Home Truth
Page 22
Ian Britain was born in India in 1948, and migrated with his family to Australia in the 1950s. He was educated at schools in Melbourne, and studied history and literature at the Australian National University, Monash University and the University of Oxford. He has held lectureships at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and at the Department of History at the University of Melbourne. His most recent position was as editor of the literary magazine Meanjin (2001–2008). His books include Fabianism and Culture: A Study in British Socialism and the Arts, 1884–1918 and Once An Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. He also co-edited (with Brenda Niall) The Oxford Book of Australian Schooldays. His scholarly articles on various topics in English and Australian cultural history have appeared in a number of Australian and overseas journals, including History Today and Victorian Studies. He regularly writes book reviews and cultural commentary for major national newspapers and for Australian Book Review, has broadcast frequently on ABC radio, and has been a guest speaker at various local and international writers’ festivals. He has been a judge of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (non-fiction category) and of the Melbourne Age Book of the Year award. He is currently completing his research for a book on the mythology of the English public school from the Middle Ages to now and for a biography of painter and diarist Donald Friend.
Matthew Condon was born in Brisbane. He is the author of many works of fiction including The Motorcycle Cafe, Usher, A Night at the Pink Poodle and The Pillow Fight. He is the recipient of two national Steele Rudd awards for short fiction. His latest novel is The Trout Opera.
Andrea Goldsmith is a novelist and occasional essayist. She has published six novels, including The Prosperous Thief, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and most recently Reunion, a story of friendship, obsessive love and intellectual striving. Her literary essays, particularly those which reflect her Jewish background, have flirted with notions of home and belonging. The essay included in this volume was shaped by two seemingly unrelated events: a trip to Antarctica in 2006 and the brief illness and death of Andrea’s partner, the poet Dorothy Porter, in December 2008.
Peter Goldsworthy grew up in various Australian country towns, finishing his schooling in Darwin in the Northern Territory. After graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1974 he worked for many years in alcohol and drug rehabilitation, but has since divided his working time between general practice and writing. He has won literary awards across a range of genres: poetry, short stories, novels, theatre, and opera libretti—including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the 1988 Australian Bicentennial Poetry prize, and the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction. His novels have been translated into many European and Asian languages; his poetry has been set to music by leading Australian composers. He wrote the libretti for the Richard Mills operas Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Batavia, the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work. The State Theatre Company of the Adelaide Festival adaptation of his novel Honk If You Are Jesus, performed during the 2006 Adelaide Festival, won numerous awards, including the Ruby Award for Best Work, and The Advertiser Oscart award for Best Play; stage adaptations of both Maestro and Three Dog Night were staged during 2009. Five of his novels are currently being adapted for the screen, and two more—Wish and Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam—for the stage. His most recent novel is Everything I Knew, and a new collection of short stories, Gravel, will appear in 2010.
Marion Halligan has published twenty books. These include ten novels, including Spider Cup, Lovers’ Knots, The Golden Dress, The Fog Garden, The Point, The Apricot Colonel and Murder on the Apricot Coast, collections of short stories including The Hanged Man in the Garden and The Worry Box, books of autobiography, travel and food, and a children’s book, The Midwife’s Daughters. Her Taste of Memory: An Autobiography in Food and Gardens, was published in September 2004. She has been shortlisted for most of the prizes on offer, and has won some. She regularly reviews books, and likes to write essays. Currently she is writing small memoir pieces. She has received an AM for her services to literature. Her most recent novel is Valley of Grace, published in March 2009.
Gabrielle Lord, BA (Hons), mother and grandmother (Yia-Yia), writer, gardener and chorister, has worked many jobs, including teaching, peach-picking/packing, brick-cleaning, selling, market-gardening and nine years as an Employment Officer. She’s written fourteen adult novels: Fortress, Tooth and Claw, Jumbo, Salt, Whipping Boy, Bones, The Sharp End, Death Delights, Feeding the Demons, Lethal Factor, Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing, Dirty Weekend, Spiking the Girl and Shattered plus a Young Adult title, Monkey Undercover. Her twelve-book Young Adult crime thriller series, Conspiracy 365, has been sold widely to overseas publishers and will bring her number of published works up to twenty-seven. The volumes are published monthly in 2010.
She has also written for television, magazines and newspapers as well as essays, and in 1995 published Grace and Angels, a book of prayer and meditation for difficult times. Two of her novels, Fortress and Whipping Boy, have been made into movies. The four Gemma Lincoln PI novels are under option for an upcoming television series. The fourth in the series of novels about Dr Jack McCain, Australian Federal Police forensic scientist, is currently awaiting writing.
Rosaleen Love is a Melbourne writer who writes about science and the rest of life. She has published three short story collections, two with Women’s Press, UK: The Total Devotion Machine and Evolution Annie. The Travelling Tide was published by Aqueduct Press, Seattle. With Allen & Unwin Australia and Joseph Henry Press, Washington USA, she has published Reefscape: Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef. Her work has been included in Australian, British and US anthologies such as Heroines, Millennium, The Art of the Story, The Women’s Press Book of New Myth and Magic, Coast to Coast, Metaworlds, She’s Fantastical, Women of Wonder, Women of Other Worlds, Dreaming Down Under and The WisCon Chronicles. In 2009 she was presented with the A Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime contribution to science fiction.
Michael McGirr is the author of The Lost Art of Sleep, Bypass: The Story of a Road and Things You Get For Free, all published by Picador. He has been fiction editor of the literary journal Meanjin and publisher of Eureka Street. He has published numerous essays, stories, columns and reviews. He is currently the Head of Faith and Mission at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne. He lives near a port with his wife, Jenny, and their three children. He has been lost but never homeless.
Cassandra Pybus is a historian and writer. She is the author of eleven books, including Community of Thieves, Gross Moral Turpitude (winner of the Colin Roderick Award), White Rajah, Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree, The Devil and James McAuley (winner of the Adelaide Festival Award for Non-Fiction) and The Woman Who Walked To Russia. Her most recent book, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty, was published in the USA, Canada and Britain to critical acclaim in 2006, and was a runner-up for the prestigious Frederick Douglas Award in 2007. Cassandra was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Historical Studies in Texas in 2007 and 2008 and she is currently Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the University of Sydney. Most of the time she lives in Tasmania.
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
First published in Australia in 2010
This edition published in 2010
by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Compilation copyright © Carmel Bird 2010
Introduction copyright © Carmel Bird 2010
Copyright in the individual essays remains the property of their authors.
‘Song of Exile’ Copyright © Rosaleen Love 2010
‘The New Jerusalem’ Copyright © Gabrielle Lord 2010
‘The Brilliant City Inside the Soul’ Copyright �
� Cassandra Pybus 2010
‘Homes Sweet Homes’ Copyright © Peter Goldsworthy 2010
‘Distance Looks Our Way’ Copyright © Marion Halligan 2010
‘No Poet’s Song’ Copyright © Matthew Condon 2010
‘Home Triptych’ Copyright © Andrea Goldsmith 2010
‘Who Trespass Against Us’ Copyright © Michael McGirr 2010
‘Start With the Tulip’ Copyright © Carmel Bird 2010
‘This Plush Embrace’ Copyright © Ian Britain 2010
The right of Carmel Bird to be identified as the editor of this work and the right of Rosaleen Love, Gabrielle Lord, Cassandra Pybus, Peter Goldsworthy, Marion Halligan, Matthew Condon, Andrea Goldsmith, Michael McGirr, Carmel Bird and Ian Britain to be identified as the authors of their essays has been asserted by them under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
25 Ryde Road, Pymble, Sydney, NSW 2073, Australia
31 View Road, Glenfield, Auckland 0627, New Zealand
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Home truth : an anthology / editor, Carmel Bird.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9014 6 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-730-49244-3 (ePub)
Bibliography.
Australian essays.
Bird, Carmel, 1940-
A824.408
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com