How did you become a writer?

From as far back as I can remember, the thing I loved most in the world was listening to my mother read books to me, and tell me stories. Because of this, I knew that the only thing I wanted to do in my life was to write stories myself.    

Throughout my childhood I wrote stories all the time.  I was an only child, and after the age of seven I was often a very lonely child, because at that time my mother started to spend long periods in hospital. When I was nine, she died, and I went to live in a foster family. After that, reading and writing became the most important thing in my life.  

Writing as an adult is, of course, a different matter to writing as a child.

In 1975, after completing a postgraduate degree in history, I went to  Greece, where I spent the next two years trying to find my voice as a writer. At the same time I began developing a rhythm of writing regularly for about six to eight hours every day. That was when I wrote Five Times Dizzy. 

It took five years to get Five Times Dizzy published, and a few more years before I managed to scrape a subsistence wage as an author.  

Now in my 70s, I still write for at least a few hours every day, and I am still trying to become a writer.

Where do you get your ideas?

My main inspiration is PLACE. I never set out to find ideas for stories, but occasionally a house or a piece of land will suddenly seem to speak to me. When that happens, I start drawing little maps and/or house-plans. As I draw and re-draw the maps and write notes directly into them, imaginary people start living in the place that I am mapping. Once I have characters interacting with place, I have plot. 

The purpose of this mapping is to allow the characters and the story to come out of the land, rather than being put into it arbitrarily.  The country has to tell its own story. This is true for just about everything I have written. The picture book, My Place, is of course a prime example, but the method is also true of my history book, Australians All. Before I could write my memoir, Her Mother’s Daughter, I had to explore the places in Germany where my mother had lived, as well as her childhood landscape of the north coast of New South Wales.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Read... learn Italian... do aquarobics… walk around my local area… spend time with my friends. 

Of all your books, which one is your favourite? 

I don’t really have a favourite, but I certainly feel honoured to have been part of the team of forty or so staff and students from Papunya School who produced the Papunya School Book of Country and History.  

Papunya is a small Aboriginal community in the Western Desert, about 250 km west of Alice Springs. Over the years 1997 to 2001 I used to go there for a few weeks every school term to help the Anangu staff and students make resources for the special curriculum they were developing (known as the Papunya Model of Education).  The Papunya School Book came out of this amazing collaborative process. 

Were you involved with making the television series of My Place?

I was the historical and story consultant to the series over about six years of script development, but the script-writers and directors had the freedom to develop new stories based on the characters and place of the book. I agreed to allow the producer, Penny Chapman, to adapt My Place because I knew that she would employ Aboriginal scriptwriters for the episodes that have Aboriginal families in them. Because of this, I feel that the theme of belonging to Country, which is at the heart of the book, really comes through in the TV series.

What is your favourite part of My Place?

In the book — the very last page, in which Barangaroo sits in the Big Tree and tells us what her grandmother has said.

In the TV series — the Sorry Day scene in Episode 1, when Laura and Auntie Bev watch the Apology in the community centre. I was present when this scene was film, and I wept.

Is the place of My Place real?

Yes! have a look at my News blog for 9 August 2021. You will see the Big Tree that gave me the original idea for the story, over thirty years ago. It grows in an old graveyard where at that time I used to take my dog for a run every afternoon. As he ran about in the safety of the enclosed area, I used to imagine generations of children playing in the tree, going back to the Deep Time of Aboriginal history.

How could we get more information so we can write about the history of our own family and community and place?

For your place: Who are the traditional custodians of your area? Find out the clan name and/or language name or nation. You can probably find this on the website of your local government area.

How did the First Nations people live in your area? (Tip: Find out where the fresh water is… See below.)

Are there any local place names that reflect the Indigenous people and language of your place? it might be the name of a creek, a street, or even the suburb or town.

Are there Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in your area, or attending your school, today? (They might have moved from different areas.) Are there any local organisations of First Nations people?

 For your family: Ask your parents or grandparents what they liked to do when they were your age. Use family photos to help prompt their memories. Ask them to draw a map of where they lived as children — putting in their home, their school, their friends’ houses, and whatever else they choose to remember. This might be in another country, or a different part of Australia.

Do your family members have any mementoes of their early life? (A memento is an object containing special memories.) These might be toys, books, an old football, a seashell from a beach holiday, an old teacup… Ask your family member to tell you why the memento is special.

For your community: the starting point is to explore — to walk around and observe the place where you live. Where is the fresh water? (A creek might now be a stormwater drain.) Aboriginal people would have made their homes nearby, and the first settlers would also have used it.

Think about the Country you live on. Is it flat or hilly? By the sea or inland? Is your place in the city of the bush?

What do the buildings of your place tell you? What are the houses like? Do they show the influence of different waves of migration? What about the public buildings? Are there various places of worship? Old halls where long-forgotten organisations used to meet? What about the place today? What sort of shops are there? Is there an old graveyard you can explore?

Once you have done your own exploring, you can explore local history resources in your local library or on the local council website.

AND REMEMBER TO MAKE LITTLE MAPS AS YOU EXPLORE

Do you have any advice for people who want to be writers?

If you are an adult: Just write! Set aside a slot of time every day — even if it is only an hour — and write.  You are the only person in the world who can find your voice as a writer, and it is only by writing and writing and writing and writing that you will ever find it.

If you are young, probably the best preparation you can do is read widely.  Reading and writing are like breathing in and breathing out. You can’t do one without the other.