Booktown Boogie

Booktown Boogie

The booktown boogie is a new wave dance craze that looks set to take the nation by storm. To re-create a batch in your home town just take a mixed bunch of punters, from yuppy mummies with doll-like toddlers riding vintage trikes to old dears wearing colourful crocheted blankies on electric scooters and add a splash of hippy eccentricity and some owlish nerds to the mix then pour on a shipload of books and leave to set.   Welcome to Booktown!


The weekend we spent in Clunes soaking up the vibes of this good old boogie mix tape is still as vivid in my mind as the first live concert I attended at the MCG in an ancient era that will remain nameless, suffice to say that we all wore big hair, tight black jeans, frilly shirts and a hell of a lot of black eyeliner.

But on this occasion, instead of shaking our permed and stiffly hair-sprayed heads off we spent hours sorting through piles and piles of secondhand books and chatting to some of the friendliest people we've ever met.

We also managed to fit in a few delightful writers sessions such as a panel of newly birthed authors, Leah Swann, Balli Kaur Jaswal and Jane Rawson discussing their positive publishing experiences with such small press gurus as Affirm Press and Sleepers Inc. that effectively took their "personal expressions and turned them into a gift for the reading public". Chaired by the coolly enigmatic Sam Cooney editor of online lit mag,  The Lifted Brow http://www.theliftedbrow.com/
His well crafted questions created a chatty style forum which entertained the small audience in the massive bluestone church so well that we all staggered out into the bright sunshine filled with a renewed inspiration.

After a smorgasbord of treats from the international food stalls spread throughout the town, and maybe just a small sample of the book buying fun, we lined up for the next session. We were equally entranced by both that famous author Kate Grenville and her Publisher/Editor, Michael Heyward http://textpublishing.com.au/ as they discussed their long and very successful literary relationship. As well as revealing all the pain of drafts, tough-love editing and re-writes that you would expect they also spoke of the joy they'd had in developing a manuscript and working together to bring this country's history to life through the eyes of the real characters who lived it. Kate concluded with some sound advice to budding writers, "step back and let the story tell itself" and the crowd applauded as Kate thanked us all for reading her work, while Michael felt that we could all display our true appreciation of her skills by buying more of her books!

Most of the crowd took him up on his cute but crafty sales pitch and headed out to queue up and get a pre-signed copy of a volume or two. But we stayed put and soaked up the liltingly familiar voice of ex ABC broadcaster, Ramona Koval. As she'd interviewed so many authors and reviewed such an incredible amount of books in her career as well as publishing her own works she was a fine source of some very amusing information about this funny old writing life.  Her energy was even more captivating in person than it had ever been on radio and once again were all left with sore cheeks from laughing as well as loads of inspirational advice to take away.

Ramona left us with a question, "does reading about life, explain the meaning of life?"
For me, the answer is clear : yes-indeedee-do, oh my lordee yes!! 

And her own motto "Reading is a great recipe for living!", is just about as good as any I've heard and also gives me a great excuse to keep reading, reading, reading...'cause I aint exactly found that true meaning yet.

Bound for Nowhere

Just spent a chilly but cozy weekend basking in the warmth of Booktown's literary atmosphere way out west at Clunes, a small but perfectly preserved nineteenth century gold mining village with a proud history of being the site of Victoria's first recorded gold strike and an almost unhealthy eagerness for all things bookish.

With the zeal of their forebears, those early diggers whose luck bought this tiny farming settlement overnight fame around the world, these proud country folk plonked out here amongst rolling brown hills and decaying hay sheds in the middle of nowhere have managed to re-invent themselves on the strength of these passions and from what I saw, it's worked a treat. So much so, that they all now find themselves Bound for Nowhere!

Our campsite was nestled between the bone-dry pebbled riverbed with a view to the lush green grass of the local footy oval on one side and the dusty main drag lined with hay bales on the other. We soon spotted the Life Bouy Beach Bus (above) with its well chosen destination board and began checking out this classic retro Bedford bus conversion when a thunderous roar and a cloud of dust from the highway spat out a faded old ZZ Top biker on a gleaming Harley clad from the top of his enormous gut all the way to his rather large bottom in cracked and worn leathers.

He pulled in beside the bus, took off his helmet releasing a flowing chest length beard on a tattoo covered billiard ball of a head and grumbled, 'Welcome to Booktown' then disappeared inside the bus.

Just for a moment there, we did wonder what we were in store for out here but bravely ventured out to check out the town and we were soon following our noses up the hill toward the tempting aromas of a bush barbecue sizzling away in the brisk autumn air. We joined the rest of the fabulously friendly locals for a delicious dinner amongst the hay bales up at that most famous of country town institutions, the show grounds. After we had polished off almost everything in sight, including a large helping of some rather memorable homemade pav washed down with a glass or two of the local brew, our tummies were filled to pussy's bow. Then we all headed off over the road to their magnificent Wesley bluestone church c1864 (below) to behold the guest of honour, the one and only Peter FitzSimons (author of Tobruk, Kokoda, Mawson and Eureka just to name a few of his blockbusters) spruik about his long and illustrious writing career.

Dressed all in black (except for his trademark bright red scarf covering his presumably balding pate), he took his place at the pulpit, cleared his throat and began with a dead pan face; 'Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today…' And he then proceeded to enlighten the congregation with several well rehearsed but quite amusing sermons from his life as a sportsman, a writer, a father and a well known husband.

He certainly is a natural-born storyteller with that innate ability to entertain but in my opinion as a writer he does tend to dumb down a few too many important historical facts to make these very well known tales accessible for all. But I guess that's what makes his work so very popular. Also as he did admit, he does have a full time team of researchers working for him.  So, all he really needs to do is pull this pile of facts together into a piece of creative writing. Which does smell an awful lot like journalism to me. And, as we all know if it smells like and looks like it, then it usually tastes like it too.

Anyhoo, the theory goes that for each lecture one attends at least one lesson should be taken away and in fact I did end up with quite a few pages of notes.  The essence of which is that the writer needs to make the story live and breathe. My old pal Pete likes to scrawl 'L&B' in red pen along the margins when he's editing to show where he needs to add some of the juicier anecdotes he's collected. One such example he gave was that the early polar explorers lives were generally quite miserable with very little to look forward to during those long lonely frost-bitten expeditions. One thing they did get quite chuffed about though was the ability to go for months without shaving.  Then, when they grew tired of their beards they only had to spend a few hours out in an arctic windstorm spearing seals or some other disgusting deed and they could then wipe a mitt over their face to effectively snap off their whiskers.

Hmmm, maybe you needed to be of the male gender to get excited about this? Or, perhaps this will eventually takeover that Brazilian craze? No, according to Pete by adding such tantalising personal information the reader then truly relates to the character and can then physically connect with them in time and place.

Well, he's gotta be doing something right 'cause the sales figures don't lie ... or do they??