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The Third Brother
The Third Brother
Wakefield Press, 2017I knew nothing about my uncle's older brother, Glen Murrie, except that he'd died in the Second World War. A bomber pilot, he was killed on operations in the Pacific when he was 22 years old. He'd joined the RAAF when he was just 19. Seventy years after his death he was only a name to me, a face in a photograph. I wanted to know more. It was the start of nearly two years' worth of research and writing.
The more I discovered about Glen's life, the more fascinated I became. I read service records, newspaper reports, Glen's logbook, records of the Operations he'd flown. I found that he had been engaged to be married when he was killed. I read heartbreaking letters of loss, letters from his fiancee to his parents.
The Third Brother is a real departure for me. For a start, it's not really a children's book. But it means so much to me that I have included it in my website. -
The Nellie Stories
The Nellie Stories
Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Viking/Penguin Books, 2016The Nellie Stories is what publishers call a bind-up: it includes all four of the original stories about Nellie O'Neill in the one volume. It's a hardback book, not a paperback, and it has a very pretty magnetic closure so that it looks a bit like a lockable diary. The important thing about The Nellie Stories is that it includes a whole new chapter - a 'what happened next?' chapter - which looks at Nellie's life two years after the end of the final book (Nellie's Greatest Wish). And there's also another section, 'What I Imagine for Nellie's Future', in which the rest of our heroine's life is predicted. You'll have to read the book to find out what happens to her!
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One Night
One Night
Illustrated by Stephen Michael King | Omnibus Books, 2014When I was quite young, and we still lived in the country, my father told me that at midnight on Christmas Eve the farm animals spoke to each other in human voices. Every Christmas I had the wonderful idea of staying awake and creeping out at night to hear them, but of course I always fell asleep before the magical hour. I still think it's the loveliest story, and part of me believes that it must be true. Dad knew lots of folk legends like that, mostly ones he'd heard from the older German people who lived in our district.
One Night has been published in Japan in a smaller format. It makes a delightful tiny hardback, and somehow the Japanese characters suit it too! -
Eureka Boys (Do You Dare?)
Eureka Boys (Do You Dare?)
Penguin Books, 2015The 'Do You Dare?' series is loosely based on the Our Australian Girl series in that it aims to bring Australian history to life - but for boys (as well as girls, of course!).
The Eureka Stockade is one of the most important events in Australian history. In a way that made it quite difficult to write about, because so much has been written about it already. I had to find a way of bringing those extraordinary events to a personal level so younger readers could understand them. I read lots of books about Eureka, and one tiny detail jumped out at me: in a list of the people who were killed during the rebellion I saw the name Happy Jack. Nothing about him - where he came from, how old he was - just that he was one of the twenty-two people recorded as having died. Who was he? Why had he joined the rebels? I had to create a character for him, and as soon as Jack existed it was easy to fit other characters around him: my hero Henry Bird and his friend Frank Shanahan, and the horrible police trooper Sergeant Nockles. And Lola the carpet python. Suddenly I had a story.
I wish I knew if the real Happy Jack was anything at all like the person I imagined. Whether he is or not, I dedicated the book to him.
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Meet Ruby
Meet Ruby
(Our Australian Girl, Book 1)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2013It took me a while to find my 1930s Australian Girl, Ruby Quinlan, and to get to know her. She's so different from Nellie O'Neill, my first Australian Girl. Ruby comes from a life of privilege; she goes to a private girls' school; her family has a cook/housekeeper, and she is the only child of adoring parents. I knew that she would start her fictional life as a rather spoilt girl, somebody who, unlike Nellie, never had to struggle for anything. I also knew that she would have a warm heart, and plenty of courage. She would be put to the test, and her character would shine through.
By the end of Meet Ruby, the effects of the world economic downturn known as the Great Depression are beginning to bite and Ruby's comfortable life is soon turned on its head. When her father loses all his money, Ruby is horrified to discover that she will have to live in the country with her cousins. How can she bear it?
You can find out more about all the Our Australian Girl books at ouraustraliangirl.com.au
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Ruby and the Country Cousins
Ruby and the Country Cousins
(Our Australian Girl, Book 2)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2013Separated from Ruby's father, Ruby and her mother have to face a very different sort of life with their country relatives. The Camerons are hard-working, practical, and very poor. Like many farming families, they have been affected badly by the Depression.
Ruby hates Kettle Farm, and she hates her new school, where she is treated as a 'townie' outsider. Ruby and her cousin May are chalk and cheese and don't get along, and Ruby's little dog, Baxter, is no country dog. He is soon in trouble.
One of my favourite characters in this book is Uncle James's great-aunt Flora Cameron, who seems fierce but who will prove to be a very good friend to Ruby. Aunt Flora has already appeared in another book: she is the sweet curly-haired baby Nellie O'Neill meets in Nellie's Greatest Wish - eighty years earlier! I wonder how many readers will have spotted that?
I loved writing about Kettle Farm: it brought back so many memories of the farm where I grew up. The school, too, is based on the little primary school I went to for seven years.
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School Days for Ruby
School Days for Ruby
(Our Australian Girl, Book 3)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2013The story opens with a fancy-dress parade for Empire Day at Ruby's country school. In the early years of the twentieth century Australia's annual celebration of the British Empire was second in importance only to Christmas and Easter. It is dificult for us now to imagine this sort of uncritical patriotism, but in 1931 Australia was effectively a monocultural country. Australians were proud to be Australian and British.
Ruby has settled into school life, but things change dramatically for her when the four West children arrive in second term. Because their father is known to have been in prison, they are bullied by many of the other children. Only Ruby, who knows what it's like to be an outsider, offers them friendship. When the Wests are hounded from the school, Ruby and May go after them and try to help. But at the Wests' home, Ruby discovers something shocking about her much-loved Dad ...
For me the Wests are the real face of the Great Depression - a family so poor that the children go barefoot and often there is no food to eat. Compared with them, Ruby knows she is lucky.
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Ruby of Kettle Farm
Ruby of Kettle Farm
(Our Australian Girl, Book 4)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2013What has happened to Ruby's father? Nobody knows where he is, and Ruby's mother is anxious and unhappy. As the months pass, and Ruby takes part more and more in the life of Kettle Farm, her mother is failing rapidly. Soon Ruby realises that somehow she must find Dad, and she and May secretly go to Adelaide to look for him.
By the end of Ruby of Kettle Farm, Ruby is very different from the carefree, rather thoughtless girl she was in Meet Ruby. She has lost a great deal, but gained even more, and now she knows what is really important to her.
The Depression lasted for about ten years and was a defining period in Australia's history. It brought misery to many people, but others say that although they were very poor, it was a happy time. It brought out the best in people, and taught them all sorts of important life skills. I think Ruby would probably agree.
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The Gift
The Gift
Illustrated by Martin McKenna | Omnibus Books, 2012This book has been eight years in the making: Martin McKenna's beautiful illustrations have at last brought it most vividly to life.
The idea for the story came to me when I was looking through a department-store Christmas toy catalogue. It seemed to me that few of the toys advertised were the sort you could love simply for their own sake. Almost all of them did something. They were bright and plastic and interactive, and playing with them, although entertaining, would require little imagination. It made me think of toys generally, and of Christmas in particular, and especially of what Christmas, and gift-giving, are all about. Martin's final illustration in the book says it all, wordlessly.
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Meet Nellie
Meet Nellie
(Our Australian Girl, Book 1)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2012For me 12-year-old Nellie O'Neill sums up the Irish character: she's proud, funny, tragic, warm-hearted, a bit cheeky. No matter how bleak things are for her, she never loses her optimism. Nellie lost all her family in the Great Hunger, the terrible potato famine that crippled Ireland in the 1840s. Orphaned, homeless and starving, she was placed in a workhouse, and in 1849, along with 200 or so other orphan girls, she was shipped out to South Australia to work as a servant. We meet her just as the Elgin is docking at Port Adelaide, and Nellie and her best friend Mary are talking about their wishes for the future.
Writing Nellie's story meant doing a lot of research: about the potato famine, about nineteenth-century workhouses, about the Orphan Immmigration Scheme. Unearthing the details was endlessly interesting.
Meet Nellie is the first of four interlinked books about Nellie, part of Penguin's wonderful Our Australian Girl series about Australian girls who lived at different times in our history. You can find out more at ouraustraliangirl.com.au
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Nellie and the Secret Letter
Nellie and the Secret Letter
(Our Australian Girl, Book 2)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2012Nellie O'Neill's adventures continue in this second book. She has been parted from the friendly and considerate family she worked for, the Thompsons, and has moved to another job, this time as kitchen maid in a wealthy household where her friend Mary is nursery maid. Here she makes an implacable enemy in Bessie Rudge, the cook, who (like many English people at the time) has a deep dislike of the Irish and an ingrained belief in the rigid English class system. Nellie misses the Thompsons and particularly her friend Tom Thompson, who has been teaching her to read. She struggles to write a long-promised letter to Tom. But why doesn't he write back?
My research for Nellie and the Secret Letter included finding out how wealthy Adelaide people lived, details of the class system that prevailed in Victorian times, and what it would have been like to work in a colonial kitchen. Years ago I wrote a book called Australian Colonial Cookery, and that helped a lot.
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Nellie's Quest
Nellie's Quest
(Our Australian Girl, Book 3)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2012In this third book Nellie and Mary have no jobs, and no home. Worse, Mary is very ill. Nellie leaves her friend in hospital in Adelaide and travels to Burra in search of the Thompsons.
Burra is a historic copper-mining town in South Australia's mid north. Much of it is still almost exactly as it was in 1850, when it was one of the biggest inland towns in Australia, so it was easy for me to imagine Nellie there. At the height of the mining boom many miners lived in dug-out homes in the bank of the Burra Creek, and Nellie lives briefly with a kind and hospitable Cornish couple in their strange little underground home. But she can't stay in Burra for ever ... she still has no job, and she knows that Mary needs her.
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Nellie's Greatest Wish
Nellie's Greatest Wish
(Our Australian Girl, Book 4)Illustrated by Lucia Masciullo | Penguin Books, 2012What Nellie discovers when she returns to Adelaide will change her for ever.
For a great many Irish workhouse orphans their new life in Australia didn't turn out as they expected. Often it was difficult for them to find employment, and some did end up on the streets, living as beggars or worse. It's a sad little chapter in South Australia's history. I couldn't ignore it: it was a fact, and historically it was very possible that Nellie would find herself in a situation she'd always dreaded, and which Bessie Rudge cruelly predicted for her. But for Nellie, unlike some of the real-life orphans, there is always hope. What happens to her? Will all the wishes she made on the Elgin come true at last?
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Show Day
Show Day
Illustrated by Andrew McLean | Scholastic/Omnibus Books, 2012When I was a child and we lived in the country, we always went to the annual Mount Pleasant Show. Country shows represent the very best of country life - all those beautifully groomed animals, glossy fruits, perfect cakes and jams, exquisitely made baby clothes and jumpers and patchwork quilts ... I loved the horses in action, and the wood-chopping, and the sections specially for children: best pet, best hobby, best handwriting. My favourite was 'Best pair of polished boots'. (You don't see that one nowadays!) Small country shows are starting to die out now, and I think that's terribly sad. They have a character and camaraderie that's missing in the much bigger statewide shows.
Andrew McLean's illlustrations capture the atmosphere of the show so beautifully. You can almost smell the popcorn!
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Crusher Kevin (Aussie Nibbles)
Crusher Kevin (Aussie Nibbles)
Illustrated by Andrew McLean | Penguin Books, 2011Sometimes a story happens right in front of you, and all you have to do is recognise it, pick it up, and write it down.
A while ago a couple of luxury home units were being built in street near where we live. One day I noticed that there was a guard dog on the construction site. He was a big, plain dog with a fearsome bark, but I suspected that he wasn't nearly as fierce as he looked. He looked lonely.The site was cold and muddy, and I was sorry for him - especially on weekends, when the builders weren't working. I found out from a woman who lived nearby that the dog's name was Terence, and that he was quite old, and that his sight was failing. There, in a nutshell, was the story of Crusher Kevin.
When the units were completed, Terence disappeared, along with the builders and their trucks. I hope people were kind to him.
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Zizzy
Zizzy
Illustrated by Danny Snell | Omnibus Books, 2010Sloths are fascinating animals: so snoozy and slow, doing almost nothing but hang from tree branches all their lives. Zizzy, the baby sloth in this story, dreams of seeing what lies beyond the rainforest tree where he lives. A friendly bird leads him to the sea, ‘the beginning of the rest of the world', and his dreams change for ever. Danny Snell has drawn the most wonderful animals: not only soft, furry Zizzy, but an array of tropical frogs, a giant anteater, and a pair of extremely beautiful armadillos. -
A Girl Like Me
A Girl Like Me
Penguin Books, 2010This is my first young adult novel, and it's a book I've wanted to write for decades – ever since I heard the story of 13-year-old Bertha Schippan, who was murdered in 1902 in the tiny South Australian settlement of Towitta. Nobody ever found out who killed Bertha. I wanted to bring her to life again, and to write about the kind of girl she might have been, and why her life ended so tragically. I made up a lot of the story, but because it's based on real people and real events, I also did a lot of research. The story is told by Emmie Brooker, a farmer's daughter who wants to write a novel. Nothing else I have written has ever absorbed me as much as this book. History, romance, true crime and a mystery to solve: what could be more fun? -
Something About Water
Something About Water
Illustrated by Tom Jellett | Omnibus Books, 2009We've been recyclers and water-savers in our family for many years, and so writing this book wasn't difficult at all. The idea that all the water on Earth has been there for ever, and that for millions and millions of years it has simply been recycled, over and over, just blows me away. The water you drink now might have been swum in by dinosaurs, or it could have been part of the iceberg that sank the Titanic – incredible, but true! Tom Jellett had the idea of giving the story its comic-strip format, and had lots of other brilliant ideas too. (I love his brightly coloured frogs, and especially the polar bear.) -
Look, Baby!
Look, Baby!
Illustrated by Cheryl Orsini | Working Title Press, 2009When my children were little they adored a picture book that showed the names of things. This book does the same thing: it's a sort of picture dictionary for very young children, with a rhyming text. Cheryl Orsini's illustrations are beautiful, both timeless and delightfully old-fashioned. They remind me a bit of the illustrations in the Little Golden Books that were published in the 1940s. -
Heart of Magic (Lightning Strikes)
Heart of Magic (Lightning Strikes)
Walker Books, 2008This story is about two very different girls who are best friends. Stacey is quiet and shy, and longs to be more like confident, pretty Twyla. On the day they go to the Royal Show for Twyla's birthday treat, they very unexpectedly have a quarrel. Stacey, furious with her friend, decides to go and have fun on her own. She meets a gypsy woman who gives her a gold heart pin, and after that things change dramatically. To her surprise, shy Stacey turns into someone very like her ex-best friend. I set the action in a showground because it's so noisy and colourful, the sort of place where almost anything could happen. -
Fairy Four-Eyes (Aussie Bites)
Fairy Four-Eyes (Aussie Bites)
Illustrated by Emma Quay | Penguin Books, 2007As a child I studied ballet for a couple of years, and some of my memories surfaced for this book. I also loved the ballet books written ages ago by Lorna Hill (A Dream of Sadler's Wells, and many others) – and there are some echoes of those books here too. Ballet is so exciting and so beautiful. It has everything: music, drama and great athleticism. But you never see a ballerina wearing glasses, do you? Lucy, the girl in the story, is horrified when she discovers that's what she has to do. How can she possibly dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in glasses? And the new boy in her ballet class is such a show-off! He just makes everything worse. -
Pudding and Chips
Pudding and Chips
Illustrated by Janine Dawson | ABC Books, 2004This picture book was such fun to do, because I loved the characters – a warm-hearted farmer named Annie, a big, bossy white goose and a bossy sheepdog. And also because the illustrations by the inimitable Janine Dawson were so witty and appealing. When I had the original idea for the story, we had a little farm with a flock of geese. Geese can be very ornery – and they do lay their eggs in all sorts of unusual places! Chips the sheepdog is based on Kelly, a dog we once had. He is always the dog I keep in my memory. -
Little Red Bear
Little Red Bear
Illustrated by Anna Pignataro | Scholastic Press, 2003When I was going for a walk one day I noticed a tiny red bear propped on the low wall surrounding a retirement home. Obviously it had been dropped, and the child who owned it hadn't realised, and a thoughtful passer-by had put it on the wall where it would be more noticeable. Next time I went for a walk it was still there – and the next day, and the next. Nobody came back to claim it. Then one day it rained very hard, and all I could think about was the little bear, getting soaking wet, nobody caring. So I went out and rescued him, and dried him off, and kept him, and wrote this book. -
A Year on Our Farm
A Year on Our Farm
Illustrated by Andrew McLean | Omnibus Books, 2002This book was several years in the making. I had wanted for some time to do a book of seasons, and I wanted to set it on a typical small Australian farm. I talked about it with my father, and he gave me a list of all the things you have to do on a farm, month by month. His notes became the basis of the text. There are lots of bits of my own childhood here. Kelly, one of the dogs in the book, was named for a sheepdog we had, the best, smartest dog ever. Andrew McLean's illustrations for this book are perfect. All the time I was writing it, I was hoping that he would be the illustrator, and imagining his illustrations. In the end they were even better than I'd imagined. -
Jump, Baby!
Jump, Baby!
Illustrated by Dominique Falla | Omnibus Books, 2002We have a walnut tree at the back of our house, and it's a favourite haunt of possums, both ringtails and brushtails. Sometimes you can see a mother with her baby clinging to her back. I wondered how a baby would feel when he was too old for his mum to carry him, and he was on his own for the first time. A bit nervous, probably! Dominique Falla painted the sweetest illustrations of baby possums for the book. -
Jack's Owl: Omnibus Solos
Jack's Owl: Omnibus Solos
Illustrated by Stephen Michael King | Omnibus Books, 1999Owls are my favourite birds. I wrote Jack's Owl about a little owl called Hoo who lives in a dark forest where magical things happen. Stephen Michael King's drawings of Hoo, with his feathery ears, are magical too. The story is pure fantasy, but it's also about something real: respecting the need of wild creatures to be wild. This book started off as a much longer story, and I had to cut it down to the 1000 words required for a Solo. Maybe one day I'll write another story about Hoo. -
The Sea Dog: Omnibus Solos
The Sea Dog: Omnibus Solos
Illustrated by Andrew McLean | Omnibus Books, 1998Years ago, when I was staying on the NSW coast, I was taken to see the Norah Head lighthouse. I decided right then to write a story about a boy who lived in a lighthouse, with the sea below and wildness all around. Ben, the boy in the story, loves his unusual home, but it's lonely there, and he's rather afraid of the sea: he knows how strong it is. Then one day his father brings him a little white dog who isn't afraid of anything. -
Potato Baby
Potato Baby
ABC Books, 1997When I was about ten years old I spent a day planting potatoes with my father. It was one of those perfect days that seem even better in recollection, and I wanted somehow to re-create it. Originally I wrote this story as a picture book, but that didn't really work – so I made it much longer, added a whole lot of characters, and turned it into a chapter book. It's about a girl, Katie Moloney, whose own mother has died, and who is resentful because her stepmother is having a baby. Katie doesn't even like babies! The carved pig in the story is based on the lucky pig which hangs from a shamrock bracelet that belonged to my mother. (You can see this very same bracelet on the cover of Nellie's Greatest Wish.)
Potato Baby was the first book in which I used the Irish potato famine as part of the storyline: it plays a much bigger role in the Nellie (Our Australian Girl) books.
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The Best Pet: Omnibus Solos
The Best Pet: Omnibus Solos
Illustrated by Beth Norling| Omnibus Books, 1997For ages my son wanted a pet ferret. I couldn't give him a ferret, so instead I wrote a book about a boy named Tom who discovers that a ferret is indeed ‘the best pet' – and a complete handful! In the end I liked Monty the ferret so much that I almost wanted a ferret for a pet myself. Beth Norling's illustrations for the book are so lively and funny. I love the pic where Tom's mother is putting the (furious and reluctant) cat out. -
Moving On
Moving On
Illustrated by Penny Walton| Ashton Scholastic, 1993This was my first proper picture book. I was so excited when I heard that it had been accepted for publication! It's about a boy learning that his school is about to be closed down, and it's based on memories of the little two-roomed country school I went to. It was my father's old school too, and he told me lots of things about his own experiences there. He remembered riding his pony to school, and kids coming to school with bare feet, and how he had to drink water from the rainwater tank with wrigglers in it. Sadly, like so many country schools, it closed many years ago.
