Local History...Local Stories
The tramline was a single track, but crossing loops at Acacia Road, Miranda, Caringbah, Woolooware Road and Curranulla Street in Cronulla allowed trams to travel and pass in opposite directions. Penshurst Metropolitan Water supplied the steam trams with the necessary water requirements via a 15cm pipeline which connected to a large overhead tank at the Miranda Loop.
The steam trams are remembered as ‘fiery, noisy, whistling, smoke-belching little monsters’ yet they endeared themselves to many commuters – even though it was not uncommon on Sunday evenings, when picnickers returned en masse from the seaside, for the overburdened trams to stall on the steep bank at Miranda (now located between Sutherland Hospital and Westfield Miranda). The male travellers were often required to alight and help push the cars and motor over the steep ascent while other passengers walked alongside the track.
Sadly, the Miranda bank was the scene of a tragic accident on 10 November 1924 when the 6:37am steam tram from Cronulla hurtled down the hill at a tremendous speed, reportedly attempting to make up lost running time. Steam motor No. 88A derailed at the bottom, overturned and the driver, Sam Wyatt, was killed instantly. Several passengers were also injured in the disaster. A further accident was narrowly avoided when the steam crane which had been sent by the Railway Department itself almost toppled as it was far too light to lift the weight of the derailed motor back on to the track.The last passenger steam tram ran on 3 August 1931. On 7 August 1931, the Propeller newspaper reported:
The Sutherland-Cronulla steam tram passenger service was replaced last Monday by a fleet of double-deck motor buses. The last tram left Cronulla for Sutherland shortly after midnight. Despite the hour there were about 300 people present. On the last three trips passengers were carried free of charge. When the last trip commenced loud cheers were given by the crowd, and the “cock-a-doodle doos” were sounded on the steam whistle. On the headlight of the engine was hung a wreath of lilies.
The goods service ended on 12 February 1932.
Naidoc Week 3- 10 July
Naidoc week is a time to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and achievements and is an opportunity to recognise the contributions that Indigenous Australians make to our country and our society, including books, of course!
Factual
Finding Eliza : power and colonial storytelling by Larissa Behrendt
A vital Indigenous perspective on colonial storytelling.
Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories.
Exploring works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, Behrendt looks at the stereotypes embedded in these accounts, including the assumption of cannibalism and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Finding Eliza shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – and how, in Australia, this has contributed to a complex racial divide.
Talking to my country by Stan Grant
An extraordinarily powerful and personal meditation on race, culture and national identity. In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australian and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. 'We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier', he wrote, 'We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation's prosperity.' Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country.
Dark emu : black seeds : agriculture or accident? by Bruce Pascoe
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
Memoir
Not just black and white : a conversation between a mother and daughter
by Lesley and Tammy Williams
Two remarkable women tell an inspirational story about the power of family and pursuing your dreams.
Lesley Williams is forced to leave Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family a young age to work as a domestic servant. Apart from a bit of pocket money, Lesley never sees her wages – they are kept 'safe' for her and for countless others just like her. She is taught not to question her life, until desperation makes her start to wonder, where is all that money she earned? So begins a nine-year journey for answers which will test every ounce of her resolve.
Inspired by her mother's quest, a teenage Tammy Williams enter a national writing competition with an essay about injustice. Winning first prize takes Tammy and Lesley to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch and ultimately to the United Nations in Geneva. Along the way, they find courage they never thought they had, and friendship in the most unexpected places.
The power of bones by Keelan Mailman
It looked bleak and predictable for little Keelen Mailman: an alcoholic mother, absent father, the horrors of regular sexual and physical assault and the casual racism of a small outback town in the sixties. But somehow, despite the pain and deprivation, the lost education, she managed to absorb her mother's lessons: her Bidjara language and culture, her obligations to Country, and her loyalty to her family.
So it was no surprise to some that a girl who could hide for a year in her own home to keep her family together, run as fast as Raylene Boyle and catch porcupine and goanna, would one day make history. At just 30, and a single mother, Keelen became the first Aboriginal woman to run a commercial cattle station when she took over Mt Tabor, two hours from Augathella on the black soil plains of western Queensland. This is the heartland of Bidjara country, after all, the place her mother and grandparents and great-grandparents had camped on and cared for, and where their ancestors left their marks on caves and rock walls more than 10,000 years ago.
After before time by Robbi Neal
Stories of life from a remote Aboriginal community that sing with vivid and simple life, truth and power. At the end of 2008, Robbi Neal and her family travelled to the other end of mainland Australia to a remote Aboriginal community. They planned to stay for twelve months. Seven years later, they are still there. This moving collection of linked narratives centring around a remote Indigenous community has been inspired by real people and real events - the stories might read like fiction, but they are based on fact. The events they describe really happened. Each story is true to the person who inspired it and Robbi has been given permission to share these truths by writing them down, both by the person who influenced each story and by the Elders concerned. These stories sing with vivid and simple life, truth and power. These are stories of shame, pain and sorrow, but also joy and love - and they transform our understanding of 'the Indigenous experience'.
Fiction
Ghost River by Tony Birch
'You find yourself down at the bottom of the river, for some it's time to give into her. But other times, young fellas like you two, you got to fight your way back. Show the river you got courage and is ready to live.'
The river is a place of history and secrets. For Ren and Sonny, two unlikely friends, it's a place of freedom and adventure. For a group of storytelling vagrants, it's a refuge. And for the isolated daughter of a cult reverend, it's an escape.
Each time they visit, another secret slips into its ancient waters. But change and trouble are coming – to the river and to the lives of those who love it. Who will have the courage to fight and survive and what will be the cost?
Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss
5 August, 1944:Over 1000 Japanese soldiers attempt to break out of the No. 12 Prisoner of War compound on the fringes of Cowra. In the carnage, hundreds are killed, many are recaptured and some take their own lives rather than suffer the humiliation of ongoing defeat. But one soldier, Hiroshi, determined to avoid either fate, manages to escape.
After the Carnage by Tara June Winch
A single mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her young son. A Nigerian student undertakes a United Nations internship in the hope of a better future. A recently divorced man starts a running group with members of an online forum for recovering addicts.
Ranging from New York to Istanbul, from Pakistan to Australia, these unforgettable stories chart the distances in their characters' lives - whether they have grown apart from the ones they love, been displaced from their homeland, or are struggling to reconcile their dreams with reality. A collection of prodigious depth and variety, After the Carnage marks the remarkable evolution of one of our finest young writers.
The crocodile hotel by Julie Janson
This story strikes deep into Australia’s heart. An epic story of a young Aboriginal single mother’s awakening of identity and compassion in a remote Northern Territory community in 1976. This land holds a terrible secret of immense proportions, the earth is red with the memory. The old people are living witnesses to the past with all its misery and need for survival.
Jane Reynolds is swept up in a year of wonders, as she negotiates her place between the black and white societies. She finds love with two charismatic men and meets traditional Aboriginal elders who change her life forever. Jane fights alongside the Lanniwah for land rights and finds respect and redemption for herself.
Factual
Finding Eliza : power and colonial storytelling by Larissa Behrendt
A vital Indigenous perspective on colonial storytelling.Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories.
Exploring works as diverse as Robinson Crusoe and Coonardoo, Behrendt looks at the stereotypes embedded in these accounts, including the assumption of cannibalism and the myth of the noble savage. Ultimately, Finding Eliza shows how these stories not only reflect the values of their storytellers but also reinforce those values – and how, in Australia, this has contributed to a complex racial divide.
Talking to my country by Stan Grant
Dark emu : black seeds : agriculture or accident? by Bruce Pascoe
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.Memoir
Not just black and white : a conversation between a mother and daughter
by Lesley and Tammy Williams
Two remarkable women tell an inspirational story about the power of family and pursuing your dreams.
Lesley Williams is forced to leave Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family a young age to work as a domestic servant. Apart from a bit of pocket money, Lesley never sees her wages – they are kept 'safe' for her and for countless others just like her. She is taught not to question her life, until desperation makes her start to wonder, where is all that money she earned? So begins a nine-year journey for answers which will test every ounce of her resolve.
Inspired by her mother's quest, a teenage Tammy Williams enter a national writing competition with an essay about injustice. Winning first prize takes Tammy and Lesley to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch and ultimately to the United Nations in Geneva. Along the way, they find courage they never thought they had, and friendship in the most unexpected places.
The power of bones by Keelan MailmanIt looked bleak and predictable for little Keelen Mailman: an alcoholic mother, absent father, the horrors of regular sexual and physical assault and the casual racism of a small outback town in the sixties. But somehow, despite the pain and deprivation, the lost education, she managed to absorb her mother's lessons: her Bidjara language and culture, her obligations to Country, and her loyalty to her family.
So it was no surprise to some that a girl who could hide for a year in her own home to keep her family together, run as fast as Raylene Boyle and catch porcupine and goanna, would one day make history. At just 30, and a single mother, Keelen became the first Aboriginal woman to run a commercial cattle station when she took over Mt Tabor, two hours from Augathella on the black soil plains of western Queensland. This is the heartland of Bidjara country, after all, the place her mother and grandparents and great-grandparents had camped on and cared for, and where their ancestors left their marks on caves and rock walls more than 10,000 years ago.
After before time by Robbi Neal
Fiction
Ghost River by Tony Birch
'You find yourself down at the bottom of the river, for some it's time to give into her. But other times, young fellas like you two, you got to fight your way back. Show the river you got courage and is ready to live.'The river is a place of history and secrets. For Ren and Sonny, two unlikely friends, it's a place of freedom and adventure. For a group of storytelling vagrants, it's a refuge. And for the isolated daughter of a cult reverend, it's an escape.
Each time they visit, another secret slips into its ancient waters. But change and trouble are coming – to the river and to the lives of those who love it. Who will have the courage to fight and survive and what will be the cost?
Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss
After the Carnage by Tara June Winch
A single mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her young son. A Nigerian student undertakes a United Nations internship in the hope of a better future. A recently divorced man starts a running group with members of an online forum for recovering addicts.Ranging from New York to Istanbul, from Pakistan to Australia, these unforgettable stories chart the distances in their characters' lives - whether they have grown apart from the ones they love, been displaced from their homeland, or are struggling to reconcile their dreams with reality. A collection of prodigious depth and variety, After the Carnage marks the remarkable evolution of one of our finest young writers.
The crocodile hotel by Julie Janson
This story strikes deep into Australia’s heart. An epic story of a young Aboriginal single mother’s awakening of identity and compassion in a remote Northern Territory community in 1976. This land holds a terrible secret of immense proportions, the earth is red with the memory. The old people are living witnesses to the past with all its misery and need for survival.Jane Reynolds is swept up in a year of wonders, as she negotiates her place between the black and white societies. She finds love with two charismatic men and meets traditional Aboriginal elders who change her life forever. Jane fights alongside the Lanniwah for land rights and finds respect and redemption for herself.
July Reads...
Imagine me gone/ Adam Haslett
When Margaret's handsome English fiancé is hospitalized for depression, she faces a choice: go ahead with their planned marriage or back away. She decides to marry him.
The newlyweds move back to Boston to start a family: first Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic, then savvy, responsible Celia, and finally sensitive, meticulous Alec. But over the span of decades, the golden haze of early childhood recedes and Michael spirals down an increasingly troubled and precarious existence.
How much can any family give to save one of its own? Weaving together the voices of its five central characters, Imagine Me Gone captures the ferocious love that binds parent to child, brother to sister, and asks what this love does to those who give or receive it.
Everyone brave is forgiven/ Chris Cleave
When war is declared, Mary North leaves finishing school unfinished, goes straight to the War Office, and signs up. Tom Shaw decides to give it a miss - until his flatmate Alistair unexpectedly enlists, and the conflict can no longer be avoided. Young, bright and brave, Mary is certain she'd be a marvelous spy. When she is - bewilderingly - made a teacher, she instead finds herself defying prejudice to protect the children her country would rather forget. Tom, meanwhile, finds that he will do anything for Mary. And when Mary and Alistair meet, it is love, as well as war, that will test them in ways they could not have imagined, entangling three lives in violence and passion, friendship and deception, inexorably shaping their hopes and dreams. In a powerful combination of both humour and heartbreak, this dazzling novel weaves little-known history, and a perfect love story, through the vast sweep of the Second World War - daring us to understand that, against the great theatre of world events, it is the intimate losses, the small battles, the daily human triumphs, that change us most.
My Italian Bulldozer/ Alexander McCall- Smith
A brand new stand alone novel from best-selling Alexander McCall Smith, based on an immensely popular short story.
When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer.
With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts and so begins a series of laugh out loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul and his Italian Bulldozer. A story of unexpected circumstance and lesson in making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozer is a warm holiday read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
When I was invisible/ Dorothy Koomson
‘Do you ever wonder if you've lived the life you were meant to?' I ask her.
She sighs, and dips her head. ‘Even if I do, what difference will it make?'
In 1988, two eight-year-old girls with almost identical names and the same love of ballet meet for the first time. They seem destined to be best friends forever and to become professional dancers. Years later, however, they have both been dealt so many cruel blows that they walk away from each other into very different futures – one enters a convent, the other becomes a minor celebrity. Will these new, ‘invisible' lives be the ones they were meant to live, or will they only find that kind of salvation when they are reunited twenty years later?
How to Find Love in a Bookshop / Veronica Henry
Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in the idyllic Cotswold town of Peasebrook, is a dream come true for booklovers.
But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention the loyalty she owes to her customers.
Sarah Basildon, owner of stately pile Peasebrook Manor, has used the bookshop as an escape from all her problems in the past few years. But is there more to her visits than meets the eye?
Since messing up his marriage, Jackson asks Emilia for advice on books to read to the son he misses so much. But Jackson has a secret, and is not all he seems...
Modern lovers/ Emma Straub
Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring.
Back in the band’s heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them—can never be reclaimed.
The healing party/Micheline Lee
Estranged from her family, Natasha is making a life for herself in Darwin when her sister calls with bad news. Their mother is ill, and has only a few months to live. Confused and conflicted, Natasha returns to the home she fled many years before. But her father, an evangelical Christian, has not changed –he is still the domineering yet magnetic man she ran from, and her sisters and mother are still in his thrall.
One night her father makes an astonishing announcement: he has received a message from God that his wife is to be healed, and they must hold a party to celebrate. As Natasha and her sisters prepare for the big event – and the miracle – she struggles to reconcile her family’s faith with her sense that they are pretending. Is she a traitor or the only one who can see the truth? And what use is truth anyway, in the face of death?
The curious charms of Arthur Pepper/ Phaedra Patrick
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden.
But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife's secret life before they met—a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.
La Rose/ Louise Erdrich
Late summer in North Dakota, 1999: Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence but only when he staggers closer does he realise he has killed his neighbour's son. Dusty Ravich, the deceased boy, was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have been close for years and their children played together despite going to different schools. Landreaux is horrified at what he's done; fighting off his longstanding alcoholism, he ensconces himself in a sweat lodge and prays for guidance. And there he discovers an old way of delivering justice for the wrong he's done. The next day he and his wife Emmaline deliver LaRose to the bereaved Ravich parents. Standing on the threshold of the Ravich home, they say, 'Our son will be your son now'. LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Gradually he's allowed visits with his birth family, whose grief for the son and brother they gave away mirrors that of the Raviches. The years pass and LaRose becomes the linchpin that links both families. As the Irons and the Raviches grow ever more entwined, their pain begins to subside. But when a man who nurses a grudge against Landreaux fixates on the idea that there was a cover-up the day Landreaux killed Dusty - and decides to expose this secret - he threatens the fragile peace between the two families...
One/ Patrick Holland
The last bushrangers in Australian history, James and Patrick Kenniff, were at the height at their horse thieving operation at turn of the 20th century. In One, troops cannot pull the Kenniff Gang out of the ranges and plains of Western Queensland - the brothers know the terrain too well, and the locals are sympathetic to their escapades. When a policeman and a station manager go out on patrol from tiny Upper Warrego Station and disappear, Sergeant Nixon makes it his mission to pursue the gang, especially, Jim Kenniff, who becomes for him an emblem of the violence that resides in the heart of the country.
When Margaret's handsome English fiancé is hospitalized for depression, she faces a choice: go ahead with their planned marriage or back away. She decides to marry him.The newlyweds move back to Boston to start a family: first Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic, then savvy, responsible Celia, and finally sensitive, meticulous Alec. But over the span of decades, the golden haze of early childhood recedes and Michael spirals down an increasingly troubled and precarious existence.
How much can any family give to save one of its own? Weaving together the voices of its five central characters, Imagine Me Gone captures the ferocious love that binds parent to child, brother to sister, and asks what this love does to those who give or receive it.
Everyone brave is forgiven/ Chris CleaveWhen war is declared, Mary North leaves finishing school unfinished, goes straight to the War Office, and signs up. Tom Shaw decides to give it a miss - until his flatmate Alistair unexpectedly enlists, and the conflict can no longer be avoided. Young, bright and brave, Mary is certain she'd be a marvelous spy. When she is - bewilderingly - made a teacher, she instead finds herself defying prejudice to protect the children her country would rather forget. Tom, meanwhile, finds that he will do anything for Mary. And when Mary and Alistair meet, it is love, as well as war, that will test them in ways they could not have imagined, entangling three lives in violence and passion, friendship and deception, inexorably shaping their hopes and dreams. In a powerful combination of both humour and heartbreak, this dazzling novel weaves little-known history, and a perfect love story, through the vast sweep of the Second World War - daring us to understand that, against the great theatre of world events, it is the intimate losses, the small battles, the daily human triumphs, that change us most.
My Italian Bulldozer/ Alexander McCall- Smith
A brand new stand alone novel from best-selling Alexander McCall Smith, based on an immensely popular short story.When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer.
With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts and so begins a series of laugh out loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul and his Italian Bulldozer. A story of unexpected circumstance and lesson in making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozer is a warm holiday read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
When I was invisible/ Dorothy Koomson‘Do you ever wonder if you've lived the life you were meant to?' I ask her.
She sighs, and dips her head. ‘Even if I do, what difference will it make?'
In 1988, two eight-year-old girls with almost identical names and the same love of ballet meet for the first time. They seem destined to be best friends forever and to become professional dancers. Years later, however, they have both been dealt so many cruel blows that they walk away from each other into very different futures – one enters a convent, the other becomes a minor celebrity. Will these new, ‘invisible' lives be the ones they were meant to live, or will they only find that kind of salvation when they are reunited twenty years later?
How to Find Love in a Bookshop / Veronica Henry
Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in the idyllic Cotswold town of Peasebrook, is a dream come true for booklovers.But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention the loyalty she owes to her customers.
Sarah Basildon, owner of stately pile Peasebrook Manor, has used the bookshop as an escape from all her problems in the past few years. But is there more to her visits than meets the eye?
Since messing up his marriage, Jackson asks Emilia for advice on books to read to the son he misses so much. But Jackson has a secret, and is not all he seems...
Modern lovers/ Emma Straub
Back in the band’s heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them—can never be reclaimed.
The healing party/Micheline Lee
Estranged from her family, Natasha is making a life for herself in Darwin when her sister calls with bad news. Their mother is ill, and has only a few months to live. Confused and conflicted, Natasha returns to the home she fled many years before. But her father, an evangelical Christian, has not changed –he is still the domineering yet magnetic man she ran from, and her sisters and mother are still in his thrall.One night her father makes an astonishing announcement: he has received a message from God that his wife is to be healed, and they must hold a party to celebrate. As Natasha and her sisters prepare for the big event – and the miracle – she struggles to reconcile her family’s faith with her sense that they are pretending. Is she a traitor or the only one who can see the truth? And what use is truth anyway, in the face of death?
The curious charms of Arthur Pepper/ Phaedra Patrick
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden.But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife's secret life before they met—a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.
La Rose/ Louise Erdrich
Late summer in North Dakota, 1999: Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence but only when he staggers closer does he realise he has killed his neighbour's son. Dusty Ravich, the deceased boy, was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have been close for years and their children played together despite going to different schools. Landreaux is horrified at what he's done; fighting off his longstanding alcoholism, he ensconces himself in a sweat lodge and prays for guidance. And there he discovers an old way of delivering justice for the wrong he's done. The next day he and his wife Emmaline deliver LaRose to the bereaved Ravich parents. Standing on the threshold of the Ravich home, they say, 'Our son will be your son now'. LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Gradually he's allowed visits with his birth family, whose grief for the son and brother they gave away mirrors that of the Raviches. The years pass and LaRose becomes the linchpin that links both families. As the Irons and the Raviches grow ever more entwined, their pain begins to subside. But when a man who nurses a grudge against Landreaux fixates on the idea that there was a cover-up the day Landreaux killed Dusty - and decides to expose this secret - he threatens the fragile peace between the two families...One/ Patrick Holland
Comic Con-versation with Marcelo Baez!
Marcelo Baez is a professional illustrator and designer who always have one eye on his first love comics and illustration! He has worked for international clients such as Marvel, GQ Magazine, Hardie Grant Egmont, Popular Mechanics, Men's Health, National Geographic, Microsoft, Scholastic and Westpac just to name a few.
Could you tell us about your journey as a comic artist?
What are your tools of the trade? Do you work in traditional media as well as digital?
Pencil, pens, brushes and digital.
All my idea roughs start in my sketchbook (pen and paper) For the sake of speed and meeting deadlines I have trained myself to do my layouts and “tight pencils” in photoshop.
After client approval, I then print out the art on watercolour paper in faint blue and proceed to ink in pen and brush. The last stage, I scan in the final inked art and finish the colours in photoshop.
I’m exhibiting, “Gish” comic book cover, An upcoming wrap around cover for “OIOIOI” Comics anthology and one of my Marvel Avengers Woodblock style prints.
On your website it says you are working on a strange Greek myth graphic novel and a post-apocalyptic movie/comics crossover! Can you tell us more about this?
On your website it says you are working on a strange Greek myth graphic novel and a post-apocalyptic movie/comics crossover! Can you tell us more about this?
The post-apocalyptic movie/comic cross over is a project named GISH, based on a movie directed and written by Paul Barakat. “Whenever Gish falls asleep, her consciousness travels to the near future, where she finds herself heavily pregnant, missing an eye and struggling to survive in a city overrun by murderous gangs. When she wakes up back in the present, she must confront the fact that she is not yet carrying her future child. Caught between these two realities, Gish must now decide who she truly is and what it is she truly wants.”
My greek myth graphic novel project is about what happen to the Cyclopes after Homer’s Odyssey… I’m currently working on the second draft and it’s over 100 pages.
Any advice for the aspiring comic artist you wish someone had told you?
Draw every day! Practice practice! Draw from life! Draw for fun! Keep a sketch book and draw everyday! Practice practice! Did I mention practice?
Find out more at Marcelo Baez's Website and Facebook pages.
This event is part of Comic Con-versation 2016. Comic Con-versation is an annual week long festival celebrating the best of local comic culture with events, talks, workshops, panel sessions, readings and exhibitions across Sydney libraries.
You can check out all the amazing upcoming #ccv16 events and activities here
https://www.facebook.com/comicconversation2016
Comic Con-versation with Louie Joyce
Louie Joyce is an Australian illustrator and comics creator.
After spending his childhood dreaming of becoming an astronaut, superhero, futuristic bikie punk, enchanted mermaid or something cool like that, Louie realised he'd been dreaming a little too long and most that stuff was impossible anyway. Luckily he can draw pretty well so he's able to experience all those things and more by putting pencil to paper.
Can you tell us about your journey as a comic artist/ creator?
I think I've always dreamed of becoming a comic book artist. My Dad collects comics, a really great diverse range of them too, so I was exposed to all this different stuff as a kid and I just completely fell in love with the medium. The fact that all these amazing stories and worlds could essentially be created with pencil and paper was mind blowing! I've been drawing as long as I can remember and used to copy from my favourite comics and animated movies. I started trying to create my own comics or adapt movies I loved into comics, I created mini comics and would go to zine fairs to trade and sell with other artists. As I got older I always kept drawing to some degree, but it feel by the wayside for a time. Eventually after working in Graphic Design for awhile my passion for drawing reignited. I knew that was what I wanted to be doing, I wanted to be an illustrator. I studied illustration at the Enmore Design Centre, during which time the quality of my work progressed and I started focusing on creating comics. Now I work as a professional illustrator and comics creator, it's not the dream job I imagined as a kid, but I'm incredibly lucky to be doing something I love every day.Your work focuses strongly on narratives and experimenting with different techniques of graphic storytelling.Can you elaborate?
I'm always trying to convey a story or narrative with my work. I think it makes for the most interesting images, the ones you come back to. With comics I like to experiment with different approaches to layout, style and format. I tailor my comics for reading on digital or traditional platforms, playing to their individual storytelling strengths (For example my comic 'A Life in the City' which was originally printed as a handmade concertina booklet, as well and online continuous scroller comic). There's so many possibilities in how you tell a story and it's inspiring and exciting to experiment with different ways to do it.Do you have a favourite character or piece you have worked on?
My self published books MISHMASH & HODGEPODGE are probably my favourite. MISHMASH collects short comics that I've illustrated, some collaborating with other writers and others that I've written myself, while HODGEPODGE collects drawings, sketches, process work and more. They form nice companion books and i try to get a new issue out each year. I have complete creative control and they feel like a pure expression of my work which is nice.What's next?
Right now I'm working on a sci-fi series with Neville Howard called Sugar & Space, which I'm having an absolute blast drawing! I also recently finished a one shot with Alex Chung called Astral. It's about a relationship between two star-crossed lovers, literally! It will be available from my online store and at events/cons very soon. Other than that I'm working on a few new short comics for my book MISHMASH, and developing a longer form story which I hope to make some good headway on soon.Do you have any advice for aspiring comic artists that you wish someone had told you?
Draw what you love, what you're passionate about. Whatever you're working on, find what excites you and focus on that. Comics especially take an immense amount of work and time to create and it can be incredibly challenging. But if you're excited about what you're drawing your passion will drive you forward and it will show in your work. Always be learning and challenging yourself, but make it fun too!
Find out more at Louie Joyce's Website and Facebook pages.
This event is part of Comic Con-versation 2016. Comic Con-versation is an annual week long festival celebrating the best of local comic culture with events, talks, workshops, panel sessions, readings and exhibitions across Sydney libraries.
You can check out all the amazing upcoming #ccv16 events and activities here
https://www.facebook.com/comicconversation2016
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