townsville stories and townsville authors

i am discovering more richly evocative townsville literature, thanks to library colleagues who have lived here for longer than I. and soon it will be time again for one title one townsville, which was such a success earlier this year with alex miller's journey to the stone country.

which book will be the one that all townsville reads?

i have most enjoyed estelle pinney's house on the hill because estelle portrayed the multiculturalism of townsville, and her characters covered the landscape well.
the story revolves mostly around a family of women, but the men are also strongly drawn, especially Nicos, the Greek cafe owner and Belle's sometimes lover.

a few weeks ago i smelled the luscious aroma of monsoon season that so beautifully conveys our northern summer mood. it was still autumn.

today i started kay donovan's bush oranges. kay writes the monsoon so beautifully.

For the first two months in Tully it rained every day, sheets of rain. Heavy, drenching rain you couldn't walk through.... The rainforest shaded the house and kept the inside cool and moist, even when the clouds cleared enough to let the tropical sun shine through. (Donovan, 2001, pp 38-39).

Set in the brooding, tempestuous climate of North Queensland from the 1920s to the 1990s... (from jacket blurb)

I love that NQ's climate is tempestuous and the landscape evocative. Not for us the ordinary adjectives like 'liveable' and 'friendly'.

Bush Oranges has multiple female narrators with many local landmarks making the cut: The Strand, Belgian Gardens, the Criterion Hotel, Magnetic Island and Tully. One of my grandmothers was born in Tully, and NQ remains her favourite place. She dreams about it from Brisbane.

With my cataloguing colleague, Anne, I plan to create a local authors/local stories page on the library website where we highlight some evocative Townsville literature from our collection. Although I have not yet read Thea Astley's The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, I expect we will include that. Thea Astley taught school here and visited the city library here (not in its present location). And of course Janette Turner Hospital, who I understand taught at JCU some time ago.

This is going to be such fun.

joe egg

Curious. In about 1971 my cousin Susie played the part of Joe Egg in a Townsville theatre production of 'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'. I only know this because I saw a faded newspaper clipping in a family album. Suse would have been about 10 at the time, living in Townsville in between Moresby and W.A. As far as I know this was her only production. Our cousin Wendy is the actress in the family (she was a brilliant Miss Hannigan!).

That news clipping is, until now, the only time I had ever heard of this play. I have never seen it in production, never heard of it anywhere else. I sought out the playscript out of curiousity some years ago, but that was it. Until today. Forty years after that Townsville production, Joe Egg is on again in Townsville, at The Civic Theatre.
http://www.townsville.qld.gov.au/recreation/theatres/civic/theatreseason
Maybe it's a Townsville theatre classic?

Have you seen Joe Egg performed? When and where?

one year in townsville

i arrived back in townsville to live a year ago today.
things i like about townsville -
* the sultry wet season (and the resulting literature)
* the tropical palms and gardens
* cycle/walking tracks everywhere
* the sunny winter
* view from the strand
* choice of restaurants from a variety of cultures, especially thai
* fresh made sushi from cherry blossom
* calm looming mountains and the colours of Castle Hill
* so many events, plays, festivals...
* the university
* three libraries
* the incredible people i work with 
* our place

you will live in townsville indefinitely (at least until you forget how ghastly packing and unpacking is)

what do you love about your town?

writing real lives

can historians write literary narrative? can writers write history if they're not historians? do you have to know your real subject to write about them? what methods are used to capture the real life on the page?


three queensland writers opened up to their audience last night at thuringowa library to reveal the essence of creative nonfiction and their work within the genre.

Bob James spoke about his oral history project for his masters' at James Cook University on the Gugu Badhun people. Over a three year period he conducted many interviews, attended many camps, and took many photographs to produce a historical work with the voices of the people involved faithfully recorded.

Deborah Carlyon spoke about her journey to realisation of her book Mama Kuma: One woman, two cultures - an exploration of her Papua New Guinean grandmother's tribal life. This book was awarded the Queensland Premiers Literary Awards (2001) for an Emerging Queensland Author. Deborah interviewed her grandmother while she was still living, and then interviewed family members from their PNG village, as well as researching in libraries and archives to establish facts and dates to satisfy a western audience's demand.
She noted that the PNG villagers were not so concerned with pinpointing dates and ages.
She had asked 'how old was Mama Kuma when that happened?' and received the response, 'she didn't have breasts then, she was still a girl'.

Dr Lindsay Simpson spoke about her path to nonfiction writing. She has written about famous and infamous people, some she has met, others she has not. Coming from a journalistic background and working as a court reporter, Dr Simpson developed a love for finding out more. she said that a newspaper feature was not big enough - she needed to move into books.
she has interviewed prisoners in jail, researched, learned to dive when she was writing about a diver, and has co-written with other authors. Dr Simpson is currently Head of Journalism at James Cook University.

An inspiring evening, organised by the fabulous Lifelong Learning Team at CityLibraries Townsville.

townsville!

miniature roses in my back garden

the Saint on Castle Hill, viewed from Queen's Gardens
- replaced a question mark
- created by Uni pranksters nearly fifty years ago
- I like it, like I like Arthur Stace's Eternity

and 'image' that was all around Maryborough
[The Legend of the Saint, on Q150 digital stories]

tranquil tropical gardens

edward scissorhands was an editor

Cut here

Townsville’s literary scene is shaping up well. Workshops and events all over the calendar – and this is one you won’t want to miss. Shelley Kenigsberg will be at Thuringowa Central library on Saturday 29 May with her workshop The Kindest Cut: Editing for Writers. Fiction and non-fiction writers at any stage of development should book in now through QWC because your work’s going to come out looking shapelier. More balanced.

I have the impression from Shelley’s work that a good editor is like an author’s inner Edward Scissorhands. The Ed. works with the author to shape, to cut, to build, to capture a rhythm, to ensure the emergence of the true work. They realize a vision together – and that’s a win for readers because they don’t have to chew through a tangle of redundant words, images and characters to get to the meat.


Every word its place. In Shelley’s workshop writers will examine elements such as writing style and word choice, voice, viewpoint, dialogue, beginnings, ends and middles, flow, balance and structure. Shelley freelances, and is also owner of SK Publishing and coordinator of the Macleay College Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing. She has developed and presented courses for editors globally. She even edits in paradise!


Some of us have a few squiggles and a bit of knowledge in our repertoire to handle copy editing – fixing grammar, spelling and semantics errors. Structural editing? It can make a book fly! And readers certainly notice if the editing hasn’t been much chop. Shelley quotes Le Guin quoting Chekhov when she advocates cutting out your first three pages to find where your story really begins. I’m still editing my 22ish line poem about Brisbane after fabulous structural editing advice from Julie Beveridge. Editing’s a journey.


If you’re ready to take that journey, book through QWC for the Townsville workshop.


Develop your passion - check out the Society of Editors and pop The Style Manual in your pocket.


And don’t be shy. If you go to Shelley’s workshop – tell me how amazing your work is post-edit.

For this post I'm guest blogging for QWC - check out the Empty Page Blog

writers in townsville

this month in townsville - Alex Miller (Journey to the Stone Country) and Narelle Oliver (Fox and Fine Feathers).

Townsville recently joined a small Australian list of cities running the One Book One City concept with Alex Miller's JTTSC for One Book One Townsville. Alex hosted a book discussion at Riverway and a writers' workshop in Flinders Street library - both well attended.Salisbury  runs OBOC. Brisbane used to until the great Malouf v. Sparrow debate and it split into a writing competition called One Book Many Brisbanes where the resulting book has short stories featuring Brisbane.
So now Townsville joins this list. Where else in Australia is this done? The US has a website to list all the OBOC sites/books. In May One Book One Twitter is on.
What will Townsville read next?

And Narelle Oliver is in town this week for the Books North literature festival. Narelle grew up in and around Toowoomba a little before me. Her most recent book Fox and Fine Feathers is on the shortlist for the CBC Awards. This is a wonderful opportunity for Townsvillians to meet this incredibly talented Australian writer/illustrator, and to learn from her work.
I met her in Mackay some years ago at a SLAQ conference where she talked to us about the process of her work being used as design in the children's area at Brisbane Square Library.
My favourite: The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay - because it's set at the beach, and it's fun.

in the playhouse

i feel that i never get to enough plays, so to have eight in one hit puts my annual total up a bit. this is the weekend i was waiting all year for, since i moved here.
the north queensland festival of one-act plays over two nights at the civic theatre was as good as i'd hoped. i don't know which play or performances won yet (didn't stay for the decision) but i know which ones i liked. i remember going to either the first or second festival years ago when wendy was teaching drama at st margaret mary's (this was the 17th) and the audience was much larger.
i was disappointed with the size of the audience this time. hardly any young people and possibly lacking in many of the local school drama departments' students and teachers (although the weekend clashed with groovin the moo at murray, so maybe that was where they all were?)

my pick for best play: jabberwocky by ken cotterill with community theatre.
my pick for best actors (several): emma davis in sorry wrong number (as well as several of the operators) by columba catholic college and both esme mullens and lyn tarring in townsville little theatre's garbage by helen wyngard.
no idea about best direction (there were many good elements).

synopses:
mitch and miranda (community theatre) - effective use of breaking the fourth wall, and repetition with a twist in the end that i did not see coming.

lee (kumcom theatre) - interesting use of old film to introduce the play (subject - who really killed jfk?) but it went on too long. the man and lee were very powerful characters.

heedless spirits (pimlico state high) - good cast (4 f, 2 m) but the synopsis didn't match what i saw in the end - while i heard that julia was no longer in love with dave, when he came to sit next to her at the end (in a very smooth move), she looked bashful rather than indifferent. the interaction between the girls was brilliant though.

jabberwocky (community theatre) - excellent absurdist theatre! i absolutely loved the woman who was not there, especially her rhythmic spoken word dance act -  he beats her / every night / bam / bam (cheryl maddox). the poor man! he eventually gave in to 'the force from outside' and staggered off stage at a 45 degree angle. the waitress was good too with line delivery.

 the shed (townsville little theatre) - clever, a one act play with two sets.

sorry wrong number (columba catholic college) - excellent lighting and direction. mrs stevenson was in bed, only used her upper body, only ever used the telephone. no walking, just lots of talking (and shouting and one very effective scream). each telephone operator was stagelit at their turn at one side of the stage. there were some very funny accents and mannerisms. it was very dial m for murder. the sound of the train and the deep-voiced man at the end were very chilling. lovely to see mrs stevenson alive after curtain fall to come in to the audience for the next play!

garbage (townsville little theatre) - strong audience support from tlt members. lyn tarring as florrie probably had the most heartrending stage speech of the festival. as both florrie and sniffy left the stage (at different times), i would have probably made a point of writing that both of them had left their homes or once had homes. it was a point made for florrie, but i don't remember it for sniffy. mags, who liked the open space never left the stage.

three brilliant performances coming up in the year for the school's program too.
the gruffalo, an adaptation of the picture book by julia donaldson and axel scheffler.
special delivery, a visual comedy.
and something i highly recommend (i saw these performers at out of the box 2006) - tashi!! two tales from imaginary theatre and anna and barbara fienberg's tashi stories.

thanks, townsville theatre community!

added notes 5.5.10: Results published so far



Congratulations to Columba Catholic College students involved in the Townsville Festival of One Act Plays held over the May Day Long Weekend. The play “Sorry, Wrong Number” won the award for the Best Production – Junior Section; Best Director – Junior Section; and Best Crew – Festival.

another fortune cookie message

the next month will bring great change.

love it!

librarything thing

LibraryThing for Libraries is compatible with Spydus, so it's on my wish list, and now they have Library Anywhere which looks delicious.

Dreaming of future times with an upgrade, I've set up an LT staff site, and a top reads site which lists our most popular borrowed titles each week. We already submit to the the local newspaper's Saturday books page and have listed the titles on our website.
The LT thing is to encourage more interactivity, discussion and wide reading, and to promote use of LT by customers. There's RSS and events/venue listings, reviews, librarysharing, discussions and challenges...

In January's Booklist, Joyce Saricks* is imploring librarians to 'make a list (of titles you read last year), put the titles on a display, add them to your blog... and don't forget to start keeping your list for next year'. Hm. Do it in LibraryThing! It's so much more amazing.


I thought I had our top reads site all swish, especially after excellent coding advice from Jean at CMIS and Neal. I linked the books to the record on our catalogue like Jean does for reviewers. Tested at home and at work - all pretty. Until a very helpful email from Jean who uses Firefox and wasn't getting the link. Hm. I do remember that advice now from Setting up a website 101.

More helpful coding advice from Jean which I will test tomorrow (or later in the week because I'm a bit over coding right now) should see the links working with both Explorer and Firefox. Hope.
Harps, do you have FF (you couldn't access the link on: http://bit.ly/dkn5Ra )?
And probably the links on our top5 webpage don't work in FF either. Hm.

Here's my LT with no trickyschmicky catalogue links: librarianalison on LT (note to self - you're a bit behind in adding titles!)

Ancient memory: A blip in time before I started to get into creating sites on my miniscule scale, I did some training with Melanie Hassell at UQG who told us of having to learn html to write the whole page/s. Thank you technical people behind the scenes who do all the hard work now so we just have to understand code and maybe just write a little. you're awesome!**


* Saricks, J. January 1 & 15, 2010. At Leisure. Booklist. 106 (9-10) p. 41.
** tried to be clever here and put in junk code around 'you're awesome': couldn't 'cause blogger turns it into links. clever blogger.

best how-to books ever

a kick in the head and a a poke in the eye - dangerous stuff!

And there's also:
The Mentor Kit for young poets at Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards
The Australian Poetry Centre
Poem in your Pocket Day
the fridge

which poems do you enjoy (writing or reading)? tell me do.

mall sprite

the first day

the first day of an awfully big adventure

love is all around

our library is running a mini-romance writing competition - 50 words, no more, no less - for Library Lovers Day (valentines day for you other romantics) !!
what fun!
more fun today - critically examined the reference serials collection with Julie, and cleared a few shelves ready for those car manuals that are so hugely popular. another day's work ahead with this (that's just serials, then comes the whole reference collection x 3 branches).
yesterday - smart service training with a stash of great ideas for customer service and working to improve kpi outcomes.
tomorrow - feeling the love at a staff meeting, then updating website with a prac student from CSU and our fabulous trainee Bonnie
tomorrow tomorrow - collection development meeting all day - good to have at the beginning of the year so we can get on with it.

2010 is getting better every day.

now if only i can finish that poem / write that guest blog post / get into that literature research / register for that writing class / get that next book to review / and review it / get into the novel / write that mini-romance / and get going on the 10 000 steps challenge / then I can tick February off as a big success.

what are your personal goals for February?

librarything is my new thing

just started Estelle Pinney's House on the Hill - set in Townsville. Fabulous characters so far, and check this from page 27: In the early 1920s Townsville was a melange of graceful stone architecture, wandering suburbs, jerry-built stores, balconied hotels and a sweeping waterfront called the Strand. The town was a mosaic of colours and creeds and down the long main street the torrid air was rich with a cacaphony of different tongues.

Also has luscious descriptions of frangipanis and the monsoon.
I shall have to add a new collection to my librarything, maybe 'Townsville literature' ?

Warren mentioned David Williamson's play/screenplay Travelling North as another story featuring the wet season. I remember seeing the film some years ago.
Which books have you read featuring Townsville or NQ, and particularly with rich visual descriptions? Tell me!

And yes, I will be incorporating librarything into reading promotion for our staff. Looking forward to the day we upgrade to the Spydus version that can incorporate LT.

wet season

mt stuart in the rain

on a night like this everyone stood in their doorways, looking out, looking up. the pregnant clouds were dumping swimming pools-worth of rain straight down. puddles were forming around houses, lakes too. people stuck their hands out in it, their faces, some even danced about. eventually, with more of the same, each person closed his door and headed for bed. each lay there, smiling inwardly, listening to the rhythm on his roof. one thought of her clothes still on the line, getting an extra rinsing.

on a day like this she walked through the clumps of eucalyptus gums, past the paperbarks and crocodile infested waters. she marvelled at baby koalas, patted grey kangaroos, and stood in awe of the mud-covered water buffalo as he emerged from his pond. what she most enjoyed on her morning visit to Billabong Sanctuary was the sultry rain that fell, the plump, warm drops that drizzled down, later, as she enjoyed tea on the open verandah the steady shower turned to a bucketing that sent people rushing for cover. the red-tailed black cockatoo had his crest slicked down with the rain. his attempts to fluff his crest back up were futile. glorious rain!

librarydayinthelife 1

I'm no. 61 on the list of librarians from various countries participating in round 4 of Librarydayinthelife - where a collection of librarians shout out about their day/week in the library.

I'm Alison and I'm an Information Services Librarian at a public library service in north Queensland. I graduated from Charles Sturt University in April '09 and started my professional job search.

I started out as an assistant in a primary school library in central Queensland, created wordbox4writers, while on the Fraser Coast, and am now in my element as ISL in NQ.

If Librarydayinthelife had been on last week I would have written about the mammoth job of weeding stack NF and stack REF. The week ahead promises a lot of information service with our fabulous public. Welcome to a week in the life of a librarian. Check out the wiki for links to other librarians' days and weeks.

tropical summer mood

the strand on sunday 27 december

north queensland's wet season began on christmas night and it's been quite unlike anything i've experienced. almost immediately, and certainly after a week of night rain, i felt that the weather was actually a character in this story we live. it has substance enough to be a character, more correctly i should say it provides an incredible sense of atmosphere or setting - it is full with passion and outbursts of frangipani blossoms.

frangipanis blooming at the strand

my attention has particularly been on rainfall as i have been pool-sitting for friends and have been careful to keep the level just so. the record-breaking torrential rain of Wednesday night/Thursday morning (206.8mm - Townsville's wettest December day) was described as a deluge, and yes, it filled that pool up well. required a few bomb dives to get it down a little for the next deluge.

it's been a while since i've lived in a place with weather. weather so pervading that it can be described in innumerable ways and can provide direction for people's lives. toowoomba had the fog that descended and made people huddle close. no such thing as central heating, we had a kerosene heater that we would huddle around, first to roast our backs and then our fronts.
dalby just had 'hot weather' - nothing atmospheric about it. maryborough's weather was so mild that we forgot all about seasons. winter was a few days of wearing an extra layer (it was really nothing after having experienced toowoomba's weather). both myall creek and mary river flooded while i was in those towns, and those were certainly events, but not annual.

now to townsville where the wet season is something anticipated, discussed, warned about, but must be experienced. the vibrancy and deluge of this tropical atmosphere immediately led me to question who has written about this season, this atmosphere, this northern summer mood?
i remembered thea astley and had heard of ian townsend. i have borrowed affection from our library and am seeking out astley's hunting the wild pineapple, it's raining in mango, girl with a monkey for their north queensland settings. i want to feel how they convey this incredible atmosphere. affection has a tag line: 'there is no cure'. that could be said for becoming a north queenslander, and certainly a townsvillian. there is no cure. i love it here.

can anyone recommend other stories with NQ, particularly Townsville as a setting, particularly with the atmosphere used to effect?

incite into townsville

my article published in InCite December 2009, page 34 - celebrating the people I've met along the way. Happy Christmas inspiring people - http://tinyurl.com/ye82lkw (pdf article).

I got the print copy in the mail today and found more townsville people had written for InCite also!

Mr Ron Store's article about our QPLA/PLA conference (that he organised so well) is on page 8 with the pretty origami twist fish we all folded (he's going to hate my favoured use of lowercase, but I'm an e.e. cummings fan, and he knows it :)

Bronia Renison from the Townsville Health Library writes with Margaret Larcombe about librarians working with nurses on a research project (page 17). I was at the hospital today and a doctor mentioned how good their library was.

article also from kellie ayre from tablelands - nearish to townsville - page 21.

and, not townsville, but someone I know from CSU and mentioned in my article - Sharon Uthmann, Shire Librarian at Bellingen Shire wrote 'going on a book hunt on the dorrigo plateau' with a colleague.

Jan Richards, ALIA president, made an interesting observation in this themed issue (rural and regional libraries): 'In small rural libraries you can work across a range of tasks and roles, and you have the authority to make decisions and try out new ideas at an early stage in your career'.* It's so true.

* Richards, J. 2009. Frontline. InCite. 30(12). p.4.

Another Townsville colleague, Keil Jones, had an article published in the October issue on Movember.

It all happens in Townsville.**

** although for me it began like this - I grew up in the little library on Toowoomba's Little Street where Robyn Sheahan was children's librarian, and where I read my way through an amazing collection of paper dreams

If you read my article, share in the blog comments your memories of the libraries/librarians in Toowoomba, Dalby, Fraser Coast or Townsville.

townsville!

My birthplace! My family lived in Acheron Avenue. Kerry, my dear friend who I met as an 11 year old in Toowoomba, started out in Vincent. My aunt, Anne Rogers, worked in what is now the JCU library. I love The Strand, Harold's and Masala, the one-act play festival, the bikeways, Magnetic Island, Riverway, the people, the libraries, sunday markets...
I've lived in a few places around Queensland. Toowoomba was great (now, looking back..) but not the year it snowed.
Where do you come from, and what do you love about Townsville?