with Gregory Day
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Gregory Day
Author, Poet & Musician
Award-winning author, Gregory Day, is a writer of rare perception and his books are funny, lyrical and wise. His brilliant Mangowak trilogy evokes not only the Australian bush and the Australian larrikin spirit but also speaks to the deeper issues of modern life and its effect on the natural world. Gregory’s later books deal with war and loss, history and strange connections. This mesmerising author talks openly about writing, the act of creation and the words on the page. A wonderful guest In the Book Cave.
Jennifer Kloester
Host
Jennifer Kloester is an Australian author of Young Adult, Biography & Historical Fiction.
Her first novel, ‘The Cinderella Moment’, was published by Penguin Australia and Swoon Romance in 2013 and was followed by the sequel, ‘The Rapunzel Dilemma’ in 2014.
Jennifer has given talks around the world on Georgette Heyer and the Regency, and is a passionate advocate for women writers, books and reading.
Read the transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:07] Hello and welcome to the book cave today we’re speaking with,
accomplished and award-winning author Gregory Day. Gregory welcome to the book cave. Hi Jen, it’s very nice to be here.
Gregory has so far published four amazing books I would say unique actually I guess every book is unique but
Perhaps yours are more unique than any others even though you can’t modify unique. I’m fascinated with the fictional town of Mangowak,
I’d say that right yeah which is a wonderful place on the Southwest coast of Victoria in Australia.
And I’m fascinated because you do such a great job of recreating landscape and this incredible sense of place how much are Mangowak is you.
[1:04] Well there are those people who say does have some resemblance to the place where I live.
And when my family lives in us for a long time. So there’s a lot of me in it of course,
so that’s what I call but what can be cold psychogeography if you like so your place is your place even though it has an external objective life outside due.
Inevitably it is your place because it’s laced.
It’s a palimpsest of your memories your relationship to it whether you came to it when you were born or where you came to apply to you’ve created.
Partly in your own mods how to write novels and fiction lies place that you come from and leaving.
Have a relationship with his just to make That explicit really as far as I’m concerned.
I love that the first book the patron saint of eels is a delicious book. It’s it’s gentle but insightful,
and it’s got this wonderful with many wonderful characters but one in particular,
fry oniono who is the patron saint of eels and there’s so much wisdom in this book.
[2:26] I think it deserves it towards that won several Awards but,
what are the things that I really found so interesting to it’s Friday I said at one point back then I just believe in miracles with a devil Criminal,
but here it is upside down believe it in Miracles Visionaries a shot away in jails and hospitals.
[2:52] The modern world.
Well nothing from me I think I’m talk Connor talking about Australia and.
[3:06] And I can’t even really talk about astray I could talk about Victoria and now I could say I kind of been talked about Victoria or I could say I could talk about Southwest Victoria.
But yeah Australia as a place that was.
[3:22] The thousands of years kind of drenched in a metaphysical mythological culture.
Online Skype in Maine Peter Pan’s kind and stripped all that away.
And so I think we were kind of left we are the inheritance of a place that he’s doesn’t really credit the Unseen.
[3:48] You know the fairies in the bottom of the God know whatever you want want to say we done we’ve made it all material.
So that’s part of the land grab that happened in Victoria and it’s the the consequences of that at that yeah we done where is backing when I was living in Calabria.
[4:09] I planted years ago.
Well that was a kind of a different type of totalitarian anyway you know the church ruled and as he says he know if you didn’t believe in or at least if you didn’t say you believed in Miracles you’re in trouble,
the heater cost yeah it is it’s very interesting that it’s reversed like that.
[4:30] So that help out of this whole thing with those books is trying to credit the unsaying into anime some of the spirit and some of the metaphysics,
of the place because it’s still there it’s there and wait we have enough sorry to pretend it’s not he’s kind of do you think that’s one of the.
Things that I guess it’s a quick way of saying what’s wrong with the one world is it disjunct between the unsane and the natural,
and are we in Australia today doing ourselves a disservice By ignoring that,
extraordinary and long past that was in fact the indigenous,
cost of the people who lived here or are we actually overlaying that culture in that lot with his older more than you know idealized version version of of that time in that culture.
Yeah I think about doing all of that.
[5:29] And it’s incredibly complex but I just think from my phone to you as a Rasha rotting in English.
In Australia in Waller on Country if you lock and so I’m riding with the language that come from here was imposed upon here and so as soon as you start writing about landscape.
Estrella your animatedly in the political realm and yarina a very.
I think it made Italy quite complicated round and sorry to make it simple on the page requires a lot of thinking and walking and and reading,
and reflecting talking to historians just trying to work at what has happened and so.
So therefore we as a writer.
[6:26] Trying to find a voice to talk about that stuff and I think that’s one of the things the culture as a whole really doesn’t have a voice for this to the insane where is.
England has a voice for the Unseen even England America certainly does now with these old cons of excesses that happened with religion we know that’s how it’s no I’m not saying that you know we’re going to become religious or spiritual.
But it in us as humans because we don’t know where we came from and we don’t know where we’re going to go to ultimately and so the young saying he’s a huge part of my life.
And side to write about it in English in this place is just it’s just come to my obsession a really good job of reaching that guy,
did in fact this book switch,
when you read them out on one level very simple to lot. No worries about Ordinary People and then live and in mango black,
doing things that we all can identify with Israelite to but there is always a sense when I read your work there is much deeper you’ve achieved its extraordinary.
[7:40] Dixon and sense of all the cities somehow imbued in the rising that’s in the space between the woods I don’t quite know how you do that and perhaps you could tell us as best as you can but I’m also tell me about that,
cuz I find that fascinating that these books are so delighted.
[8:03] Well you’re a book Lover James so you know book is not read until it’s Ray Ray.
And once it’s rate then it has to have dipped otherwise it’s boring first time narrative plot my mention we can get through second time it’s got to have lions,
so that’s part of beat craft to a certain extent of it.
[8:29] Yes the thing that’s coming to mind these Rod Harley love is John McCain.
An Irish novelist and short story writer Barry Wright Rhonda.
[8:41] And he you know you know I like when you grew up you were taught Gaelic in the schools and several that it was just in the mix.
So he got he he gets a big guy like but he never Russian guy.
The cadences of Gaelic were underneath everything you ever did but there was never any sign of it.
And so this is kind of geology that goes on with books I can’t really explain that since you’re talking about in his book stock the geology other than to say.
Offending rotting you suggest you don’t declare.
[9:22] Could rotting saw that something on the wear off.
[9:27] And maybe it maybe it’s got something to do with the.
[9:33] Turn on fashionable way about the passion I have for that price it can’t really be held on a page can be held on a page,
and most of what you feel kind if that makes any sense. That makes a lot of sense but how,
so how where are you when you’re actually in the rotting present so when I read your work if it comes across as if it was all I had visions of you just being out with rotten tie Pages without having to stop
when I ride it’s it’s it’s often.
Challenging and difficult and it takes you know half a day to write a paragraph that I’m happy with but you’ll rotting comes across as just thought of this effortless,
Atwood flowing
not even stream-of-consciousness what is an element of that perhaps I don’t know but are you self-aware when you’re riding was it just,
I think so I think it’s one of those things where are you.
This is the sunniest I mean you’re writing for if you wanted to quantify it in time.
[10:50] You’re actually Rising,
so not much time in your life what about your thinking about what you’re going to do Carnival wise and so when you go to do it that.
Goal that unconscious synaptic kind of speed he’s all in there behind that so all the thinking at all that behaving and all that he’s all day so.
It’s definitely all all the reflection and all the complexity should bathe a but then you got to sing.
You know you can’t Rancho you can’t you know kind of explicate it’s the normal guy so you going to sing and say singing you you just say.
That’s because you’re a musician and also polish and I think that,
there’s a very strong themes in your work not just over today but there is a musicality in your writing I think in the Poetry that comes through,
very well and music I found the consistency and you say there’s a wonderful description of Shadows in the patricide DeVilles way you talk about the baby,
so sweet but so sad because they could not let the decoration to the original ground and that’s about.
[12:14] The fact that we have created this very Material World on top of the natural world and we therefore denied,
not just animals and birds and plants their place but also something is on photo of I think of Shadows and you’ll really good doing that and I wonder.
Music is a Fame poetry but also the land is this extraordinary consistent theme in your books and so important.
Do you still think do you think the land still exist a false in today’s world in the way that you write about in your books. I think it rules the world.
And I mean.
[12:59] In the most unconscious why people on their lives are completely determined by landscape.
[13:08] And I wants a natural landscape architect cultural landscape to these dice’s slot difference.
But fundamentally this is all the thing with the climate change issue and fondle it fundamentally it’s the ground we walk on.
Sorry everything that really basically masses.
Comes from at black artists painters boxes on would say you know nature is the teacher.
What is on the teacher because nature is what we are like this is the element wearing way like you know it all fishing the Buttonwood we are in this thing started because it’s there it’s it’s backgrounds locking it’s it’s often treated us a nursery,
so it’s background not foreground,
in the why we say the world so we walk on the ground when I was thinking about the fact we walking on the ground all the time when breathing the air the air is on saying it’s invisible but do anything to the air,
and we’re in big trouble. We can save ya,
so this is the thing the country have to be conscious of what you can’t say because the air is the thing we breathe and we can’t say it.
Between you and me it is all the stuff that we can’t say sorry all yeah I think it’s it’s it’s.
[14:24] And the great thing for me as a kind of the more lyrical side of me is that.
[14:31] I love all of the natural landscape because it’s not something that men might.
Saw something that as humans we all have flaws and faults in each of us we not.
We didn’t make it maybe we are kind of affecting at in changing it but ultimately originally it’s not as we did not make it.
Largest I need that,
cuz it’s a romantic view of it cuz you know you say you go out and I will let you know I don’t have to think about what we’ve done and what I’ve done.
But push it too but that in itself is something that people need I mean looking hospitals or schools or you know.
Nature is used just continually to make people feel little bit better.
[15:19] But then again we created this massive discharge from nycha people living in,
cities of the becoming more and more open on Australia which is always being this extraordinary landscape,
and for a long time even though the carnival in last night was at a place of,
Garden biggest spices in the last 20 years in Victoria we are reducing the space
people are getting more and more crowded and so we’re at she cutting people off more and more and more from the landscape from the organic World from from nature itself.
I mean it is complex.
[16:03] I think it’s a mistake and it’s been used it gets commodify so it gets colonized by the neoliberal corporate world,
to not use it to sell all the times that I used to Brandon,
are all times of the thing that destroy Federal natural terms.
When you have a football stadium go to Disneyland with an Aboriginal word and you get rid of that and you call that United after real estate agent you know things like that,
that happened sorry yes definitely if they didn’t really nasty time in terms of that just since the fall of the Berlin Wall I think it’s just like you know I say that communism doesn’t work. Doesn’t work is freaks,
cop Blanc to just go excessively into this profit-driven way of living life,
confession I thought I heard of the the Berlin wall that full that moment so we just do what we lock down the course,
when I was nearly 20 years down the track from that and where we are really discovering,
if that doesn’t work at the planet.
Because it goes way not separate from that to we on it so.
[17:32] What are the things to that come through your books not just the land but the ocean and you have a great since I think about the land at Sea as though you yourself so more than most people that you understand a little.
That many people as you said. I think I think you’ll seeing a lot more that’s why I think it was really important you talk in the paint inside of the Hills.
Of a great and successful Road within the ocean.
[18:04] Well the ocean is.
[18:15] I’m not saying anything that other people I’m saying I think the job of the rotted I was just to find the woods or a really really.
I’m really sure I’m not saying anything that other pic of that saying it’s just that when you’re writing.
[18:31] Your job if you bring it into the light or suppose you find some kind of description.
For that entire world but I think you’re making people think Sunday when you read your books think of things are outside in Philadelphia for saying things.
So that’s definitely something that I’m really aware of.
Electricity in terms of plants and animals and clouds and ocean and so forth.
But then there’s another literacy in terms of atmosphere and the why a particular person in the place you leave.
[19:08] He’s comfortable in a particular spot or remind you of a particular spot so.
[19:15] That’s something that because I you know love.
The place where I leave I’ve become very interested in and I think the history of it’s very interesting I’ll spend my life be coming late retina 13 original literature if you like.
Is something that is dry razani just coming to understand strides been obsessed with itself as a nation.
Spencer I think of little things like.
Once again I fear in the island or England or Spain or Columbia you might write about that particular heal.
[19:55] But orino there is a sense of county-by-county has a literature that he.
I mean once again going back the Aboriginal map of us drive 250 languages it was very very very much original thing in this country is not the same country is as you know if you are out of its land or something.
So that literacy becomes normal specific but the the idea and this is the thing with with Facebook’s is to make that Rachel that local into turn it into the universal.
[20:30] Kind of thing because it’s a human experience a wise.
Sorry Australian smart love you know magic realism from Columbia offer in India they might let you know the next Halo voices from island or whatever in their literature the finest hot how to understand it.
There is that kind of elements going on here too and.
I’m interested in that you actually have achieved what I think is a relatively rare thing which is an Australian voice and Pat’s at because you do.
[21:06] Pay your respects will give pay your dues I have to the indigenous element.
That is here you’ll part of Australia but also to the colonized voice.
I find the three books to the mangle X Series feels very gentle but Ron the khoikhoi Sea of Diamonds I think he’s.
[21:34] Having read it now, I think it’s really got a lot to do with death,
I mean I think of them when I say that to do these three books was like well I’m going to it’s this many different ways of looking at this situation in this place,
so I’m going to do three books that take a slightly different approach so the patron saint of eels was,
what what some people called wisdom literature to 5 it’s a way into the insane,
in The Real McCoys saved on his was like well let’s do a Thomas Hardy.
Type of approach in the landscape and then the third book in the Grand Hotel what is.
[22:25] A bat I suppose I should be cool if ass,
inside wow this is this state feeling that this kind of tragic loss but in the end.
You know any interview I kind of interested in conveying somehow,
loyal to us try and temperament you’ve got a laugh you’ve got to say the it says he you know that it’s kind of surreal I really enjoyed that ass pickup,
each of the three books really does give you something quite different today the different sort of.
[23:05] Irondequoit see if dog has an edge to it but the other two dying to do and I also I really enjoyed that, too I love the Beast,
the iridex can you tell us about that you’re addicted to is it real and I are the things that.
It’s Sam it’s a it’s a spoof on kind of.
[23:32] The weird excesses of Tourism and have I clash with local communities and so I looked at all these tears and management manuals guide.
Rock that could have caused what happens in Australia size along this Great Ocean Road area has already happened,
initially 200 years ago in America hundred years ago it’s already this oldest industrial process of selling up selling this beautiful place,
it’s already been through it all I would just kind of getting to it now and so there’s a lot of documentation of it.
Thai place like Avantis I mean the history of tourism in Venice guys back a millennium,
there is a document called the index of local irritation to tourism iridex which was in tourism management manual that was written in the 70s,
and it is an index bicycle charging,
what happens in a small beautiful little Matthew fishing town or something when it started to be promoted is tourism so they get terrorism terrorist coming into the town Strange’s.
[24:36] And so there’s a there’s a chat there bullet list of what happens when that like the first stages you know if they.
I get excited because you know this new people around.
Basically it goes through the different stages between when the exhaust studs were stopped to get him an annoying and it’s not to drive them mad and in the end I think the last dialed you something like resignation.
[25:02] And that’s in the tourism management also what the Terrace Management in your assigned to tourism arthritis this is this is the resistance you’re going to encounter these the reaction when you try to do this in this small town.
So you going to get this is nice but in the end it’s okay because I’ll just be resolved on to it in the end you’ll be fine you got to do a lock now that’s a true document,
it’s crazy but it’s true and so the Grand Hotel’s got a mixture of reality and and knees and suck both in it,
it’s certainly done but in the in the question of diamond do you have this wonderful prize when you say the date make the living think,
and that really resonated with me because I do think that’s actually really true particularly As you move through life you get to be older and cause more and more people around you. Your face with your mortality.
Peter mean,
and it’s beautifully realized I think it’s Carnival my dependency or in the way it’s a lot of that in that book I think.
[26:19] Tremendous amounts of wisdom in your books do you say yourself as a wise person.
[26:26] Narcos notch I think there’s an incredible amount of wisdom in people all the time.
[26:36] I could have conversations every die with PayPal and eyesight things and if they had a talk to a lawyer if I were famous person and they said it on television will pay for be banging on about a Fridays but they just sign it and they could have nobody and nobody notices images drifts away on the Wind,
people saying why people leaving wisely and unwisely all the time so I just like to think of that is within the book says.
[27:02] There isn’t there is a part of me that is really really passionate a little bit of urgent about us getting back into balance.
Said that drives some of the message that the other side is just giving voices a common wisdoms.
Not particularly eloquent stuff about to but you certainly achieve that do you think we will get back into balance.
Have we ever achieved balance do you think was there a time in human history when to have to be we had that opportunity for balance and we.
Just went in a different direction but I think we’re at a pretty interesting point now because.
If you look at human history and you look good like I said I reach the point of industrialization and what we’re dealing with now is that so we didn’t with call.
That’s what we dealing with intended Bible woman with dealing with call and Collies.
[27:59] What is a chicken’s Charles Dickens it’s it’s that industrial monument and cost time is in a ounce of time,
but this big active history this moment we’re at the carnival end of the industrial Monument where we’re understanding all of that call we have a fuse too much that it’s having this effect so we have to change,
sorry to get that balance,
Justin because we have a finite resource or an atmosphere with limits we understand now so.
Things have to change so tremendous resistance.
So that change the reason the balance is about population and and and the another technology so.
[28:47] As a as a kind of as a as a Spacey’s we’ve never had to have to as far as I know deal with,
the idea of balance in the in the same way that we do not think this is this is really the moment when I look at my kids.
[29:06] This is the moment will you talk in your books you say things like.
Even this late in the human story do you see us is having an ending as a relation human story so.
[29:21] I kind of think there’s no beginning and no into everything so.
[29:29] The Great Wheel of human things.
I know I have not to be honest in a while I was going to say if I didn’t have children I wouldn’t really care.
[29:45] That’s just being really kind of small minded.
Best I think that some it could be lies in this particular story.
Interesting I like. But there’s a lot of work thing down there by paper like George mom be out in England and James voice in Australia about saying.
Well we keep thrashing Humanity but.
What we thought I also understand is we are South altruistic is a species we are so insightful we are so generous we are so giving we care about things we don’t have to,
we’ve got to start Ray to find herself to ourselves and think about ourselves in that way and emphasized by strength so we can get out of this hole,
well that’s interesting to me because it does seem to be the Journey of quite a lot of your characters and we come to your photo I think to some degree that is the journey.
The troll characters here are actually going through it it is really having experience of Horrors of the of the war and then finding as Wisconsin cell phone King Island and being on crazy and having the Pole Experience,
the tightest infect the journey this discovery this reshaping reimagining of one soap as a base of person there perhaps one is that.
Yeah I mean I think that’s that’s.
[31:13] I think you’re right that you’re not that that’s a knock of a when one of the old it when I was writing that book I kind of started to think about.
There were 10 Soldier which is really a common theme in Worcester and black Australia.
East conformist the oldest story that there is it home, and it’s and it’s all the way through and what that is is it’s a person generally a man because it’s is kind of war that mean far.
It goes into this mythological battle and.
[31:53] Looks darkness in the face looks death in the face does things.
That but I didn’t think I could do by the evil and good.
[32:06] Leeds lock in an intensification lock lock seldom he’s Wars is intensification Everything Is Awesome.
[32:14] Come back to Penelope and telemachus and.
[32:20] How do we do that how do we just tip a hat at the post office and get on with it.
I’m sorry the Reconstruction of the cell itself gets torn apart and then it has to be put back together and end things locked altruism and things locked up they have passed of oneself.
Have to be discovered to put that Darkness into balance and I think that’s true I think with where is that is that,
but if you realized the game I think it’s grading Saj but I find that fascinating too because if you would you do the folding table and yet to me this is one of the really.
[32:59] Insightful such an awareness of the reality of War on that moment and what that must have been like an you you portray that so well but again sorry that stuff to the treatment of the imagination.
How much research went into the archipelago’s lost because the previous three books are in a place and roughly in a time that I know so my life was my race it and respond yet.
[33:28] The second mobile. Spent a lot of time working on them but I’ve never leave there such so yeah a lot of research I took a long time took that 5 years and a lot of that was just Festival going spending time.
Cuz it’s not just about reading books I mean you have to write I’m not a military, I’ve never been interested in military thing so I had to catch up,
a hell of a long way because there’s all kinds of Transport is that they when they raid a book about a battle of crait they going to be there looking for your mistakes.
[34:01] She just wanted to be real so yeah it was a lot of research and you put you had that wonderful experience euroshop house tea and marmalade,
call Ross gay and that hotel Domain Hotel.
But actually being there and experience. So how early in the process of researching you meet those women probably would have hate you.
In the book because that was such a compelling guy so I was always very friendly with the curator of the Museum of crazy in the Rock Leone he’s a great guy and I said to him I was going up to Hana which is another,
play some crate with a sensual kind of things in the battle.
[34:50] I said what should I go when I got behind you know what should I do cause 2 where should I go to kind of I don’t really it’s not information I’m after its atmosphere is feeling mad map of this,
kind of hotel is Olcott Grand hotel but which is now in a kind of suburb of Honea kind of on its own right on the say that,
and he said that they are not going to tell you anything just got there I go to that place so I went day on a Sunday it was the anniversary of the battle just happened to be a real maybe you just have maybe I’ll make that happen.
And I went out there on a Sunday morning running a very quiet and walking into this hotel,
and there was a young woman and old woman sitting behind the concierge counter.
And I said, I may help you in not sit well not really I’ll just come here because you know.
[35:45] This hotel is so important in the end I started to kind of give him a bit of the spiel about the ridiculous and the old woman just.
Yes I know I was there or not cuz I said something like it to the 75th Anniversary yes or no and then when the Germans invaded.
The Germans took that house as they headquarters on the island.
And these these two sisters are still living that hotel that I work 6 nights non-use out at that time and she just briefly said something something something happened instead,
she pulls interested would you like to come up and have a cup of tea making talk about it,
yeah so her and her sister we went upstairs and this beautiful room spent the whole day.
With these two older women beautiful women Tommy just so generous.
[36:53] And that were bright friends with the Italian Rada Antonio tabucchi who I also I love and he goes there when he died but he he used to go there every year and,
I would like Mama light switch he particularly loved and so they made this mama lie to me and I gave me some Jaws to take,
and saw that it was just really moving beautiful time so right this place in this trying about it which then people made them aware of in crate so then we had this time I just thought I’d touch bar was really really lovely.
[37:27] Those incredible intersections of moment in life to me that kind of gift from the gods and you had.
[37:38] And it’s wonderful that you rush about it because then you’d encapsulated.
[37:45] Something about the temperament with which you come to these things like I think,
even though I was being ridiculous presumptuous to them I must have saying they must have thought out he’s just a poor little innocent educating and so it was okay for them to do what we got on really well,
so then by spending a day with him it would be worth in our spending three five years in a library reading books about crate that one day just told me more and I couldn’t use any office,
because it was kind of too light but the same study guide me really help,
what you drinking Gatorade and that therefore is all my septic gift in itself that you you coming to this place,
and you’ve written this book and then oh my God you make the people who were there who were the all Witnesses and they tell you the really what you’ve written is,
school today,
and cost us not a lot associate director the museum say he is it was a setup he probably knew that we probably get on our time that this might happen,
and he’s already set me up with he asked me out to the museum and I directly on took me out on to this friend unless he’s old man in this old man,
was the son of one of the main resistance fighters in the world who had seen his father shop in the firing squad and just before his father had been shot.
[39:10] His father was screaming and it wasn’t locked inside and all he was screaming that was tyke my boy away so he doesn’t see this and they didn’t and he saw it and then Costas put me and him together.
Beautiful I’ll man you know.
[39:29] People’s like that this searing moment just completely format even still still the biggest thing in his life and,
so when you when you somehow bearing witness to that material once you make people I got to spend some time in the minute I spend some time with some Australian soldiers who they to become some kind of responsibility as it as yet saving dreams begin responsibilities,
and that’s part of the process so if it comes from a lyric impulse to sing,
and then you go into the territory and then it becomes a responsibility as well.
I think I see that lady don’t know I think I think so.
[40:13] I would say about your books and I want to hear about you and you booked all your books like the rate of feeling so you’re telling true stories.
Stories of people that you knew on you know or even your own story and I think this is extraordinary.
Since solve.
[40:34] I told myself if you can’t let go of course yes like as a recognition when you Rachel.
Powerful and one of the things that I think.
So many moments in your books when it’s just moments of wisdom and insight and things that I think are important for people to read and understand in their life as you go through this on this Mortal Journey,
but one of them that really resonated with me was you say Walking Dead was the point of life when we had to Nadia opportunity to give.
I like to keep apps that still sell alive in the world but it’s not what we see,
and he has the really loud conduff Kaepernick message somebody constantly getting an album world,
through social media Trend you know what we getting so much more of the conduff,
material is taking negative do narcissistic
just be a Greek myth and now it’s a lot of people don’t get all that business I narcissistic,
yeah but I also think tell me that you don’t want him to gild the Lily orbea Pollyanna I think we are getting a lot of good stuff but we just.
It’s like you never say happiness Rights Watch.
[42:02] So the hottest story to write as a happy story because it’s not drama yes unique tension of conflict addicted,
five nights at the media recently conflict addicted I need a story that needs to be Conflict for a story set up create conflict will receive conflict,
will be compelled by its actual.
In between is all these other things which aunt is dramatic which I still think we’re getting these all these good things people of saying and doing and I do think we say that we just taken for granted,
I don’t think we nauseous.
Weiner system with the extraordinary increase in the pace of life and the things that we’ve owned by the way than the amount of information wherever well with the idea that you can just sit,
when did your loss of the season with the sitting on a train or tram or a box just sitting and thinking just sitting in quietly,
in Repose so. You know I already up oakhaven everyone’s on their phone you know it’s beginning to be a kick back to their people certainly disengaging,
shutting down final many young woman just recently he shut down the Facebook account and I said oh you know how’s that and she said it’s wonderful I put so much more time,
when people say the younger people ask me that Raji and they sell you know how to use.
[43:26] Do you have any advice or whatever and I said well can’t how many hours into wake you spend looking at a screen and.
Cut up half those hours and spend those that have that time spent that rotting.
That’s all you have to do do you wash on a computer by hand by hand notebooks,
wow 1010 North Avenue,
not equivalent to 10 and then die,
and then it gets transcribed into a computer and then I started itching,
you transcribing the confusion.
Have a job of making commentary or anything is she does or she just left,
Humboldt TV tried typing my handwriting is not kind of conducive to day trading pretty much a graphological exercise,
that yeah yes I rock by hand alright I’ll do a quad lot of stuff Eatery criticism stuff and I do all that on the computer when it comes to singing I can’t come.
[44:55] I find that the pro sets of thought to is different,
what pasta is the thing you know in the community Albert Camus novel to play as a character in that who wants to write a novel
he never gets past the first sentence because you can’t get the first sentence. He wants it perfect and it cost nothing is ever perfect,
I wouldn’t be able to finish it because I’d be in the first paragraph moving things around all the time but when you ride on Piper,
you can do if you scratch offs and all the rest of it but there’s a limit to what you can do then you just have to go to the next big cake going
books and write books were written by Jane Austen wrote my head and and they were multiple
puppies and you know when books were lost in the fire that was,
and a manuscript and also getting his fingernail cuttings from a mahasin throwing them into the bonfire as well when he been particularly,
so that was gone when did it that’s it left instructions.
[46:23] Oh yeah that’s right it’s a good feeling sophical conundrum,
when I also thought about it because she was VoDLocker flat Tooele yeah she would destroy the original manuscript,
which I find really fascinating as someone who really believes in the art of Illusion so the finished thing,
ship and copy salad by the person I send.
[47:10] Well.
I’m a saint. I’m in the middle of riding the coast was the mango at three books now in the middle of writing another set of three books of which archipelago of cells as the first one.
Archipelago of cells deals with the person who comes from Western Victoria and goes to Crate Grace and then comes back,
this next want to send a card to someone from Westin Victoria who goes to France.
And comes back and this story revolves around this the my Paris my 1968 student demonstrations 2 weapon demonstrations.
And my character is someone he’s a civil engineer who study who’s working on Sand Dune stabilisation along a guard Ocean Drive and at that point if you wanted to do research on that,
the place you went is France cuz I did a lot of in the revolution a year that did a lot of important Sand Dune stabilization and staff France to Paris was the place you got,
so he wanted to do.
[48:16] Advanced is kind of working Sandra stabilization they wasn’t much weapons Ben Thomas try so it goes to Paris in 1968.
Baby’s head in the sand and he’s in this moment prescribe intellectual cultural moment comparison 960 I,
high contrast from culture and then he comes back after going through this experience he comes back,
and we watch him.
[48:49] Changed and resigning yet.
28 + 28,
so it’s been wonderful having you in the book cave Gregory beautiful today here all the books and we’d like to know your three books of choice for our
virtual Time Capsule the books that you would leave the world a thousand years from now the three books that you think they opened people ought to read
okay well I thought about this,
and I could have gone for the the big epics that have had a great influence on me. I decided given the nature of my work and what it’s all the bass.
I decided to pick three intensely local books so the three books are,
Facebook. Very hard to find by the way they not imprint but they’re very special to me and I’ve really informed a lot of what I’ve done,
so the first one is a book by it’s not botanist call Beth God.
[50:03] Is very important,
woman in this room it’s a lot of work on Kurio Aboriginal plants in Australia which is.
One of my interests and said the book is called Victorian Curry plants and it goes through all the 90 plants in a landscape
and what I ask what that can be used for what were they what they were and still are and increasingly are again been used for
types of medicine food and so forth in Alaska.
[50:37] The second book is a book by an English detective erotic code author of field in the early 20th century and travel around the Sun.
Stay in a place for 6 months write a detective story in an in that place with he’s,
Aboriginal detective called Barney and he rose he came to the coast where I live in 1952.
To the Tamara,
it’s been 6 months day and wrote a book there a detective story that coat the clue of the new shoe which is all of its time its time,
and I was completely politically correct it will be challenging but it’s very very good at capturing a very kind of unfashionable middle 20 Century Australia,
and really good an atmosphere so that puts cold the closer than you shoot and.
The third book is a book written by a cry fisherman in lawn.
He lived his whole life in Long cry fishing and they did have discolored fishing in Port Phillip Bay.
[51:54] And he’s a very intelligent person who at the end of his life decided to rot a memoir.
Tele rideable code feel the same wind witch,
in my estimation it’s is a book in Australia called fortunate life farming Memoir of a real kind of a real life,
this is kind of like the coastal version of that anyway it’s a beautiful book and it’s at my local area like the author I filled in the pick up books.
And it’s a treasure.
Not in print anymore but it’s a real treasure say if I was going to put three books in the capsule IP from here,
wonderful looking forward to following up finding them and reading them thanks so much.
[52:48] Music.
Have a relationship with his just to make That explicit really as far as I’m concerned.
I love that the first book the patron saint of eels is a delicious book. It’s it’s gentle but insightful,
and it’s got this wonderful with many wonderful characters but one in particular,
fry oniono who is the patron saint of eels and there’s so much wisdom in this book.
[2:26] I think it deserves it towards that won several Awards but,
what are the things that I really found so interesting to it’s Friday I said at one point back then I just believe in miracles with a devil Criminal,
but here it is upside down believe it in Miracles Visionaries a shot away in jails and hospitals.
[2:52] The modern world.
Well nothing from me I think I’m talk Connor talking about Australia and.
[3:06] And I can’t even really talk about astray I could talk about Victoria and now I could say I kind of been talked about Victoria or I could say I could talk about Southwest Victoria.
But yeah Australia as a place that was.
[3:22] The thousands of years kind of drenched in a metaphysical mythological culture.
Online Skype in Maine Peter Pan’s kind and stripped all that away.
And so I think we were kind of left we are the inheritance of a place that he’s doesn’t really credit the Unseen.
[3:48] You know the fairies in the bottom of the God know whatever you want want to say we done we’ve made it all material.
So that’s part of the land grab that happened in Victoria and it’s the the consequences of that at that yeah we done where is backing when I was living in Calabria.
[4:09] I planted years ago.
Well that was a kind of a different type of totalitarian anyway you know the church ruled and as he says he know if you didn’t believe in or at least if you didn’t say you believed in Miracles you’re in trouble,
the heater cost yeah it is it’s very interesting that it’s reversed like that.
[4:30] So that help out of this whole thing with those books is trying to credit the unsaying into anime some of the spirit and some of the metaphysics,
of the place because it’s still there it’s there and wait we have enough sorry to pretend it’s not he’s kind of do you think that’s one of the.
Things that I guess it’s a quick way of saying what’s wrong with the one world is it disjunct between the unsane and the natural,
and are we in Australia today doing ourselves a disservice By ignoring that,
extraordinary and long past that was in fact the indigenous,
cost of the people who lived here or are we actually overlaying that culture in that lot with his older more than you know idealized version version of of that time in that culture.
Yeah I think about doing all of that.
[5:29] And it’s incredibly complex but I just think from my phone to you as a Rasha rotting in English.
In Australia in Waller on Country if you lock and so I’m riding with the language that come from here was imposed upon here and so as soon as you start writing about landscape.
Estrella your animatedly in the political realm and yarina a very.
I think it made Italy quite complicated round and sorry to make it simple on the page requires a lot of thinking and walking and and reading,
and reflecting talking to historians just trying to work at what has happened and so.
So therefore we as a writer.
[6:26] Trying to find a voice to talk about that stuff and I think that’s one of the things the culture as a whole really doesn’t have a voice for this to the insane where is.
England has a voice for the Unseen even England America certainly does now with these old cons of excesses that happened with religion we know that’s how it’s no I’m not saying that you know we’re going to become religious or spiritual.
But it in us as humans because we don’t know where we came from and we don’t know where we’re going to go to ultimately and so the young saying he’s a huge part of my life.
And side to write about it in English in this place is just it’s just come to my obsession a really good job of reaching that guy,
did in fact this book switch,
when you read them out on one level very simple to lot. No worries about Ordinary People and then live and in mango black,
doing things that we all can identify with Israelite to but there is always a sense when I read your work there is much deeper you’ve achieved its extraordinary.
[7:40] Dixon and sense of all the cities somehow imbued in the rising that’s in the space between the woods I don’t quite know how you do that and perhaps you could tell us as best as you can but I’m also tell me about that,
cuz I find that fascinating that these books are so delighted.
[8:03] Well you’re a book Lover James so you know book is not read until it’s Ray Ray.
And once it’s rate then it has to have dipped otherwise it’s boring first time narrative plot my mention we can get through second time it’s got to have lions,
so that’s part of beat craft to a certain extent of it.
[8:29] Yes the thing that’s coming to mind these Rod Harley love is John McCain.
An Irish novelist and short story writer Barry Wright Rhonda.
[8:41] And he you know you know I like when you grew up you were taught Gaelic in the schools and several that it was just in the mix.
So he got he he gets a big guy like but he never Russian guy.
The cadences of Gaelic were underneath everything you ever did but there was never any sign of it.
And so this is kind of geology that goes on with books I can’t really explain that since you’re talking about in his book stock the geology other than to say.
Offending rotting you suggest you don’t declare.
[9:22] Could rotting saw that something on the wear off.
[9:27] And maybe it maybe it’s got something to do with the.
[9:33] Turn on fashionable way about the passion I have for that price it can’t really be held on a page can be held on a page,
and most of what you feel kind if that makes any sense. That makes a lot of sense but how,
so how where are you when you’re actually in the rotting present so when I read your work if it comes across as if it was all I had visions of you just being out with rotten tie Pages without having to stop
when I ride it’s it’s it’s often.
Challenging and difficult and it takes you know half a day to write a paragraph that I’m happy with but you’ll rotting comes across as just thought of this effortless,
Atwood flowing
not even stream-of-consciousness what is an element of that perhaps I don’t know but are you self-aware when you’re riding was it just,
I think so I think it’s one of those things where are you.
This is the sunniest I mean you’re writing for if you wanted to quantify it in time.
[10:50] You’re actually Rising,
so not much time in your life what about your thinking about what you’re going to do Carnival wise and so when you go to do it that.
Goal that unconscious synaptic kind of speed he’s all in there behind that so all the thinking at all that behaving and all that he’s all day so.
It’s definitely all all the reflection and all the complexity should bathe a but then you got to sing.
You know you can’t Rancho you can’t you know kind of explicate it’s the normal guy so you going to sing and say singing you you just say.
That’s because you’re a musician and also polish and I think that,
there’s a very strong themes in your work not just over today but there is a musicality in your writing I think in the Poetry that comes through,
very well and music I found the consistency and you say there’s a wonderful description of Shadows in the patricide DeVilles way you talk about the baby,
so sweet but so sad because they could not let the decoration to the original ground and that’s about.
[12:14] The fact that we have created this very Material World on top of the natural world and we therefore denied,
not just animals and birds and plants their place but also something is on photo of I think of Shadows and you’ll really good doing that and I wonder.
Music is a Fame poetry but also the land is this extraordinary consistent theme in your books and so important.
Do you still think do you think the land still exist a false in today’s world in the way that you write about in your books. I think it rules the world.
And I mean.
[12:59] In the most unconscious why people on their lives are completely determined by landscape.
[13:08] And I wants a natural landscape architect cultural landscape to these dice’s slot difference.
But fundamentally this is all the thing with the climate change issue and fondle it fundamentally it’s the ground we walk on.
Sorry everything that really basically masses.
Comes from at black artists painters boxes on would say you know nature is the teacher.
What is on the teacher because nature is what we are like this is the element wearing way like you know it all fishing the Buttonwood we are in this thing started because it’s there it’s it’s backgrounds locking it’s it’s often treated us a nursery,
so it’s background not foreground,
in the why we say the world so we walk on the ground when I was thinking about the fact we walking on the ground all the time when breathing the air the air is on saying it’s invisible but do anything to the air,
and we’re in big trouble. We can save ya,
so this is the thing the country have to be conscious of what you can’t say because the air is the thing we breathe and we can’t say it.
Between you and me it is all the stuff that we can’t say sorry all yeah I think it’s it’s it’s.
[14:24] And the great thing for me as a kind of the more lyrical side of me is that.
[14:31] I love all of the natural landscape because it’s not something that men might.
Saw something that as humans we all have flaws and faults in each of us we not.
We didn’t make it maybe we are kind of affecting at in changing it but ultimately originally it’s not as we did not make it.
Largest I need that,
cuz it’s a romantic view of it cuz you know you say you go out and I will let you know I don’t have to think about what we’ve done and what I’ve done.
But push it too but that in itself is something that people need I mean looking hospitals or schools or you know.
Nature is used just continually to make people feel little bit better.
[15:19] But then again we created this massive discharge from nycha people living in,
cities of the becoming more and more open on Australia which is always being this extraordinary landscape,
and for a long time even though the carnival in last night was at a place of,
Garden biggest spices in the last 20 years in Victoria we are reducing the space
people are getting more and more crowded and so we’re at she cutting people off more and more and more from the landscape from the organic World from from nature itself.
I mean it is complex.
[16:03] I think it’s a mistake and it’s been used it gets commodify so it gets colonized by the neoliberal corporate world,
to not use it to sell all the times that I used to Brandon,
are all times of the thing that destroy Federal natural terms.
When you have a football stadium go to Disneyland with an Aboriginal word and you get rid of that and you call that United after real estate agent you know things like that,
that happened sorry yes definitely if they didn’t really nasty time in terms of that just since the fall of the Berlin Wall I think it’s just like you know I say that communism doesn’t work. Doesn’t work is freaks,
cop Blanc to just go excessively into this profit-driven way of living life,
confession I thought I heard of the the Berlin wall that full that moment so we just do what we lock down the course,
when I was nearly 20 years down the track from that and where we are really discovering,
if that doesn’t work at the planet.
Because it goes way not separate from that to we on it so.
[17:32] What are the things to that come through your books not just the land but the ocean and you have a great since I think about the land at Sea as though you yourself so more than most people that you understand a little.
That many people as you said. I think I think you’ll seeing a lot more that’s why I think it was really important you talk in the paint inside of the Hills.
Of a great and successful Road within the ocean.
[18:04] Well the ocean is.
[18:15] I’m not saying anything that other people I’m saying I think the job of the rotted I was just to find the woods or a really really.
I’m really sure I’m not saying anything that other pic of that saying it’s just that when you’re writing.
[18:31] Your job if you bring it into the light or suppose you find some kind of description.
For that entire world but I think you’re making people think Sunday when you read your books think of things are outside in Philadelphia for saying things.
So that’s definitely something that I’m really aware of.
Electricity in terms of plants and animals and clouds and ocean and so forth.
But then there’s another literacy in terms of atmosphere and the why a particular person in the place you leave.
[19:08] He’s comfortable in a particular spot or remind you of a particular spot so.
[19:15] That’s something that because I you know love.
The place where I leave I’ve become very interested in and I think the history of it’s very interesting I’ll spend my life be coming late retina 13 original literature if you like.
Is something that is dry razani just coming to understand strides been obsessed with itself as a nation.
Spencer I think of little things like.
Once again I fear in the island or England or Spain or Columbia you might write about that particular heal.
[19:55] But orino there is a sense of county-by-county has a literature that he.
I mean once again going back the Aboriginal map of us drive 250 languages it was very very very much original thing in this country is not the same country is as you know if you are out of its land or something.
So that literacy becomes normal specific but the the idea and this is the thing with with Facebook’s is to make that Rachel that local into turn it into the universal.
[20:30] Kind of thing because it’s a human experience a wise.
Sorry Australian smart love you know magic realism from Columbia offer in India they might let you know the next Halo voices from island or whatever in their literature the finest hot how to understand it.
There is that kind of elements going on here too and.
I’m interested in that you actually have achieved what I think is a relatively rare thing which is an Australian voice and Pat’s at because you do.
[21:06] Pay your respects will give pay your dues I have to the indigenous element.
That is here you’ll part of Australia but also to the colonized voice.
I find the three books to the mangle X Series feels very gentle but Ron the khoikhoi Sea of Diamonds I think he’s.
[21:34] Having read it now, I think it’s really got a lot to do with death,
I mean I think of them when I say that to do these three books was like well I’m going to it’s this many different ways of looking at this situation in this place,
so I’m going to do three books that take a slightly different approach so the patron saint of eels was,
what what some people called wisdom literature to 5 it’s a way into the insane,
in The Real McCoys saved on his was like well let’s do a Thomas Hardy.
Type of approach in the landscape and then the third book in the Grand Hotel what is.
[22:25] A bat I suppose I should be cool if ass,
inside wow this is this state feeling that this kind of tragic loss but in the end.
You know any interview I kind of interested in conveying somehow,
loyal to us try and temperament you’ve got a laugh you’ve got to say the it says he you know that it’s kind of surreal I really enjoyed that ass pickup,
each of the three books really does give you something quite different today the different sort of.
[23:05] Irondequoit see if dog has an edge to it but the other two dying to do and I also I really enjoyed that, too I love the Beast,
the iridex can you tell us about that you’re addicted to is it real and I are the things that.
It’s Sam it’s a it’s a spoof on kind of.
[23:32] The weird excesses of Tourism and have I clash with local communities and so I looked at all these tears and management manuals guide.
Rock that could have caused what happens in Australia size along this Great Ocean Road area has already happened,
initially 200 years ago in America hundred years ago it’s already this oldest industrial process of selling up selling this beautiful place,
it’s already been through it all I would just kind of getting to it now and so there’s a lot of documentation of it.
Thai place like Avantis I mean the history of tourism in Venice guys back a millennium,
there is a document called the index of local irritation to tourism iridex which was in tourism management manual that was written in the 70s,
and it is an index bicycle charging,
what happens in a small beautiful little Matthew fishing town or something when it started to be promoted is tourism so they get terrorism terrorist coming into the town Strange’s.
[24:36] And so there’s a there’s a chat there bullet list of what happens when that like the first stages you know if they.
I get excited because you know this new people around.
Basically it goes through the different stages between when the exhaust studs were stopped to get him an annoying and it’s not to drive them mad and in the end I think the last dialed you something like resignation.
[25:02] And that’s in the tourism management also what the Terrace Management in your assigned to tourism arthritis this is this is the resistance you’re going to encounter these the reaction when you try to do this in this small town.
So you going to get this is nice but in the end it’s okay because I’ll just be resolved on to it in the end you’ll be fine you got to do a lock now that’s a true document,
it’s crazy but it’s true and so the Grand Hotel’s got a mixture of reality and and knees and suck both in it,
it’s certainly done but in the in the question of diamond do you have this wonderful prize when you say the date make the living think,
and that really resonated with me because I do think that’s actually really true particularly As you move through life you get to be older and cause more and more people around you. Your face with your mortality.
Peter mean,
and it’s beautifully realized I think it’s Carnival my dependency or in the way it’s a lot of that in that book I think.
[26:19] Tremendous amounts of wisdom in your books do you say yourself as a wise person.
[26:26] Narcos notch I think there’s an incredible amount of wisdom in people all the time.
[26:36] I could have conversations every die with PayPal and eyesight things and if they had a talk to a lawyer if I were famous person and they said it on television will pay for be banging on about a Fridays but they just sign it and they could have nobody and nobody notices images drifts away on the Wind,
people saying why people leaving wisely and unwisely all the time so I just like to think of that is within the book says.
[27:02] There isn’t there is a part of me that is really really passionate a little bit of urgent about us getting back into balance.
Said that drives some of the message that the other side is just giving voices a common wisdoms.
Not particularly eloquent stuff about to but you certainly achieve that do you think we will get back into balance.
Have we ever achieved balance do you think was there a time in human history when to have to be we had that opportunity for balance and we.
Just went in a different direction but I think we’re at a pretty interesting point now because.
If you look at human history and you look good like I said I reach the point of industrialization and what we’re dealing with now is that so we didn’t with call.
That’s what we dealing with intended Bible woman with dealing with call and Collies.
[27:59] What is a chicken’s Charles Dickens it’s it’s that industrial monument and cost time is in a ounce of time,
but this big active history this moment we’re at the carnival end of the industrial Monument where we’re understanding all of that call we have a fuse too much that it’s having this effect so we have to change,
sorry to get that balance,
Justin because we have a finite resource or an atmosphere with limits we understand now so.
Things have to change so tremendous resistance.
So that change the reason the balance is about population and and and the another technology so.
[28:47] As a as a kind of as a as a Spacey’s we’ve never had to have to as far as I know deal with,
the idea of balance in the in the same way that we do not think this is this is really the moment when I look at my kids.
[29:06] This is the moment will you talk in your books you say things like.
Even this late in the human story do you see us is having an ending as a relation human story so.
[29:21] I kind of think there’s no beginning and no into everything so.
[29:29] The Great Wheel of human things.
I know I have not to be honest in a while I was going to say if I didn’t have children I wouldn’t really care.
[29:45] That’s just being really kind of small minded.
Best I think that some it could be lies in this particular story.
Interesting I like. But there’s a lot of work thing down there by paper like George mom be out in England and James voice in Australia about saying.
Well we keep thrashing Humanity but.
What we thought I also understand is we are South altruistic is a species we are so insightful we are so generous we are so giving we care about things we don’t have to,
we’ve got to start Ray to find herself to ourselves and think about ourselves in that way and emphasized by strength so we can get out of this hole,
well that’s interesting to me because it does seem to be the Journey of quite a lot of your characters and we come to your photo I think to some degree that is the journey.
The troll characters here are actually going through it it is really having experience of Horrors of the of the war and then finding as Wisconsin cell phone King Island and being on crazy and having the Pole Experience,
the tightest infect the journey this discovery this reshaping reimagining of one soap as a base of person there perhaps one is that.
Yeah I mean I think that’s that’s.
[31:13] I think you’re right that you’re not that that’s a knock of a when one of the old it when I was writing that book I kind of started to think about.
There were 10 Soldier which is really a common theme in Worcester and black Australia.
East conformist the oldest story that there is it home, and it’s and it’s all the way through and what that is is it’s a person generally a man because it’s is kind of war that mean far.
It goes into this mythological battle and.
[31:53] Looks darkness in the face looks death in the face does things.
That but I didn’t think I could do by the evil and good.
[32:06] Leeds lock in an intensification lock lock seldom he’s Wars is intensification Everything Is Awesome.
[32:14] Come back to Penelope and telemachus and.
[32:20] How do we do that how do we just tip a hat at the post office and get on with it.
I’m sorry the Reconstruction of the cell itself gets torn apart and then it has to be put back together and end things locked altruism and things locked up they have passed of oneself.
Have to be discovered to put that Darkness into balance and I think that’s true I think with where is that is that,
but if you realized the game I think it’s grading Saj but I find that fascinating too because if you would you do the folding table and yet to me this is one of the really.
[32:59] Insightful such an awareness of the reality of War on that moment and what that must have been like an you you portray that so well but again sorry that stuff to the treatment of the imagination.
How much research went into the archipelago’s lost because the previous three books are in a place and roughly in a time that I know so my life was my race it and respond yet.
[33:28] The second mobile. Spent a lot of time working on them but I’ve never leave there such so yeah a lot of research I took a long time took that 5 years and a lot of that was just Festival going spending time.
Cuz it’s not just about reading books I mean you have to write I’m not a military, I’ve never been interested in military thing so I had to catch up,
a hell of a long way because there’s all kinds of Transport is that they when they raid a book about a battle of crait they going to be there looking for your mistakes.
[34:01] She just wanted to be real so yeah it was a lot of research and you put you had that wonderful experience euroshop house tea and marmalade,
call Ross gay and that hotel Domain Hotel.
But actually being there and experience. So how early in the process of researching you meet those women probably would have hate you.
In the book because that was such a compelling guy so I was always very friendly with the curator of the Museum of crazy in the Rock Leone he’s a great guy and I said to him I was going up to Hana which is another,
play some crate with a sensual kind of things in the battle.
[34:50] I said what should I go when I got behind you know what should I do cause 2 where should I go to kind of I don’t really it’s not information I’m after its atmosphere is feeling mad map of this,
kind of hotel is Olcott Grand hotel but which is now in a kind of suburb of Honea kind of on its own right on the say that,
and he said that they are not going to tell you anything just got there I go to that place so I went day on a Sunday it was the anniversary of the battle just happened to be a real maybe you just have maybe I’ll make that happen.
And I went out there on a Sunday morning running a very quiet and walking into this hotel,
and there was a young woman and old woman sitting behind the concierge counter.
And I said, I may help you in not sit well not really I’ll just come here because you know.
[35:45] This hotel is so important in the end I started to kind of give him a bit of the spiel about the ridiculous and the old woman just.
Yes I know I was there or not cuz I said something like it to the 75th Anniversary yes or no and then when the Germans invaded.
The Germans took that house as they headquarters on the island.
And these these two sisters are still living that hotel that I work 6 nights non-use out at that time and she just briefly said something something something happened instead,
she pulls interested would you like to come up and have a cup of tea making talk about it,
yeah so her and her sister we went upstairs and this beautiful room spent the whole day.
With these two older women beautiful women Tommy just so generous.
[36:53] And that were bright friends with the Italian Rada Antonio tabucchi who I also I love and he goes there when he died but he he used to go there every year and,
I would like Mama light switch he particularly loved and so they made this mama lie to me and I gave me some Jaws to take,
and saw that it was just really moving beautiful time so right this place in this trying about it which then people made them aware of in crate so then we had this time I just thought I’d touch bar was really really lovely.
[37:27] Those incredible intersections of moment in life to me that kind of gift from the gods and you had.
[37:38] And it’s wonderful that you rush about it because then you’d encapsulated.
[37:45] Something about the temperament with which you come to these things like I think,
even though I was being ridiculous presumptuous to them I must have saying they must have thought out he’s just a poor little innocent educating and so it was okay for them to do what we got on really well,
so then by spending a day with him it would be worth in our spending three five years in a library reading books about crate that one day just told me more and I couldn’t use any office,
because it was kind of too light but the same study guide me really help,
what you drinking Gatorade and that therefore is all my septic gift in itself that you you coming to this place,
and you’ve written this book and then oh my God you make the people who were there who were the all Witnesses and they tell you the really what you’ve written is,
school today,
and cost us not a lot associate director the museum say he is it was a setup he probably knew that we probably get on our time that this might happen,
and he’s already set me up with he asked me out to the museum and I directly on took me out on to this friend unless he’s old man in this old man,
was the son of one of the main resistance fighters in the world who had seen his father shop in the firing squad and just before his father had been shot.
[39:10] His father was screaming and it wasn’t locked inside and all he was screaming that was tyke my boy away so he doesn’t see this and they didn’t and he saw it and then Costas put me and him together.
Beautiful I’ll man you know.
[39:29] People’s like that this searing moment just completely format even still still the biggest thing in his life and,
so when you when you somehow bearing witness to that material once you make people I got to spend some time in the minute I spend some time with some Australian soldiers who they to become some kind of responsibility as it as yet saving dreams begin responsibilities,
and that’s part of the process so if it comes from a lyric impulse to sing,
and then you go into the territory and then it becomes a responsibility as well.
I think I see that lady don’t know I think I think so.
[40:13] I would say about your books and I want to hear about you and you booked all your books like the rate of feeling so you’re telling true stories.
Stories of people that you knew on you know or even your own story and I think this is extraordinary.
Since solve.
[40:34] I told myself if you can’t let go of course yes like as a recognition when you Rachel.
Powerful and one of the things that I think.
So many moments in your books when it’s just moments of wisdom and insight and things that I think are important for people to read and understand in their life as you go through this on this Mortal Journey,
but one of them that really resonated with me was you say Walking Dead was the point of life when we had to Nadia opportunity to give.
I like to keep apps that still sell alive in the world but it’s not what we see,
and he has the really loud conduff Kaepernick message somebody constantly getting an album world,
through social media Trend you know what we getting so much more of the conduff,
material is taking negative do narcissistic
just be a Greek myth and now it’s a lot of people don’t get all that business I narcissistic,
yeah but I also think tell me that you don’t want him to gild the Lily orbea Pollyanna I think we are getting a lot of good stuff but we just.
It’s like you never say happiness Rights Watch.
[42:02] So the hottest story to write as a happy story because it’s not drama yes unique tension of conflict addicted,
five nights at the media recently conflict addicted I need a story that needs to be Conflict for a story set up create conflict will receive conflict,
will be compelled by its actual.
In between is all these other things which aunt is dramatic which I still think we’re getting these all these good things people of saying and doing and I do think we say that we just taken for granted,
I don’t think we nauseous.
Weiner system with the extraordinary increase in the pace of life and the things that we’ve owned by the way than the amount of information wherever well with the idea that you can just sit,
when did your loss of the season with the sitting on a train or tram or a box just sitting and thinking just sitting in quietly,
in Repose so. You know I already up oakhaven everyone’s on their phone you know it’s beginning to be a kick back to their people certainly disengaging,
shutting down final many young woman just recently he shut down the Facebook account and I said oh you know how’s that and she said it’s wonderful I put so much more time,
when people say the younger people ask me that Raji and they sell you know how to use.
[43:26] Do you have any advice or whatever and I said well can’t how many hours into wake you spend looking at a screen and.
Cut up half those hours and spend those that have that time spent that rotting.
That’s all you have to do do you wash on a computer by hand by hand notebooks,
wow 1010 North Avenue,
not equivalent to 10 and then die,
and then it gets transcribed into a computer and then I started itching,
you transcribing the confusion.
Have a job of making commentary or anything is she does or she just left,
Humboldt TV tried typing my handwriting is not kind of conducive to day trading pretty much a graphological exercise,
that yeah yes I rock by hand alright I’ll do a quad lot of stuff Eatery criticism stuff and I do all that on the computer when it comes to singing I can’t come.
[44:55] I find that the pro sets of thought to is different,
what pasta is the thing you know in the community Albert Camus novel to play as a character in that who wants to write a novel
he never gets past the first sentence because you can’t get the first sentence. He wants it perfect and it cost nothing is ever perfect,
I wouldn’t be able to finish it because I’d be in the first paragraph moving things around all the time but when you ride on Piper,
you can do if you scratch offs and all the rest of it but there’s a limit to what you can do then you just have to go to the next big cake going
books and write books were written by Jane Austen wrote my head and and they were multiple
puppies and you know when books were lost in the fire that was,
and a manuscript and also getting his fingernail cuttings from a mahasin throwing them into the bonfire as well when he been particularly,
so that was gone when did it that’s it left instructions.
[46:23] Oh yeah that’s right it’s a good feeling sophical conundrum,
when I also thought about it because she was VoDLocker flat Tooele yeah she would destroy the original manuscript,
which I find really fascinating as someone who really believes in the art of Illusion so the finished thing,
ship and copy salad by the person I send.
[47:10] Well.
I’m a saint. I’m in the middle of riding the coast was the mango at three books now in the middle of writing another set of three books of which archipelago of cells as the first one.
Archipelago of cells deals with the person who comes from Western Victoria and goes to Crate Grace and then comes back,
this next want to send a card to someone from Westin Victoria who goes to France.
And comes back and this story revolves around this the my Paris my 1968 student demonstrations 2 weapon demonstrations.
And my character is someone he’s a civil engineer who study who’s working on Sand Dune stabilisation along a guard Ocean Drive and at that point if you wanted to do research on that,
the place you went is France cuz I did a lot of in the revolution a year that did a lot of important Sand Dune stabilization and staff France to Paris was the place you got,
so he wanted to do.
[48:16] Advanced is kind of working Sandra stabilization they wasn’t much weapons Ben Thomas try so it goes to Paris in 1968.
Baby’s head in the sand and he’s in this moment prescribe intellectual cultural moment comparison 960 I,
high contrast from culture and then he comes back after going through this experience he comes back,
and we watch him.
[48:49] Changed and resigning yet.
28 + 28,
so it’s been wonderful having you in the book cave Gregory beautiful today here all the books and we’d like to know your three books of choice for our
virtual Time Capsule the books that you would leave the world a thousand years from now the three books that you think they opened people ought to read
okay well I thought about this,
and I could have gone for the the big epics that have had a great influence on me. I decided given the nature of my work and what it’s all the bass.
I decided to pick three intensely local books so the three books are,
Facebook. Very hard to find by the way they not imprint but they’re very special to me and I’ve really informed a lot of what I’ve done,
so the first one is a book by it’s not botanist call Beth God.
[50:03] Is very important,
woman in this room it’s a lot of work on Kurio Aboriginal plants in Australia which is.
One of my interests and said the book is called Victorian Curry plants and it goes through all the 90 plants in a landscape
and what I ask what that can be used for what were they what they were and still are and increasingly are again been used for
types of medicine food and so forth in Alaska.
[50:37] The second book is a book by an English detective erotic code author of field in the early 20th century and travel around the Sun.
Stay in a place for 6 months write a detective story in an in that place with he’s,
Aboriginal detective called Barney and he rose he came to the coast where I live in 1952.
To the Tamara,
it’s been 6 months day and wrote a book there a detective story that coat the clue of the new shoe which is all of its time its time,
and I was completely politically correct it will be challenging but it’s very very good at capturing a very kind of unfashionable middle 20 Century Australia,
and really good an atmosphere so that puts cold the closer than you shoot and.
The third book is a book written by a cry fisherman in lawn.
He lived his whole life in Long cry fishing and they did have discolored fishing in Port Phillip Bay.
[51:54] And he’s a very intelligent person who at the end of his life decided to rot a memoir.
Tele rideable code feel the same wind witch,
in my estimation it’s is a book in Australia called fortunate life farming Memoir of a real kind of a real life,
this is kind of like the coastal version of that anyway it’s a beautiful book and it’s at my local area like the author I filled in the pick up books.
And it’s a treasure.
Not in print anymore but it’s a real treasure say if I was going to put three books in the capsule IP from here,
wonderful looking forward to following up finding them and reading them thanks so much.
[52:48] Music.