Someone stole our plane tickets!

While exchanging travel stories with friends the other night this memory resurfaced and I decided it was time to make it public as a way of honouring the kindness of a stranger.

In July 1999 I was travelling with my sixteen-year-old niece, Sally, from America back to Melbourne when our airline tickets disappeared at Los Angeles Airport.

Since leaving Houston, Texas Sally had insisted on taking charge of the tickets, carrying them in her hands along with her fluffy purple purse.

With time to spare before our flight we went to a café not far from the departure lounge.  Walking back to the lounge after our snack my niece stopped abruptly. Her face went pale. She could not speak but I knew what had happened. I looked at her hands. No tickets! No purse!

When she had calmed down enough to talk she said she remembered putting both items down on the ledge in front of the serving area when she ordered her snack. We hurried back to look for them. They were not there. Sally’s distress increased. I fought to control my panic. As calmly as I could I explained our situation to the café workers who were very helpful but the tickets could not be found. I recalled seeing a man at the serving counter while we were eating. I saw him only from the back and I remembered he was wearing light brown cargo pants.

We went to the Qantas counter in the departure lounge to report our loss but there was no one yet in attendance. Sally and I roamed the airport waiting areas carefully inspecting men’s trousers looking for the thief in cargo pants. We were in fighting spirit and would have challenged anyone we believed to be the scumbag who stole our tickets. However, we did not see a similar pair of trousers.

Sally was becoming more and more distressed. Finally, we returned to our departure lounge to wait for the staff to arrive. Other passengers offered kind words and reassurance which helped to calm Sally. Finally, a Qantas staff member arrived. After hearing our story, she indicated she would send word through to the check-in counter to see if anyone had handed in our tickets. It was a long and anxious wait until another staff member eventually arrived. I raced back over to the counter and to my great relief she had our tickets and Sally’s fluffy purple purse. Apparently, a gentleman had handed them in.

After we had calmed down we worked out what must have happened. The man wearing light brown cargo pants who came into the cafe for a snack just after us had seen the purse and tickets on the ledge. Rather than take the easy option of handing them up to the café staff he took the time and trouble to do the right thing. He walked all the way back out to the Qantas desk in the main area of that huge airport and handed them in to the staff there.

We never knew who he was but his kind thoughtfulness and honesty made a difference and will always be remembered. JB

Australia Day Blogging Awards

Thank you, Bean from Finding Your Gibbee, for awarding me The Versatile Blogger award.

In keeping with the rules of this award (see below) and to celebrate Australia Day, I would like to award The Versatile Blogger to the following brilliant bloggers:
Jackie Kerin
Lillian Rodrighues-Pang (http://lillistory.wordpress.com/)
Zena Shapter
Skye : Leopold Primary School
Liam : Leopold Primary School
Riley : Leopold Primary School

Rule number 4 (Share seven completely random things about myself.)
1: I am a child on the inside (the outside is another matter)
2: I am also a reptile (love the heat and cannot tolerate the cold)
3: I love a good murder (in fiction)
4: I have killed
5: I have never been in jail (well, not as an inmate)
6: I make a mean pavlova (never been arrested for it)
7: I love listening to audio books (never been arrested for that either)
Re point 4: It was a mouse.

Here are the rules that go along with this award:
1.In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.(15 isn’t mandatory, but it’s a nice gesture. Try and pick at least 5 )
2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.
3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
5. In the same post, include this set of rules.
6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

I’m just a timid little mouse in the blogging universe but there is nothing like an award to get me roaring like a lion. JB

Get a Grip, Cooper Jones

Get a Grip, Cooper Jones by Sue Whiting is set in Wangaroo Bay, with the ocean on one side and the Australian bush on the other. This is a familiar setting for me as I grew up in Orbost in East Gippsland which is on the coast of Bass Strait and close to several national parks as well as bushland.

Being near to the Australian bush means the threat of bushfires is a fact of life. It is a terrifying threat but as kids we did not see it that way. We would watch the red wall of fire approaching our house with a sense of anticipation and excitement. In joyous awe we would shout out its proximity to each other.

“It’s close.”

“It’ll get to us before lunch time.”

“It’s sure travelling fast.”

I was especially impressed by the vibrant tones of red, orange and yellow that swept across the sky.

Of course, an adult’s perception of bushfire is quite different. Our parents, although appearing calm, must have been anxious and watchful. Just how distressing the threat of bushfire is to people who live through it was brought home to me in 2009 when I toured the Black Saturday communities of Murrindindi shire in October that year. Sadly, I was also deeply aware of the loss and pain many of these communities suffered.

Sue Whiting’s story is set against the backdrop of the threat of bushfire. Cooper’s mother does not take the threat seriously and, much like my siblings and me, seems oblivious to the danger. Although Cooper seems more alert to the peril than his mother, as a swimmer with a fear of the ocean his personal fears are, for him, as intimidating as the fear of being caught in the approaching fire.

Arriving at the teens can be a turning point for many children. One minute life is fun and carefree, the next it is fraught with tensions, life changing decisions and confronting issues. In Get a Grip, Cooper Jones, we meet thirteen-year-old Cooper at this turning point in his life. As the township heats up with summer temperatures soaring and the bushfire looming, so does Cooper’s life.

Cooper doesn’t have a father and has never given the idea of a dad much thought until a chance remark sends him on a quest find his unknown father. His relationship with his mother becomes tense and he meets a new challenge when Abbie, a gorgeous new girl in town, moves in next door. Too close for comfort, she stirs intense feelings in young Cooper. While he is struggling with an identity crisis without a father figure, Abbie is struggling with issues of identity for different reasons. It is his feelings for Abbie that force Cooper to face his fear of the ocean when she is in urgent need of help. With the bushfire blocking access to the outside world on one side, Cooper’s only option is the ocean.

The book’s humour, language and terminology give it a distinctly Australian flavour; a flavour I find most enjoyable. Sue Whiting’s Get a Grip, Cooper Jones is a fast paced, easy to read book for the upper primary and lower secondary school age group.

Growing up with bushfires and surf

Get a Grip, Cooper Jones by Sue Whiting

Published by Walker Books

ISBN 9781921529788

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Phar Lap in rhyming verse

Phar Lap was the hero that died a tragic death. The legend of the much loved racehorse, foaled in Timaru, New Zealand, 1926 is well known to every Australian but has recently been published by Museum Victoria in a picture book and ballad combination.

The darling of the race-going public in Australia during the Great Depression the champion chestnut gelding was so fast he won race after race, living up to his name (Phar Lap is a Thai word meaning lightning). The winning style of the horse with the big heart (his heart was twice the usual size)  thrilled those who bet on him at a time when most people were out of work and struggling to get enough money to feed and clothe their families. However, Phar Lap’s habit of winning races did not please the criminal element in the race industry. Gangsters tried to shoot him a couple of days before the 1930 Melbourne Cup but the attempt failed and Phar Lap went on to win the coveted Cup that year.

Two years later Phar Lap went to the USA to race in the Agua Caliente Handicap – North America’s richest race at the time. After travelling by ship across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco and another 800 kilometres by road to Tijuana in Mexico, Phar Lap raced against the best horses in America to win easily by two lengths in a time of 2:2.8–a new record. He was described by commentators as ‘the handsomest horse ever seen on an American track’.

Alas, two weeks later he came down with a mysterious illness (recently revealed to be arsenic poisoning) and died an agonising death in California on April 5, 1932. Australia mourned the death of the horse that had won the hearts of the people. His body was returned to Australia and he now stands in the Melbourne Museum; their most popular exhibit.

In the years following his death, Phar Lap became a national icon in Australia and New Zealand. Books were written about him, songs were sung for him, films were made about him and in 1978 an Australian postage stamp was issued in his honour.

Now, a new generation of Australians can discover Phar Lap’s story in ballad form with Jackie Kerin’s Phar Lap the wonder horse  published by Museum Victoria. To capture the mighty Phar Lap’s story in rhyming verse while maintaining historical accuracy is no easy matter but Jackie Kerin has masterfully achieved just that. The story flows seamlessly and begs to be read aloud.

Here is how Kerin records Phar Lap’s final moments with his faithful strapper, Tom Woodcock, by his side.

By midday things were getting worse, and Phar Lap was in pain,
The treatment was to walk him, so Tom tried, and tried again,
But nothing worked, and finally, the horse lay down to die,
His best friend watching, helpless, as the light dimmed in his eye.

Phar Lap the wonder horse

The book’s thirty two pages come to life with captivating pictures by well known illustrator Patricia Mullins using Japanese, Nepalese and Indian papers as well as crayon and photo montage. A perfect size for class room use at 28cm x 26cm, this beautifully presented book comes with a comprehensive and easy to read glossary at the back. JB

Henry Lawson’s mum and me

Louisa Lawson was ‘the mother of womanhood suffrage in Australia’, an inventor, a poet, journalist, newspaper proprietor and editor, as well as the mother of Henry Lawson and four other children.

For those of you who do not know Henry Lawson, he is one of Australia’s best known writers and a compatriot of Banjo Peterson who wrote Waltzing Matilda.

Henry owed much of his early success to his mother who encouraged him, bolstered his confidence and found publishing opportunities for him. As his reputation grew she became known as the mother of Henry Lawson but was determined to be more than someone’s mother.

Louisa Lawson’s determination to realise her potential had been a driving force from an early age. Born in 1848, Louisa Albury, as she was then, grew up dreaming of making her own way in the world at a time when very few opportunities existed for women. For girls in poor families opportunities and options were virtually non-existent. Although Louisa demonstrated an eagerness to learn and a passion for writing, she was often kept home from school to take care of her younger siblings. Her mother ridiculed her writing and constantly reminded Louisa of a woman’s place in the world. At the age of eighteen, Louisa bowed to the inevitable and became a housewife when she married Niels (Peter) Larsen, later Lawson. Louisa committed herself to being a good wife and mother but her restless intelligence demanded expression.

After seventeen years of marriage Louisa and her children moved to Sydney while her husband Peter remained on the goldfields. In 1888 Louisa began The Dawn, Australia’s first magazine for women and the only paper printed and published by women. Despite aggressive opposition from the unions and male prejudice, The Dawn enthusiastically continued its mission to help women lead a better life without dependencies and to fight for women’s rights and women’s suffrage. Its commercial success surprised many men. Louisa later established The Dawn Club for women; a suffrage society. On her journey to emancipate Australian women Louisa was joined by other feminists of the time. Together, they eventually achieved their goals with the passing of the Commonwealth Franchise Act on June 12^th 1902.

Despite Louisa’s hard work and commitment to the cause she was not invited to be an official guest at the celebratory ‘joy meeting’ held by The Womanhood Suffrage League in September, 1902. This cruel oversight,  belatedly addressed at the end of the meeting, is explored in my story The Woman at the Back of the Room which was awarded third place in The Stringybark Australian History Short Story Award 2011.

 Here is how The Woman at the Back of the Room starts:

In an auditorium packed with women eager to celebrate the historic occasion one woman in a high-collared dress, her dark hair swept up in a style more functional than fashionable, sat unnoticed in the back row.

It is September 1902. Golden wattles hint at a bright new dawn, spring rains generate hope that the drought might soon be over and the world’s greatest opera singer, Australia’s Dame Nellie Melba, has returned home for a triumphant concert season. The women who pack the hall of the School of Arts in Sydney are there to celebrate something more important than the start of a new season, more significant than the breaking of the drought, more momentous even than the world-wide success of their compatriot. They are there to rejoice the blossoming of a new world for women.

Keen to read more? You can! Click on the image to go to the Stringybark bookshop.

Why I envy librarians

A skinny little kid rummaging through rotting vegetables, broken furniture and rusty engine parts in search of books, that was me.

When I was growing up in Orbost, East Gippsland, in the 1950s my library was the local rubbish tip, now euphemistically, ridiculously called a ‘transfer station’. We lived several kilometres out of town, which is a long way for a large family with little money. It would have been financially impossible for my parents to buy books for us kids, or even for themselves. There were usually a few comic books floating around the house, perhaps given to my older brothers by school friends. It must have been through these comic books (and perhaps newspapers) that I learned to read at an early age.

There wasn’t a library in Orbost then. That precious institution, the local library, was not established until the 1960s or later and Orbost would have been too remote to have a library even then. My only other access to books was the annual book gifted at Christmas by my aunties in Albury, bless their cotton socks. (Update 18.1.2012. Apparently there was a library in Orbost then. The first library in Orbost was opened in 1885, in the Mechanics Institute Hall in Browning Street. However, I am not sure when it started to function as a free lending library.)

However, when I realised that books could be found at the local rubbish tip my home library grew. The tip was an easy bike ride from our place and my two older brothers went there regularly. They would sometimes, after ‘encouragement’ from my mother, allow me to go with them. Oh, boy, was I excited when I arrived at the rubbish tip. I could not believe the treasure trove of books that were there for me. Imagine people throwing away perfectly good books! I searched under whatever rubbish was there. If there was a book there I had to find it. I did not want to miss a single book. Sometimes my brothers grew tired of waiting for me and left me to it. They were smart enough not to go home without me; they simply explored other areas of the bush on their bikes and came back to fetch me later. When I did get back home I was so eager to explore the literary treasure I had found that I went straight to the hayshed, climbed up over the stacks of hay to my special hiding place, curled up like a wombat in a burrow and escaped into the world of print.

There were no librarians at my first ‘library’ and when I found out that there were people who ‘looked after books’ I was astounded. I couldn’t think of a better job. The concept of buildings where books ‘live’ was another eye opener for me. I wanted to live there with them and often imagined myself living in a library. Even now, when I walk into a library and see shelves and shelves of books I feel a sense of awe (even though I now realise living there might be impractical).

In general I find that librarians have a generosity of nature and a sense of calm that allows them to attend to my queries fully, with unhurried courtesy. I wonder if this quality springs from the deep knowledge brought by books or simply from ‘living’ with so many books.

The generosity of librarians (and many other Australians) was overwhelmingly demonstrated to me when book donations poured in for my Books for Indonesian Kids project which continues to grow. When those looking after our community libraries in Indonesia tell me how the Indonesian kids’ eyes widen in wonder when they see the donated books, I know exactly what those children are feeling. JB

Writing and research

The research aspect of writing is fascinating, isn’t it?

To write about the plants and animals of Gondwana for Trapped in Gondwana I needed to have a picture in my mind of what they might look like. That involved a trip to the State Library of Victoria. Naturally I got lost and searched in the wrong place and could not find what I was looking for but, as always, discovered that librarians are helpful, generous and knowledgeable. I  was courteously escorted to the right area where I found  Wildlife of Gondwana (Rich, T. H. & Rich).

I watched (many times) a brilliant DVD called Rainforest: The Secret of Life. In this DVD we get a glimpse of what Gondwana was once like by exploring rare, isolated rainforests with links to Gondwana.

I conducted some direct research because I am lucky to have access to children in my target audience through my teaching activities so I asked them about what they liked in stories. Some of them were kind enough to read the manuscript and offer me feedback which helped develop and improve the story.

Of course, I also spent hours and hours searching many, many websites on the Internet. I discovered that there were once lions with spots, ‘ducks’ as big as horses, bats that did not fly, crocodiles that lived on the land and might have climbed trees and many more intriguing creatures. Some of these creatures are part of the landscape in Trapped in Gondwana. I was often so fascinated by the creatures I was researching that I became absorbed for hours without realising it.

Some of the websites I explored are linked in my Blogroll at Trapped in Gondwana.  JB

Serious about writing

At long last I have decided to make a serious commitment to writing.

From an early age I have been encouraged by those wiser than me to write.  At Orbost North Primary School (Victoria, Australia) my teachers actively encouraged me. It is with great pride and humble gratitude that I recall they referred to me as ‘the one with the Enid Blyton touch’. Once, I even beat the English teacher’s son in a story writing contest!

When I moved up to Orbost High School (now Orbost Secondary College) the teachers there also encouraged me to write. At this stage I even enjoyed the exhilaration of having my short stories published in New Idea (a national Australian magazine).

Did I take the hint? Did I buckle down and develop the craft of writing? No! I have been fiddling around in life: having fun, making mistakes, earning money, not earning money, meeting wonderful people, meeting horrible people, doing wonderful things, doing stupid things, working, playing, loving, hating and everything else that came my way … except writing.

However, writing has always been close to my heart and nearby in some form or other. For instance, I have been an oral storyteller for over twenty years. In 2011 my work as an oral storyteller led me to become one of two winners of the ABC Hope 2011 award for my story The Flowerdale Tattoo, I was editor of the national storytelling magazine for many years. I attended writing workshops and courses. I published some articles and started to write several books. It wasn’t until 1995 when my mother died that I found a story that not only compelled me to start to write a book but also motivated me to take it to the finished and published stage. You see, my mother had a secret that only came to light after her death. I write about her tragic secret in  Whisper My Secret, which was published in 2007 and enjoyed much success although it was not destined to be a best seller. It is now out of print but may still be available through Barnes & Noble, Amazon and some book stores and it may resurface as an Ebook. In the last two years I have written short stories, poems, songs, and ditties; won a few prizes but nothing major apart from the Hope 2011 award.

I am a member of two writing groups. One is seasonal (we meet each season) and is a delicious mix of people; not that we eat each other, although we do eagerly devour each other’s work. The ambrosial quality of this group is created by our linked connections of friendship, storytelling and writing. The members of the seasonal group have been a source of inspiration and positive reinforcement (and fun) for me.

The other group is the newly formed Friday Group; a collection of emerging writers connected through our membership of Writers Victoria. This is a lively group of people with a variety of writing styles but committed to developing our own and each other’s writing.

At present I am working on a sequel to Whisper My Secret. This project was progressing quite well until it was interrupted by another story, a children’s story that had been lurking in my imagination for years. This children’s story has developed into a planned series of seven books. I have completed the first book: Trapped in Gondwana.

So, all in all, it looks I am pretty serious about my writing…finally! JB