Veteran’s Home in Fullarton. Later, as Dad’s life was ebbing, I visited him alone.

At one stage in my middle years, the idea of orphan Christmas celebrations emerged. If you are travelling, away from home or even simply alone, they can be a lot of fun. One of my favourites was eating Chinese food for Christmas in Delhi, India, with like-minded travellers from other parts of the world.

Somewhere between young children and dying parents, Cyclone Tracy intervened. That was a non-Christmas I’ll never forget.

As for New Year’s Eve

I always look forward to a new year, just as I look forward to each new day, but I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve celebrations. In pubs, the drunks got a bit much, and there was so much to clean up afterwards. In my younger years, everyone seemed to go on a party crawl, looking for the best place to be, leaving many hosts bereft and insulted, and my guess is the crawlers would never have found a decent party with that attitude. Even then, I thought that way.

As I got older, and mostly alone by preference at this stage, I preferred a good night’s sleep and still do. Living in Manson Towers in Glenelg, I now go to bed early, and should the crack of midnight fireworks on the foreshore wake me, I listen, smile, and go back to sleep. Sometimes, I get up and watch the highest sparkles, which I can see from my balcony.

Apart from that, I tend to spend the festive season, and the build-up to New Year’s Eve, musing.

My 2023 Guests

Wattletales has been privileged again in 2023 to have had a number of guests share their creative journey tales with us all. I thank them all.

Chance Encounters by Mandy Toczek McPeake

Beth Baillie’s Story by Beth Baillie

The Creative Existence by Deb Stewart

Bewitched by Words by Virgilio Goncalves

Creativity and the Bush by Ruth Morgan

While their contributions appeared in my regular post, I also thank the members of the Everyone’s a Poet Workshop at Glenelg Community Centre for sharing their work with Wattletales as well.

A Final Word

For those of us lucky enough not to be in crisis this year, I’m going to repeat my old Dad’s admonishment whenever I grizzled, ‘If you think you’re having a rough time, just read the papers, Luv’. I am personally thankful for being where I am and for the gift of a long life without ever having to suffer the torments that people elsewhere now experience in many parts of the world. May they find peace soon.

Bugger the website crash. We’re back!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Wattletales

A Special Post

Since the beginning of this year, I have enjoyed convening monthly poetry workshops called Everyone’s a Poet at the Glenelg Community Centre. In 2024, I’m offering The Poetry Appreciation Society for anyone who loves reading poetry. Both will run fortnightly on alternating weeks. In the meantime, I take great pleasure in introducing poems from seven workshop members with a big thank you for sharing them with Wattletales.

Oh, and I’ll also be running a Mindfulness group in 2024.

Introductions and Poems

Arranged here by colour, the poems below were written during our workshops. Each is as unique as its poet.

David Munn

David Munn has worked in the Brighton Library for 40 years. He is a movie fanatic with a particular fondness for comedies and horror films. He once was a volunteer for Urban Ecology, an environmental organization specialising in ecological cities. Under the pseudonym Joe Blow, he is the author of the self-help book How to Be Free

Sally Ann Hunter

Sally Ann was a biologist, then an environmental policy officer. Since 2000, she has been writing poems and novels  (published). She finds inspiration from the many different effects of light. She writes about nature and spirituality. She loves fine music and gardening and practices meditation daily. She lives in a bushland setting with many native birds and animals.  

Andrew Piper

Andrew has spent most of his working life as a high school maths teacher but has always been interested in the literary arts. Andrew has done corporate and media writing and preparing other official communiques. Now venturing into short story and poetry writing, he is a member of a number of local writers’ groups.

Trish Mossop

I love creativity in all its forms and have indulged in many. I have been using words for as long as I can remember, and my Mother once said, “They’ll get you into trouble.” So far, so good. I really enjoy writing, mainly lyrics and poetry. I love the ocean and its rhythm; my favourite thing apart from my grandchildren.

John Grant

John was born in the UK in 1945 and adopted at three by his mother’s second husband. His father died aged 36. His mother died at 43, a year after they emigrated to Australia in 1969. John spent his life driving and now lives in Hove. He loves to read, write, dance, and socialise with friends but is happy by himself.

Venita Trembath

I am a retired nurse, midwife, sociologist, wife, mother and grandmother of two teenage boys. I love learning, travelling and being creative. Since COVID, I rekindled an interest in writing and watercolour art. When I accidentally stumbled into a poetry group and was invited to stay, I found the experience and the encouragement to develop a new skill very enjoyable.

John Atkinson

I was born in Port Lincoln but lived in central Queensland for 35 years. After retiring, I returned to South Australia and now live in South Brighton. I’ve written poetry and journals intermittently, but involvement in a successful LGBTQIA+ monologue writing project in 2022 made me decide that it was ‘now or never’ to start writing more consistently.

Linda Williams

Lin Williams grew up in Country South Australia.  She left school at 15, but thanks to Gough Whitlam’s free tertiary education, she later earned a BA and a rewarding mid-life career as a Lifestyle Coordinator. Now retired and living in Glenelg, Lin treasures family and friends, indulges her childhood dream to become a writer, haunts cafes and does crosswords.

Happy Writing

Wattletales

Introduction

In 2010, I presented a paper called ‘Religious Poems from Around the World’ to Aldinga U3A. The compilation is downloadable below. Drawing on it today, I explore ways in which spiritual love is evoked in the present by ancient words. I was inspired to do this after being profoundly moved by the work of poet friends. Poetry, to me, is at its finest when a poem radiates love — religious or secular, if there is such a distinction — even when speaking of war or disaster.

I’ve heard say a number of times that poetry is composed of the best words in the best order. I can’t cite the origin of this phrase, but it causes me to wonder what is best and how that can be judged in anything, let alone poetry. I include this little poem in protest against prescriptive definitions.

Personally, I love poetry or any work of art that moves me, invites me to think, laugh and empathise or illuminates the ineffable. Hence my predilection for spiritual works.

We Don’t Own the Land, the Land Owns Us

I start with a First Nations poem about what is to be inextricably part of the land. The religious quality of this poem is in the claim, ‘I am Australia’; Aboriginal being is of the land.

Love is in Humour

Religious poetry often turns to humour, which I think of as beseeching us not to take ourselves too seriously. Here are two poems, the first from the Bahá’í Faith, named after its founder, Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892).

The second poem is from Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831), a quiet and eccentric Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryokan shows great humility by refusing to accept labels such as a priest or poet. But, even as he decries the vanities of his peers in this short poem, he recognises his weakness for comfort.

If you think of the Dalai Lama for a minute or have met a Buddhist monk of any tradition, you will have encountered their complete absence of judgment. Their acceptance of life as it is and the spontaneous warmth that goes with it are manifestations of joy. Acceptance allows one to open up to self and others. It makes us vulnerable but is extraordinarily powerful. It is love.

Like Ryokan, Japanese Zen Poet Ikkyu (1394-1481) also celebrated the ironies of life in wry observations of reality. Once again, his words show acceptance of things as they are and the spiritual love that implies. Ikkyu may observe the peccadilloes of his more stick-to-the-rules counterparts but is as accepting of them as he is honest about his dismissiveness and fleshly needs. I feel fresh air in that.

To Hear and Speak of True Nature

Rabindranath Tagore

Most people will have heard of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) if not from his poetics, then perhaps from a marvellous recent Netflix series, ‘Stories by Rabindranath Tagore’. As a poet, novelist, musician, and playwright, Tagore reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by spurning classical forms. Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature and penned the anthems of Bangladesh and India. God, that is to say, love is the sound of the flute and the flow of the River Yamuna, life and surrender; if only we paid attention.

Tich Nath Hahn

Thich Nath Hahn (1926-2022) was a much-loved Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, poet, scholar and activist who joined a monastery at 16. During the Vietnam War, he worked tirelessly for reconciliation between North and South Vietnam but was exiled for many years. His lifelong efforts to generate peace moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2022, finally repatriated, Thich Nath Hahn died in his country of birth, leaving a profound legacy to Buddhists and laypeople across the world who know his marvellous body of work. I include two of his poems. The first should be read alongside Tagore’s poem. They complement each other, resonating as they do in accepting what is, but he also shows in this poem that, seen clearly, accepting reality’s many faces is spiritual love.

The second poem from Thich Nath Hahn is a loving prayer he wrote to prepare the young who risked their lives during the Vietnam War to die in peace. The love in this poem always moves me. As with all of this Master’s work, it reverberates with compassion.

Haiku Potpourri — Basho (1644-1694)

Most poets today have heard of Matsuo Basho. His work is profound, and its relevance persists across centuries. A Japanese warrior-poet, not a monk, Basho nevertheless had profound respect for and love of nature. Reading his concise words can make us smile, but it is spiritually uplifting because it is emotionally honest. Basho’s keen eye for concrete ways to open our hearts is a high spiritual art. Each of his word-image-moments offers profound insight into the beauty and fragility of life, inviting acceptance and love for all that exists.

Religious Poetry

Please feel free to download my U3A presentation. Forgive, if you will, typos that I can no longer correct as my only copy is a .pdf. In my introduction to this piece, I wrote, ‘I personally found more commonalities than differences across the major religions and through the centuries. The poems often refer to the immersion of the self into God or nothingness, and they speak of blood and the body, nature and light, and, most of all, of love.’

Happy Reading

Wattletales

Writing a Book

It’s taken three years of intensive research, typing and editing, but I have written my first full-length non-fiction book with a working title of Changing Fortunes: A Story of Love, Loss and Resilience. My other writing has been short-form — poetry, non-fiction articles, essays, and business reports. None of those prepared me for the marathon that is long-form writing on a topic close to my heart.

The book tells my parents’ turbulent life stories from 1938 to 2019. I wrote the first draft as a narrated piece before rewriting it from the individuals’ points of view. I think this makes it more accurate, more in-depth, and more emotional. So, it is reimagined. I know any creative non-fiction is subject to the writer’s perception, and the closer to home the story, the more likely that is to be so. This is why it is now out in the world for a first read-through by a select audience of family and friends. I have to wait for their feedback before seeking more unbiased reviews.

The response so far is encouraging. Words like “tear-jerker, riveting, I couldn’t put it down, a truly remarkable story” are exciting to hear, but I know this doesn’t guarantee I’ll find a publisher. So far, it seems it might have broad appeal, but switching off is difficult.

Change of Scene

Yesterday, I tried to write a poem, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to draft this article for Wattletales but could not find my theme. I gave up and headed, with my notebook, to Picklemee Grandma café in Mannum’s iconic Woolshed. In the past, my local café has provided fodder for my writer’s notebook, and I needed a distraction. I also love their food and told myself I’d find it easier to write with a full stomach and a decent caffeine fix.

After the town’s recent flood devastation, relief warmed inside me. The sun shone, and the Murray River flowed serenely between its banks.

Picklemee Grandma Cafe

Teresa and her partner Kim run the Picklemee Grandma Café at Mannum, where I live, and today, Kim was trialling a dressing for her quiche and salad. “Is it too oily?” she asked. I told her not at all. The peppery, spicy flavours added a touch of elegance to my delicious, freshly baked lunch.

As I tucked into my quiche and sipped a flat white, I heard a strong male Yorkshire voice behind me.

“That looks good. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

I turned to see a grizzled face beaming down at a heaped plate of bacon and eggs with all the trimmings delivered to his table by Teresa.

“Is that a Yorkshire accent I hear?”

“Yes, it is. I’m from Bradford,” he said.

“So am I,” I grinned.

The Yorkshire spirit is such that we look out for each other. I’ve met compatriots in airports, boats, shopping centres and theatres, and I knew he wouldn’t mind. And, to find Jimmy in my local café soon after completing my manuscript about my parents was a delight.

He was turning eighty soon, he told me and liked coming to Mannum. His eyes drifted longingly to his lunch. I suggested he eat his meal before it gets cold, and we can chat afterwards. His relief was palpable. He didn’t want to be rude to a fellow expatriate.

I finished my meal and immersed myself in reading manuscript submission protocols online.

So Much in Common

A figure appeared beside me. “I’d better move on, but it’s always nice to meet another person from Yorkshire.” He hovered expectantly. Forty minutes later, Jimmy and I exchanged Christian names, shook hands for a while, like old friends and parted the better for our fleeting bond. We had covered a lot of ground. I know that he was a great hiker in his day. We talked about Kendal in the Lake District of Cumbria, where he often walked and where my family and I lived for a few years.

We spoke of the small towns we know and love. Gargrave, where the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and the River Aire cross paths; Skipton with its market and medieval castle; Ilkley, for which the Moor is named; and Howarth, famed as the home of the Bronte sisters. We discussed Bradford and World Heritage-listed Saltaire Village, an entire community built for workers by woollen mill owner Sir Titus Salt.

This was where I grew up, where my best friend bought a house recently. She lives in London but needed that connection to our country. Jimmy was born and went to school in the heart of grimy industrial Bradford town. It gave him a love of soccer and English cricket and a heart for the North of England. My brother still lives in Bradford and wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Jimmy’s voice shook when he described a visit to his father’s grave in Bari, Italy, as did mine, remembering Uncle Bobby’s name inscribed on column 298 at the Normandy War Memorial in France. They died in World War Two. Bobby has his place in my book.

Jimmy and I will not meet again, but I know him, and he knows me. Jimmy’s travels have been hampered by a bad traffic accident in outback South Australia in 2019, mine tempered by my mother’s death in Ilkley in the same year.

Other Chance Meetings

There was an American woman in the departure lounge in Hong Kong. She, her husband and their four children had sold up and set sail around the world. Her Mum was ill, so she’d flown home and was returning to the family waiting in a Thai port where their boat was undergoing maintenance. I followed their travels through pirate-infested waters on her blog for months.

Another time, I spent two hours on the train from London to Leeds talking to a woman about travel, home and books we’d read. It was an instant connection. How we laughed, my new friend and me, till she left the train at Doncaster. Then there was the British army officer who took charge when a bunch of us were stranded in Nigeria for three days. Now, that was an adventure to write home about.

Jimmy reminded me why I wrote my book. A desire to honour my parents, whose lives were torn apart and thrown together by the cataclysmic forces of war. It is set mainly in Yorkshire, where their marriage of fifty-seven years was lived.

Reflections

Chance encounters stay with you, spark memories of people and places you have known, and bring to mind poems you once wrote.

“I reckon I’ll drive back to Golden Grove the long way,” Jimmy from Bradford said with a nod as he left that day. “Call in at Blanchetown. I might have a drink there. But I’ll be back to Mannum; it’s a good place to visit.”

I was glad he visited. He set in motion a flood of memories and writing ideas I captured in my notebook after he left. Maybe we’ll meet again next time he drops in.

AUTHOR BIO

Born in the north of England, Mandy Toczek McPeake now lives in Mannum. At times, she craves the rain-soaked, dry-stone, lichen-encrusted walls and green hedgerows of Yorkshire. Mandy, a published poet and writer, photographs local wildlife and scenery to go with her words. With help from Australian Silky Terrier Molly, she and her husband Lee grow native trees, shrubs, grasses, organic vegetables and fruit trees. Princess, Glossy, Baby and identical triplet Isa Browns provide a bounty of eggs, compost for the garden, and laughter with their antics. All of the above, and the beautiful River Murray, inspire Mandy’s writing.

To read more about Mandy and her writing, click here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘That Icy Wind’, first published in Friendly Street Poets Anthology No 46 2022. ‘Summers End at Mannum’, first published in Mannum Mag, May 2021. ‘From the Window’, first published in The Crow by Ginninderra Press, September 2020.

On Being Brave

Only recently have I been able to reflect on my life and see the influences. Now, I will share some of my not-so-dull but insignificant life for the first time. Born in the small town of Fairlie in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand, I come from a family of nine children, eight girls and then a boy. I am the eighth girl.

Origins

My father, a returned serviceman in WWII, was a carpenter who became a Building Supervisor for Māori and Island Affairs. My father spoke Māori and was dark-skinned, so many assumed he was Māori. At a very young age. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t. I have always loved the Maori culture. My father didn’t like me; the feeling was mutual.

My mother was a schoolteacher specialising in special needs. She had a love of English. I remember her writing a poem for my sister’s homework. My sister believed she wrote it, but mum and I talked it out; it was a rhyming poem about the Agridome and Godfrey Bowen, a famous sheep shearer. In her later years, Mum and I had some great conversations. She was an amazing woman who pretty much raised nine individuals single-handedly.

I lived in a world of my own. My older sister, who was 10 when I was born, mothered me in my early years, but when I was seven, our family moved, leaving her with her new husband in another city on another island.

Bedlam

My formative years were bedlam. My mind started to overtake me. It raced ten paces ahead to the next thing to do, and I was doing things before I’d sorted whether or not it was good. I was trouble, not for me, of course, but for my parents and teachers. I could not for the life of me see why I did everything asked of me. I was top of my class in school, I was an athlete, and I earned my own money from an early age babysitting, yet every school report I got seemed to say the same thing: Beth is not living up to her full potential. No one ever explained what my full potential was. No one offered guidance.

I wrote poetry all the time, all in one book. When I was 15, my English teacher asked what the other book on my desk was, and I showed her. I was shocked when she told me she was impressed and asked if she could show the book to a friend of hers who was a publisher. I agreed and left the book on her table. It was stolen and destroyed by a jealous classmate, which was the end of it. It was different then — no computer backups. The story was on paper, written in pen and ink, and gone was gone. I stopped writing poetry. It felt pointless.

I can only remember one poem from the book, influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, who I read a lot at the time. It is pure fiction, my mother passed away in 2007, around some 30 years after I wrote it. Ironically, when my mother passed away, it was my brother who woke me in person to tell me she had passed.

First Love

At 15, I met a man who put me first for the first time in my life. I fell in love. My staunch Catholic mother said no and sent him on his way. I went ‘off the rails’ and into the world. I moved in with my sister and her family and suddenly had a freedom I hadn’t had before, and I blew it through sheer stupidity. My brain wasn’t connecting. I couldn’t slow down. There was too much to do, and I got pregnant when I was barely 16.

My Family Life

The child, a girl, was given up for adoption. While in the Catholic home for pregnant girls, I met a soldier who lived in a city I’d never been to. It was my way out, a way not to return to my parents. I had an opportunity to reinvent myself, so off I went, much to my mother’s chagrin. My father made ridiculous threats, telling me if I left, he would not welcome me back. I knew I could happily live out my life without ever seeing him again and married that soldier, by then a farm hand when I was 17.

My husband came out to me three days after we got married. Looking back, I admit it was a convenient marriage for us both, him to hide his true sexuality and me to hide from my family. We had our first child when I was 19 and bought a house when I was 20. I was pregnant again at 21 and had my second child by age 22. It was downhill from there for ten years. It took 16 years for our marriage to reach its foregone conclusion — my husband moved in with our best man.

A year or so later, I made a friend. We had a beautiful daughter who excelled in every way. My friend and I became flatmates, sharing the responsibility of raising a child, but that was not enough for me. I felt something was missing.

My New Life

I was lonely. Out of curiosity, I searched Facebook, and there he was. My first love. Would he remember me? Would he want to see me? The bio said single. I messaged ‘Boo’. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. He saw I was friends with his sister, so he asked me who I was. He didn’t recognise my name, but it didn’t take much to jog his memory. Thirty-two years seemed to disappear in a flash.

A few months later, he flew from Adelaide to New Zealand, where we met and had a romantic rendezvous, a week in a motel on one of the best little beaches in New Zealand. Three months later, at 47, I packed and left New Zealand for the first time to start a life with him in Adelaide. I left my 12-year-old daughter and her father. Bill and I married two years later at Parihaka, a real honour to be able to be wed at Ti Niho Marae on the eve of my 50^th birthday. We wrote our vows. Mine was a poem. His were, ‘Ditto, what she said’.

Settled

My life is finally settling. I’m still racing to a certain extent, but it’s not so dangerous. I’ve learned to laugh at myself and not take life so seriously. I live by the mantra, ‘I’m as good as you, and no one is better than me’.

I attend open-mic poetry nights in the city and find writing poetry cathartic. I write some poems for fun, some are dark and a little more serious, but I write to better myself. I’ve always been a bit of an artist, and I consider poetry an art.

Author Bio

Caughley is my maiden name, and BMC goes on all my art and craft work except writing. I have had nothing published nor won any poetry competitions. I’ve not entered any. It’s not why I write. I’m a crafty artist, and you can see some of what I do on my arty Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/BCAirbrushArt/.

You can also hear me as a presenter on PBA-FM 89.7, where I co-host the Program Short & Sweet Spoken Word.

Bill and I live a happy life in Salisbury, South Australia, with our little dog Molly.

Nurtured by Words

My relationship with words and reading began well before I started school. When I was around eighteen months of age, my mother, Valerie, began teaching me to recognise and pronounce words using flash cards with words written in black felt-tip pens.

Apparently, the first proper words I uttered were ‘brown boots’, but these didn’t come from the flash cards. Somewhere in the early 1960s, there was a ‘song’ on the radio by Stanley Holloway called ‘Brahn (brown) Boots’, and I had learned the phrase from listening to it. I recently looked up this song on YouTube and discovered that it is a humorous monologue / spoken word piece. Quite a revelation, as it could well be the first form of poetry I encountered! Could it have inspired me, at such a young age, to follow the path of poetry?

How I Learned to Love Nature

As a young child, I spent a lot of time outdoors in the sunshine, first in my pram and then in my playpen, and I associate these experiences with an awakening of my senses. I smelled the lawn and the flowers. I stared up at the blue sky to watch the butterflies, birds, and bees. The sun warmed my skin, and the birds’ songs were a joy to listen to. These are simple pleasures I still enjoy, and I often write about the natural world in my poems.

When I was a little older, I romped in the dirt, smearing it on my arms and legs, and one of my favourite pastimes was playing with water in a plastic bowl. I lived in England until the age of seven, and for much of that time, we lived near an airport and army base. I remember the excitement of very loud and fast jets, including the Red Arrows, flying over our back garden, creating a sonic boom. This excitement was akin to the feeling I get when I listen to good poems read aloud.

For a couple of years, we moved to a village in the countryside — a place called Cholsey, near Wallingford. I remember mist and rain and open fields, the smell of hay and the distant sounds of horses and cows.

The Importance of Encouragement

At School

In primary school, I wrote stories or compositions, and at home, I wrote short pieces I called songs, but essentially they were poems. Many were inspired by the music I listened to back then, such as Suzi Quatro, The Beatles, Sweet and David Bowie. I wrote these pieces in a lined exercise book, and I wish I still had it to look back on, but it was probably thrown out when we moved from Elizabeth (North of Adelaide) to Christies Beach (South of Adelaide) in the mid-70s.

At high school, like many other children, I was often bullied, and my escapes were either reading in the library or focusing on creative writing in English classes. I wrote one short story called Through the Rain and hid during the creative process to tune out the taunts of girls further along in my row. I still have a copy of this story. My mum typed it up for me many years ago.

I’ve come to realise that the next poem, which I experimented with for a YA verse novel, draws upon my experiences of high school bullying.

I was lucky, though, because three or four English teachers encouraged me in various ways, one of whom was also my class teacher in years 9 and 10. I have recently reconnected with her via Facebook, and it was wonderful to thank her for her support back then. One of my music teachers, Mr Z, also encouraged my songwriting and offered kind words when I was upset after being bullied. Encouragement is so important, I feel.

As An Adult

As an adult, I spent many years in situations that actively discouraged my writing, but despite this, I continued as best I could and became involved with Friendly Street Poets in the late 80s to late 90s. I was the treasurer of Friendly Street for a couple of years and edited the 23^rd anthology in 1999 with the late Stephen Lawrence.

Other groups I have initiated are SPIN (Southern Performers Interactive Network), which I was involved with for 4 ½ years, and the Australian Poets’ Exchange (a national Facebook group), which I still run today, with Adrian Heathcote’s help. This group has over 3,000 members.

In the mid-90s, I started a poetry workshop group, A Passion of Poets, and was encouraged by the support of fellow poets at monthly meetings. When I was unable to continue with the group, other members kept it alive, and I believe it is still running today, although the membership has changed.

My Professional Life

In the early 1990s, I went to university as a mature age student and completed a BA (Honours), majoring in English. My honours thesis was, in part, a collection of poems, and I believe that completing my two-volume thesis gave me the confidence I needed to go on and publish a collection of poems.

My first slim volume of poetry wasn’t published until 2003, a few years after I completed my Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management, and I have since published two further collections and a chapbook.

I also collated and edited an anthology of poems about the city of Adelaide, Adelaide: Mapping the Human City, which was published in 2021. While working on this anthology, I was selected as poet-in-residence at the Adelaide City Library, which provided an opportunity for me to involve participants in writing poems for submission to this anthology project.

Finally, Time to Write

I always longed for the day when I would have more time for writing and perhaps even write a novel, and now I find myself retired, albeit busy, and living at Milang, on the shores of Lake Alexandrina, with my husband Ash. I am currently putting the finishing touches on my first novel, for which I am very grateful to have received an Arts SA grant, and I am working on a second chapbook.

I enjoy living in Milang, walking by the lake and watching the pelicans and other bird life gliding over the surface of the water or congregating on the jetties. I walk as often as I can and ride my bike occasionally. After a walk or ride, I feel relaxed and ready to create, be it poetry, songs, or fiction. I also believe it is important to make time for reading every day, and I like to read the work of other poets, as well as novels, song lyrics or historical non-fiction.

A sense of place is important to me, as is being attuned to nature, and I believe this is often evident in my work, as in this poem that attempts to capture a Milang sunrise over the lake.

The poems here illustrate my story. If you’d like to read more of my work, you can purchase my recent publications, The White Line of Language 2019, and Love Songs & Naughty Bits, 2023, from Ginninderra Press. I also have a poetry page on Facebook.

AUTHOR BIO

Deb lives with her husband Ash, who she met at a poetry and music open mic at Christies Beach, the town where they both lived as kids. In early 2022, they moved from the suburbs to Milang and have adapted well to country life. They are currently building a new studio where they plan to write and record songs. 

Besides writing, Deb enjoys reading, walking, gardening, photography and music. She also enjoys eating the various culinary treats that Ash whips up in their kitchen. Life is never boring with twelve grandchildren!

Photo by Randall Foote

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘Water in a Blue Bowl’ and ‘’Returning’ both previously published in Slow Notes (2008), and The White Line of Language (2019)

What is it about characters?

In any media — television series, movie, novel — characters hold things together through their travails. Should you ask me about endings, I rarely recall. Even in cop shows, it is not the whodunnit of things that stays with me; it is the settings (I have an eidetic memory) and how evocative a character’s trajectory is. Although I admire and might study such things, I don’t watch for direction, production or dialogue either. I want the drama to touch me. Whether I laugh or cry, I need to emote.

Today’s post topic came to mind at the end of Season 1 of Inspector Ricciardi, recently on Stan. It left me in tears. In its 1930s Naples setting, this series is beautiful to watch. Still, it is the character that hooked me, despite the slightly embarrassing stylised curl on Ricciardi’s face until he is caught in pouring rain one dark night, causing his hair to spring into wiry curls all over his head instead of the flat Brylcream look from which the single curl peaks out — great characterisation right there, in a head of hair. Actor Lino Guanciale won the day as the Inspector.

I love the telly because I love well-told stories. While I’m an author and fan of novels, I am an actor follower when it comes to the screen. Good actors — those I like — typically appear in stories I relate to. It is characterisation that unites the genres. Little wonder that many good movies and series come from writers. Think how often you see ‘characters based on books by’ in the credits.

Talking Telly

Do cultures of origin influence our enjoyment of cinema or television? What gives a translated book, film or TV series universal appeal across the world? Closed captions don’t seem to destroy our enjoyment. I don’t intellectualise this, but surely at its core, any language can move human hearts, and an actor who portrays a character well does, too.

Italian Favourites

Italian television has a magical way of drawing viewers in with memorable characters, and Inspector Ricciardi is that. The show is a slow burner. Unlike Inspector Montalbano and, for those who remember, Inspector Rex, which originated in Germany and was slightly more corny but still loveable in the Italian franchise?

Inspector Ricciardi is from Italy’s RAI, the same studio that gave us Inspector Montalbano, played by Actor Luca Zingaretti, who delighted us as a police inspector always just about to eat or have sex when work intruded (a common trope), whose police antics were a sideshow to his relationships with staff and lovers with the Mafia a faint echo in the background of ordinary lives going wrong. Well, it had to be there; the setting is Sicily.

While Sicily’s stone buildings and bright blue sea drew me in, Montalbano, the character, attracted me and millions around the world over and over with a glorious mix of humour, serious crime and politics. Wikipedia tells us it ran for 15 seasons over 20 years and broadcast in over 65 countries. But the best bit is that the character of Montalbano came from Italian crime writer Andrea Camilleri’s pen.

Nordic Noir

Switching scenery to my favourite genre in recent years, Nordic Noir. My passion for this began with Borgen 2010, classified Noir despite being a political drama, and The Bridge 2011.

The stories are gripping, and the acting is superb. I was bewitched by Sidse Babett Knudsen, playing Birgitte Nyborg, a female PM who steers her way with fortitude and resilience through work-life tensions while dealing with major political issues and serial chauvinism, deception and betrayal in parliament. This is gritty stuff created; one would like to think, with the female viewer in mind.

Set in Denmark and Sweden, The Bridge offers a different hero; a young female cop played by Sofia Helin. Although she suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, she is a brilliant detective. I adored her — a socially flawed but fabulous female character.

The prominence and relative equality between the sexes in these Scandinavian shows are part of the attraction. But the setting defines the production aesthetic. We watch as our Australian home of red dust, blue skies, and a burning sun gives way to bleak rain, snow, ice, and dark days and nights.

Nordic Noir is endlessly fascinating to me. Whichever Scandinavian nation produces the show, be it police drama or something else, their telling is realistic and close up, mainly with a small cast of characters in intense atmospheric settings. Indeed, these settings are powerful characters in their own right, a vivid reminder of the importance of settings in writing, too.

Bucolic Britain

There is much to like about British cinema and television: humour, drama and eccentricity, but how different it is from its European counterparts. Bucolic backgrounds and local villages with bungling impoverished lords and bland police officers with friendly families are common since Midsomer Murders gave life to that idyll in 1997, created once again by a writer, Caroline Graham.

Then along came Vera in 2011. A stocky middle-aged policewoman with a mind of her own, who doesn’t mind her p’s and q’s with underlings or crims and even the victims to whom she often later shows immense compassion. What a character. Sex does is not the only thing that tells. Vera lives alone in an old stone house on a moor, drinks Scotch and eats poorly but always solves the crime. I adore actor Brenda Blethyn, who breathes life into this wonderful character who has survived 11 seasons of global popularity.

Female solid leads appeal to me because there was no such thing when I grew up, but please note the British crime writer Ann Cleeves created Vera. The writer is a hero once again. While I haven’t read Cleeves’ books, I have watched several Vera repeats and never remember the ins and outs of the story. I am obsessed with the character — and the cold, windswept moors, cliffs, wild seas, the smell of fish and the squelch of mud. Settings like this will be with me forever, right there with Sicily and Inspector Montalbano and, as I show next, Australia with Rolf de Heer and David Gulpilil.

How Does Australia Stack Up?

Movies

I rarely look for filmmakers’ names, but I notice them when I like what they do, and one of my Australian favourites is Rolf de Heer, who I first admired with his wicked movie Bad Boy Bubby. A few of my friends could not get past the initial mother-son incest scenes, but it proved to be an uplifting story in the end for the son.

Then there was The Tracker, a movie that had me wondering what on earth was I watching as three men trekked in near silence through the desert sands. But soon, the delicate interplay between characters became mesmerising. Gary Sweet plays a white cop who escorts David Gulpilil, a black convict suspected of murdering a white woman, to jail.

The long collaboration between de Heer and Gulpilil also produced cinematic magic by understatement in Charlie’s Country and Ten Canoes. We are so lucky to have such talent in our world. I miss David Gulpilil and his wicked sense of humour.

Television

Our talent for TV drama is excellent. One of the best political shows, with tension as high as a de Heer film or Nordic Noir, was Total Control in 2019. Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths are astounding in their roles, grappling with racism, sexism and power in the Australian parliament. It is so clever, and Mailman gave one of the finest Australian performances I have ever seen on screen. She is so good.

In 2015, Last Cab to Darwin, starring Michael Caton, is one of those iconic Aussie films, like The Castle, where he found fame talking class in Australia, and Paul Hogan’s big knife up to America in Crocodile Dundee.

The Okker or Aussie cultural triggers are much the same in all three films, but Last Cab tackles the controversy around legalising euthanasia in Australia. A dying cabbie travels from Broken Hill in NSW to Darwin via Oodnadatta. Darwin legalised euthanasia in 1995 — the first in the world — only to have it overturned by the Feds in 1997. The debate continues in some parts.

Conclusion

I have talked only about shows I particularly like. Today’s home viewing world swarms with streaming material, so I had to be selective to make my point about the importance of character and setting in significant stories. 

I was going to talk about Mexican, Spanish, Turkish and Indian series and films too, but have to leave them for another time. We are lucky to have the brilliant creative world at our fingertips. Especially oldies like me who spend more time at home.

Creating characters is art at its best. I always go back to my favourite Russian scholar, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, who argues the literary shift from ancient epic to the novel was about characterisation. In heroic myth and legend, he argues, the hero rode a horse through trauma, tragedy and dislocation, only to return unchanged as a person. Now, on both the page and screen, characters have realistic life trajectories, even TV cops, to an extent.

Whether we read or watch stories on a screen, characters are now portrayed with frailties and peccadilloes writ large for our delight. Indirectly or secretly, we can laugh at ourselves, scoff at others, excuse or even understand better our foibles and stupidities or even rage at things we disapprove of. Stories are fun. Whoever creates excellent characters (and settings as characters) is my hero.

Happy Writing

Wattletales

Curiouser and Curiouser

I was paid, once upon a time, many decades ago, to shut up. Looking back, it wasn’t surprising because I was curious and vocal about words for as long as I can remember. As a child, wherever we went, reading aloud any words I recognised became a habit. So, I jabbered on about these words, ‘Taxi’, ‘Bakery’, ‘Bus Stop’, ‘Street’. I also recalled seeing and saying, ‘Toilets — Whites Only’. I asked, loud as a lorikeet, ‘So where do those who aren’t white go?’

I could tell by my parents’ fretful frowns that my question was prickly, especially in the context I realised much later, of living in apartheid-era South Africa. So, while I was told to shut up and paid a penny to do so, it was probably the questions asked rather than the talking itself, which earned me the hush money.

(For the uninitiated, black people in those days had to go around the back to a separate loo, usually not as well self-contained.)

Family Feuds

I was too preoccupied with sports as a child to care about schoolwork. Though enjoying English and typing classes in high school (I was the first boy at our school to join a typing class because I somehow felt the skill would come in handy one day), for most of my free time from the age of 10, I played tennis. I was capable enough in my early teens to rank seventh in South Africa. My father was one of those adults who pushed and prodded, so I voluntarily called it quits at 17. He wasn’t amused. Sadly, we never became best buddies.

While Dad and Mum (both born in Madeira) encouraged me to go to university and worked their butts off in local delis to pay for that to happen, we clashed about politics. We argued often, particularly after I decided on my choice of uni: Rhodes, in Grahamstown. It was the first white uni in the country to enrol black students. Dad disliked it even more when I told him I was helping a few black lads improve their tennis skills in the local township.

When I was arrested for joining a protest supporting black students, he was justifiably unhappy. I didn’t have the money to pay my fine and had the temerity to ask if he could help me out. Years later, when I was 65 (the age he’d died), I wrote, filled with guilt and regret, the following poem.

Introduction to Poetry

I wasn’t sure what degree to study until writing a random two-paragraph letter to the editor of a local newspaper. It was published, so I decided, based on that flimsy accolade, to become a journalist (especially as I could type). My majors were journalism and English.

While doing the latter course, we delved deeply into literature, and it was then, for the first time, that I fell for the Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth and Keats. Reciting Wordsworth’s poems became a buzz. Following my stint at university, I moved farther away from my parents — geographically and emotionally — by joining The Daily Dispatch newspaper in East London, the first newspaper in South Africa to employ black journalists.

Its editor, Donald Woods, was a supporter of anti-apartheid activists Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko and later had to flee the country. (The movie ‘Cry Freedom’ portrayed his life.) I learned a lot from Woods, particularly about the basic concept of all people being treated equally. My course as a human being was set. And Mandela became my hero.

More Journalism Forays

I worked over the years on three newspapers in South Africa as a reporter (general news, local government, and sport) and then as a sub-editor. My love for writing grew, and this continued after our family (including my wife Lesley and our two sons, Kyle and Ross) emigrated to Australia in 1986. I was 34.

We left for a life less permeated by pandemonium. I continued working in newspapers, joining The Whyalla News, where I became editor, a stint that lasted five years. The closest I came to poetry during this time was when the paper won national recognition for editorial writing. It was called The Shakespeare Award but likely had very little to do with The Bard himself.

Further study

We remained in Whyalla, where I moved into academia, tutoring and lecturing at the local campus of the University of South Australia. Included among the courses I taught was creative writing.

Again, I delved into poetry while attempting to teach the craft to students. Later, I joined The Advertiser in Adelaide in 1997 as a sub-editor but realised, after 35 years, I’d fallen out of love with journalism. So, I studied again and obtained a Grad Dip in TESOL from Uni of SA, and taught part-time at the Intensive English Language Institute at Flinders Uni. But I hankered after my first sporting passion: tennis.

More Searching

I became a qualified tennis coach. Then, as the resident club coach at Grange, I helped dedicated members grow the club from one team of four players to 18 teams (72 players) and started a program for refugees. We coached up to 40 refugee children weekly over three years. The program won an SA Building Communities Award and was featured on ABC’s Stateline. At 58, it rendered me speechless to be honoured with the 2010 South Australian Tennis Coach of the Year.

Despite our differences, I knew Dad, now long departed, would’ve been proud. During this period, there was little time for wordplay. Later, though, I wrote the following poem.

Back to Writing

In subsequent years, while working as a travelling tennis coach on the Eyre and Fleurieu peninsulas, I tentatively dipped my fingers into pools of paragraphs. I joined Eyre Writers Inc. in Port Lincoln and was introduced, in a one-day course, to novel writing. I became obsessed with the idea. So, I wrote a novel. Then another. Not as rapidly as constructing those two sentences, but the process beguiled — the braiding of plots, the building of characters’ lives, fictitious usually, sometimes based on fact. I was engrossed.

It became a meditation. Each day, without fail, I wrote. Even on trips away, I devoted mornings to writing. At the end of each sitting, I jotted down keywords so I could continue where I left off. The next morning, at my desk again, I went into that world of make-believe. I was so smitten; I wanted to spend more stints in that space. Also, in Port Lincoln, I piloted volunteer writing classes at a high school and for older residents in a home.

Curious as ever

In 2013, we moved back to Adelaide, to Aldinga Beach, where I made up for time lost when coaching tennis full-time. I joined writing groups — Ochre Coast Poets, U3A Creative Writing, and a group at a retirement village in McLaren Vale — got my work critiqued and attended open mic events. I self-published and held book launches for both of my novels.

I have an affinity for short stories but, in latter years, have become besotted by the art of writing poems. I’ve tried all sorts – haiku, sonnet, villanelle – but felt most at ease with free verse, especially toying with various structures and last lines which try to startle. I’ve become fond of quirky. Using fodder from playtime with my first grandchild prompted me to write this poem.

I began submitting poems to anthologies and also competitions. Winning The Gawler Poetry Prize left me speechless. The judge, Jude Aquilina, always passionate about poetry, has lately become a mentor. She’d encouraged me to chase publishers to print a collection. So, I did. Ginninderra Press agreed to publish my first poetry anthology. Then a collection of short tales and a second poetry anthology. I still relish all kinds of writing, including academic and slang, but these days I’m possessed by poetry.

I count myself fortunate to have been born curious, particularly about words. While I don’t babble on as I used to as a child, I’m happy to let my fingers do the talking via the keys of my computer — and contentedly no longer care if I’m not paid any pennies.

AUTHOR BIO

Virgilio Goncalves migrated to Australia from South Africa in 1986. He lives in Aldinga Beach with his wife, Lesley. In 1997, Virgilio self-published One Life, Two Lands. He also self-published novels My Brother, My Saviour (2013) and No Match for Matilda (2016). Ginninderra Press has published his poetry anthologies Stings in Tails (2018) and As Clear as Modder (2022) and a short story collection, Quick as a Wink (2020). Virgilio won the Gawler Poetry Prize in 2016 for ‘Attitude’. Other poems have appeared in Friendly Street, Ochre Coast Poets and Poetica Christi anthologies, and in The Crow and Tamba.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘Street Cents’, Stings in Tails, 2018; ‘Crushed’, The Crow, Ginninderra Press, 2021; ‘Please God No!’, ‘Country Tennis Trip’ and ‘Jealousy’, As Clear as Modder, 2022.

Not So Trivia

Channel Nine’s Millionaire Hot Seat with host Eddie McGuire is a litmus test of changing times. At 4 pm, Monday to Friday, Eddie quizzes Australia on culture and history with snippets of maths and science. Both the host and the show are cultural icons. Eddie, because he’s done it for 25 years, and the show because its questions highlight a generational chasm in taken-for-granted cultural knowledge.

Eddie is 22 years younger than me and around 30 years older than his younger guests. While he shows no judgement, I am often astonished when a person under 30, descended from convicts, cannot answer a simple question about common Aussie sayings. People whose families of origin are elsewhere often do better.

I admire Eddie, whose calm and friendly demeanour never wavers, no matter who is in the hot seat. Further, he shows a genuine interest in contestants while introducing us to a wide range of people from different backgrounds. He brings out the best in everybody in 30 seconds each, most of whom are under a spotlight on TV for the first time. It’s a tough gig, but he does it with charm and good humour.

Change and Continuity

Millionaire Hot Seat is a window into our culture. It reveals a distinct shift away from my generation and even Eddie’s common sayings. The young appear to know more about American football and celebrity than Australian culture and history. Those up in years have little knowledge of popular music. You often hear the young claim: ‘I wasn’t even born then’, or, ‘That’s before my time’. It’s as though the world before them is irrelevant. It’s a puzzle.

However, I raise the idea of disparity between generations here to highlight the fact that some things remain the same. Many things have changed since my day, but two phrases will never hit the quiz circuit because we take them for granted in everyday life. I refer particularly to ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’ and ‘You’re so strong’.

Well known to women of my generation (I checked yesterday with an age mate), these remarks and others with similar intent are still not uncommon.

Growing up Girl

If I expressed an opinion my father disliked when I was little, he would say, ‘What would you know, you are only a little girl?’ Hmm. We all sometimes dismiss children, but those words stung. As I got older, when Dad disliked my mother’s or my response to a put-down, he would declare, ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’. That phrase trivialises and demeans.

I won’t dwell on it, but resisting mockery goes against unwritten rules about what it is to be feminine. In the company of others, ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’ always came up with a wink and a laugh or followed by, ‘I’m only joking’. The accompanying sideways glance suggested we, as women, were not quite bright enough to notice.

I’ll end this section with the following poem because, although I am speaking up (sic) against my father, I want also to honour him for the love he showed me. He was a kind man, yet, like us all, a product of his times. I am simply drawing attention to the fact that some things haven’t changed. We have not scrutinized the sort of jocular teasing women put up with, even though it makes a statement about how a woman should behave or become.

Women of Power and Influence

The phrases I draw attention to come with a smile but can be as manipulative and damaging as gaslighting and bullying. Mockery has the same structure as blaming girls for getting raped by dressing provocatively or walking alone at night; for being themselves.

Let me introduce two scholars I admire who paved the way for a better understanding of how stereotypes and implicit views affect women in our culture. 

            Anne Summers

I was sad to see online that Anne Summers AO has dropped off most current lists of prominent Australian Feminist writers. Born in 1945, she was a former First Assistant Secretary to the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Bob Hawke from 1983 to 1986.

Damned Whores and God’s Police (1975) broke new ground. Its title immediately captivated me. It encapsulated in a few words the way the male gaze casts women (read patriarchy) either as sluts or keepers of morals. (In my day, men often slept with any girl but preferred to marry a virgin.)  

Before publication in 2013, Summers gave public talks in 2012 about The Misogyny Factor, not long before Julia Gillard’s famous speech in parliament denouncing Tony Abbott for his misogyny. Summers argued Australia had a long way to go before accepting women in power and influence. Her work received acclaim and flak. The flak was not about her being strong per se, but she spoke up to power, loud and clear.

Jane M Usher

Like Summers’ two books, Jane M Usher’s 1992 Women’s Madness: Misogyny Or Mental Illness? systematically exposes structures of power at the highest level, so we might comprehend it when we see it in daily life.

I remember my delight when I read Jane Usher’s book. It will now be a little outdated, given changes (I avoid saying advances!) in our understanding of depression in women, but the title retains veracity. She raised questions about the relationship between a mental condition (women’s madness) and social pressure for women to conform (misogyny). This question is paramount even today in understanding how gendered concepts play out in daily life.

In Summary

In their landmark texts, these scholars both point to structures that are reinforced in everyday practices, like saying you’ve got no sense of humour and you’re so strong to women. They measure someone against an inchoate or unspoken ideal and give us tools to recognise gendered asymmetry at the local level.

As For Madness

When the husband of one of my aunts deserted, leaving her with three children to manage alone, she cried and became depressed. He was cruel during the marriage, yet nobody encouraged her to heal. Rather, the brutality of shock therapy diminished her for the rest of her life. (I am talking about half a century or more ago.)

Another aunt would put her head down and knit the minute her husband raised his voice. She’d smile, go silent and only later would say, ‘I don’t like fights’, too scared was she to defend herself or speak her mind. I’m not sure we are yet aware of how often fear of reprisal silences women whose minor transgressions, like speaking out of turn, can turn nasty.

A third aunt’s husband bullied and beat her black and blue because she defied him by working on a factory assembly line where she could express herself and laugh with other women. He disappeared, never to be seen again. When her only son subsequently died, she had no one to turn to. 

All three aunts (two mother’s sisters and one father’s sister) were further punished by poverty after their abusers left.

Mockery is a Power Tool

Mock threats towards women happen more often than you think, and they underpin domestic violence. Who remembers the poolside practice of a man picking up a girl or woman and threatening to throw her into the pool only to be put down before doing it? (I’ve seen this done to children too.) The message is, look how powerful I am, but I am saving you. This time!

I always loathed that ‘game’. The response to my angry demand to be put down was a collective, ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’. It’s not a big stretch to suggest that is another way of saying you’re too strong (for standing up for yourself). It blurs into the same trope after a while.

Such personal snippets exemplify patriarchy in everyday life. Patriarchy (dare I say the word?) is not some overarching cloud that glowers down from above like a judgmental god. Nor is it ‘all men’. Power disparities exist even in the little things, the small things that I’ve talked about. These phrases and their companion ideas delineate as they perpetuate that.

We can include bigger things, like domestic violence; it’s a matter of degree. But patriarchy exists in taken-for-granted power imbalances. Women also support it when we participate in our own oppression. An example would be a right winger who denies being a feminist.

Wrapping Up

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me I’m ‘so strong’, either as a compliment or a putdown. Neither allows for vulnerability. I’ve even been told that my strength frightens people. Sure, I don’t suffer fools gladly, but am I really that scary? Especially now, as a social category, I am an old woman with failing health and no money. I have no power, no cultural capital, but were I to decry, I can hear the response now, ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’.

You may think I am harsh, yet I only consider everyday structures of behaviour that reinforce by repetition. Have you ever heard a man tell another that he has no sense of humour or is so strong? There would definitely be a power imbalance if so.

That said, I admit there can be ambiguity between the intention and effect of gendered comments. For example, my postgraduate supervisor once said he’d have to teach me how to write like a man. He said it kindly; he intended to be supportive, and I appreciated that, but it jarred because the phrase implies that writing like a woman has no value. Please think about that.

Happy Writing

Wattletales