AustLit's Makeover
AustLit's new user interface was launched in mid-March following an intensive re-design phase. Brisbane design company Inkahoots created the new look and Anna Gerber was responsible for the implementation. (Anna is working part-time with AustLit in addition to her work at The University of Queensland's School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering where she is focusing on annotation systems for collaborators within eResearch.)

AustLit is happy to receive your feedback on the new interface. Feel free to contact us via email (info-austlit@austlit.edu.au) or by completing the User Survey (http://www.austlit.edu.au/contacts/survey).

Black Words E-News Now Available
Dr Anita Heiss, the Sydney-based national co-ordinator of AustLit's Black Words subset, is writing a regular briefing 'to keep you informed of the ever changing face of Black Words'. The first Black Words E-News is now available. Click here to read about the nationally dispersed Black Words team and their contribution to AustLit's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers dataset.

AustLit Team Members Depart
AustLit has recently farewelled two valued team members, Rebecca Carter and Peter Knox, who have been working on The Bibliography of Australian Literature (BAL) project. Both are returning to previous endeavours: Rebecca moves back to The University of Queensland Library and Peter will resume his PhD on Melinda Kendall.

The AustLit team is grateful for Rebecca and Peter's contribution to BAL and to the wider work of AustLit. We wish them all the best in their future undertakings.

New AustLit Records
During February and March 2008, the Content Development Team added:

• 8,724 new works

and

• 1,344 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 9,176 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

Patrick White Notebooks Available Online
The Manuscripts Branch of the National Library of Australia is nearing the completion of its project to make available online the ten literary notebooks of Patrick White. The notebooks are part of a major collection acquired by the Library in late 2006 from White's literary agent and executor, Barbara Mobbs.

Susan Thomas, from the Library's Manuscripts Branch, says that close examination of the notebooks reveals that 'they are treasure troves, full of observations, first paragraphs, timelines and character descriptions containing the genesis of many works, across all genres. One notebook, kept in 1941, contains a passage that White reproduced almost verbatim in his autobiography, Flaws in the Glass, which was published forty years later'. The notebooks disclose clues for every White novel except The Tree of Man.

The digitised notebooks can be viewed via the National Library's Finding Aid for Patrick White. The Library hopes their availability will introduce White's work to new audiences, extend scholarship on his writing and lead to an enhanced understanding of his life.

The Best Booker?
To celebrate its 40th anniversary the Man Booker Prize is honouring 'the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969'. A judging panel will select a shortlist of six novels from the 41 novelists who have won the Booker. The shortlist will be announced in May and public voting to choose the winner will then commence.

Australian contenders for the best overall novel are:

• Thomas Keneally – Schindler's Ark (1982)
• Peter Carey – Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)

and

• D. B. C. Pierre – Vernon God Little (2003)

There is also a faint Australian connection through William Golding's 1980 winner, Rites of Passage. Golding's novel tells the story of the sea voyage undertaken by Edmund Talbot, a young man en route to Australia to take up a position in a colonial government.

The full list of contenders is available on the Man Booker website. The regular Man Booker Prize will be awarded as usual this year. The longlist is due to be announced on 29 July, the shortlist on 9 September and the winner on 14 October.

Emeritus Awards for Koch and Murnane
Christopher Koch and Gerald Murnane have each been honoured with the Australia Council for the Arts's writers emeritus award. The career advancement awards are valued at $50,000 and recognise the achievements of writers over the age of 65 'who have made an outstanding contribution to the field [of Australian literature] and created an acclaimed body of work'.

Chair of the Council's literature board Dr Imre Salusinszky said: 'There can be few more fitting recipients of these writers emeritus awards. Both have a level of public recognition that does not match their high literary stature ... Christopher and Gerald have changed the face of Australian writing through the breadth of their respective imaginations. Each of their works are characterised by a uniquely Australian perspective on the world.' (Australia Council media release, 11 February 2008)

Koch's novels include the Miles Franklin winners The Doubleman and Highways to a War and, most recently, The Memory Room. Among Murnane's works are the novel Tamarisk Row, soon to be re-released by Giramondo Publishing (see New Publications) and the essay collection Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs.

New ASA Chair Announced
The 30 March 2008 meeting of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) elected Dr Anita Heiss as the organisation's new chair. Dr Heiss, national co-ordinator of AustLit's Black Words subset, told AustLit: 'As soon as I learned of the ASA back in 1998 I joined immediately, and I have been actively involved in the organisation since then – seven out of the ten years of my membership have seen me on the Management Committee. I am delighted to be elected as the Chair of the ASA in 2008, and look forward to continuing the role we play in protecting the rights of Australia's literary creators. I also hope to strengthen the relationship between the ASA and AustLit in promoting Australian writers and their writing.'

Dr Heiss has recently co-edited the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature with Peter Minter. (See New Publications for further details.)

Jose Heads to Harvard
Professor Nicholas Jose, currently chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, will be based in the USA during 2009 when he takes up the position of Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. Professor Jose hopes to expand American tastes for Australia literature during his tenure. 'I think the time is ripe for a resurgence of this engagement ... what I will be doing is trying to offer a framework for Australian writing in the recent past, the past 50 years and the present.' (Australian, 2 April 2008) Professor Jose wants to focus on material that Americans may 'not necessarily think of as Australian'; work that engages 'with the international arena from the Australian perspective, particularly the Asia-Pacific.' Professor Jose cited Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire and Michelle de Kretser's The Hamilton Case as examples.

The visiting chair at Harvard was established in 1976 as a bicentennial gift from the Australian government to the USA. The role of the chair is 'to maintain such teaching, research and publication as will help to promote awareness and understanding of Australia in the United States of America'. Previous chairs in the literature field include Dame Leonie Kramer (198101982) and Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe (1987-1988).

Writers to Attend 2020 Summit
Several writers, publishers and others from the Australian literature community will attend the Prime Minister's Australia 2020 summit. Those participating in the 'Towards a Creative Australia' discussion group include Professors Larissa Behrendt, J. M. Coetzee and Nicholas Jose, playwrights Wesley Enoch and Michael Gow, poet Alison Croggon and novelist, poet and short story writer Peter Goldsworthy. Dr Jackie Huggins, Deputy Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at The University of Queensland and participant in AustLit's Black Words subset, will co-chair the 'Indigenous Australia' group.

The summit will be held at Parliament House, Canberra, on 19 and 20 April 'to help shape a long term strategy for the nation's future'. The Creative Australia group will examine questions relating to the film and television industries, emerging global industries and the 'creative sector's potential as a major Australian export industry'.

Are Blurbs Worth the Paper They're Written On?
Les Murray caused a stir in February when he offered to write the blurb for a new book of poetry in exchange for the publication of his wife's family history. Murray was responding to an approach by the small Sydney publisher Puncher and Wattmann when he made his 'publish-for-comment' suggestion. Murray told the Sydney Morning Herald's Susan Wyndham: 'People are forever asking me for blurbs. I've been pestered unmercifully'. Puncher and Wattmann's publisher David Musgrave was not favourably-disposed to Murray's reply and 'refused to be bullied'. (23 February 2008)

When Melbourne poet Alan Wearne read of the contretemps he offered his services to Puncher and Wattmann, 'albeit tongue-in-cheek', as a 'no-strings blurbquoter'. (Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March 2008)

The book at the centre of the storm is John K. Murphy's Moving Along: Selected Verse. Murphy's poems have been published in Quadrant (where Murray is poetry editor) and in a range of other Australian journals and newspapers. He may be hoping that readers take Murray's advice: 'blurbs are all nonsense – they're all hyperbole and hype ... Read the contents of the damned book.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2008)

PM Won't Judge Self-Published Books
2008 is the inaugural year for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for fiction and non-fiction, but author Colin Macpherson is unhappy that self-published books are ineligible to enter the competition. Macpherson told the Australian's Rosemary Sorensen that the government is effectively using mainstream publishers as an initial vetting filter. Although similar rules apply to prizes such as the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Macpherson points out that these prizes are not distributing public money raised from taxes. (Weekend Australian, 15-16 March 2008)

Guidelines for entries to the Prime Minister's Literary Awards also stipulate that at least 750 copies of a work need to have been published and works 'must have been published in book form'.

Full conditions of entry are available on the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts website. Colin Macpherson's self-published books can be sourced via the website for his Mopoke imprint.

Rooku Bound along the Tracks
The journeys of Melbourne's train commuters are being brightened by the artistic endeavours of young and emerging Victorian artists and poets. The non-profit cultural organisation Moving Galleries is showcasing 18 works of art along with 36 rooku – an Australian version of the Japanese haiku style – on the city's Connex rail network.

Moving Galleries wants to bring art and poetry to the public while building on Melbourne's reputation as 'cultural and creative capital'. Rooku was the chosen poetry form because of its accessibility, its experimental nature and its three-line brevity. 'Rooku is really about recording what we observe and experience so we can share these experiences with others', says Michael de Valle, one of the poets selected for the first exhibition. (Age, 15 March 2008)

All 36 rooku from the current exhibition are available on the Moving Galleries website and calls are now going out for contributions to the Spring 2008 and Autumn 2009 collections. See the website for more information.

Paul Jennings was interviewed on ABC Radio National's Life Matters program on 18 March. He recommended that parents encourage their children's literacy development by reading to them 'from the start', creating a loving environment in which children become familiar with the 'language of writing' and the way it differs from the 'language of speech'.

Sydney columnist Miranda Devine took exception to Jennings's comments:
'It is no coincidence that megabucks children's author Jennings has joined megabucks children's author Mem Fox in this misguided mission to offload responsibility from schools to already guilt-ridden parents. Do you think they would have become megabucks children's authors without the enthusiastic endorsement of the education establishment? No way. They would be consigned to the dust-covered corner of the school library.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 2008)

Judith Ridge, the recently appointed children's and young people's literature development officer for the Blacktown City Council, Sydney, and a teacher herself, responded to Devine's assertions in a Letter to the Editor the following day:
'Fox's picture book Possum Magic has sold more than three million copies and is considered a classic of Australian children's literature; worldwide sales figures of Jennings's books top eight million. These figures can hardly be credited to educational sales alone. Fox and Jennings are successful not because of any theoretical position they hold, but because children – and parents – like their books.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 21-23 March 2008)

Jennings's Life Matters interview is available for audio download on the ABC website. The interview coincided with the publication of the second edition of Jennings's The Reading Bug.

Writers Galore on Canberra Streets
The February/March AustLit newsletter reported the naming of the new Canberra suburb of Wright after poet, activist and environmentalist Judith Wright but commented that, even with several other suburbs already named for writers, the national capital could not match the Sydney suburb of Casula where all street names honour Australian artists or writers.

'Not so', says Tony Marshall, a former Canberra resident and now Senior Librarian with the State Library of Tasmania's Heritage Collections. Marshall contacted AustLit to remind us of the Canberra suburb of Garran where all the streets are named after Australian writers, 'some of them, admittedly, obscure'.

Perhaps not altogether 'obscure', only dusty with memory. Writers remembered on Garran's streets include:

• Henry Savery, author of Quintus Servinton, the first Australian novel
• Mary Gaunt, who supported herself in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through her novels, short stories and travel writing
• William Fitchett, newspaper editor, journalist, novelist and tireless campaigner for 'God, King and Empire'
• Barcroft Boake, boundary rider and bush balladist

and

• Mary Hannay Foott, painter, poet, teacher and children's writer

A full list of Garran's streets, with explanations of their name-origins, appears on the ACT Planning and Land Authority website. And our thanks to Tony Marshall for drawing the suburb of Garran to our attention.

'Linguistic Virtuosity' Earns Hartnett the Astrid Lindgren Award
Sonya Hartnett has won the world's richest children's and youth literature prize, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The Award was established by the Swedish Government in 2002 to honour Lindgren's life and work; it is presented annually to one or more recipients 'regardless of language or nationality'. The award, for authors, illustrators, storytellers and promoters of reading, recognises a body of work that upholds 'the highest artistic quality' and evokes 'the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured'.

Judges of the 2008 Award described Hartnett as 'one of the major forces for renewal in modern young adult fiction. With psychological depth and a concealed yet palpable anger, she depicts the circumstances of young people without avoiding the darker sides of life. She does so with linguistic virtuosity and a brilliant narrative technique; her works are a source of strength.'

Hartnett has not always been comfortable being pigeonholed as a 'YA writer', but she acknowledges that her books have always had 'at least one foot in the "young adults' field"'. Following her win, she told the Age's Ray Cassin: 'if someone in that field wants to give me a lot of money, who am I to say that they're not for young adults'. (14 March 2008) The prize money for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is five million Swedish kroner, or close to 900,000 Australian dollars.

Hartnett's most recent young adult novels are The Ghost's Child (2007) and Surrender (2005). In 2006 she published the erotic novel Landscape with Animals under the pseudonym Cameron S. Redfern.

Tan Does It Again
Shaun Tan's The Arrival has won another award; this time the Album of the Year at the Angouleme International Comics Festival. This latest award brings the book's tally, by AustLit's count, to nine wins plus several shortlistings and a special mention. Tan's story of a family's journey of migration is published in France under the title Là où vont nos pères (There Where Our Fathers Go). Speaking to the West Australian's arts editor, Stephen Bevis, Tan said: 'I am always unsure about how a book will be received and this one was quite experimental, so it is very gratifying simply to receive positive reader feedback. An award is really great because it comes from people who really appreciate the form so they are judging it quite critically. You realise that the book actually does work.' (29 January 2008)

Tan, who has previously collaborated with the American animation studio Pixar, is now in talks with a Los Angeles producer about the possibility of turning The Arrival into a film.

McMaster Wins Inaugural Barbara Jefferis Award
Rhyll McMaster has won the inaugural Barbara Jefferis Award for her novel Feather Man. The Award's judges, Dr Leigh Dale, Deborah Hope and Rosie Scott, described McMaster's prose as 'rich, lyrical and assured' and noted that 'the portrayals of the characters in all their fabulous monstrosity ring absolutely true'. (Judges' report) Bearing in mind that the Award is for 'the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society', the judges also commented that McMaster 'has created a fresh and original woman character'.

Feather Man is McMaster's first novel following the publication of eight volumes of poetry, but in turning her attention to prose her ability to write poems 'just disappeared ... I used to walk around with poems forming in my head all the time. Everything I saw I would translate into a poem. But then it just stopped. I found that attempting the novel changed the way I saw things.' Instead of seeing the world as a poem, McMaster now views it as a narrative: 'I am a camera now; I see the world as if it were an unfolding film telling a story'. (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 2008)

Australian Success in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Australian writers have won both categories in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, South East Asia and South Pacific section. Steven Carroll won the Best Book prize for The Time We Have Taken and Karen Foxlee was awarded the Best First Book prize for The Anatomy of Wings.

Both authors have been invited to go to South Africa to take part in a programme of readings, community activities and other public events in the week prior to the announcement of this year's overall winners. The two winners, drawn from the four regional categories, will be declared during the Franschhoek Literary Festival, in the Cape Winelands District, on 18 May 2008.

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize is sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation, an intergovernmental organisation that seeks 'to strengthen civil society in the achievement of Commonwealth priorities – democracy and good governance, respect for human rights and gender equality, poverty eradication and sustainable, people-centred development, and to promote arts and culture'.

Tranter Takes Top Prize in Adelaide
John Tranter's Urban Myths: 210 Poems won the $15,000 John Bray Poetry Award and the $10,000 Premier's Award at this year's Festival Awards for Literature. The winners of the Awards were announced by South Australia's premier, the Hon. Mike Rann, during the 2008 Adelaide Writers Week. Mr Rann was particularly pleased with Tranter's success: 'It is great to see poetry take out the Premier's award for best overall published work'.

Other winners of the Festival Awards national categories are:

• Michael Gerard Bauer – Don't Call Me Ishmael! (Award for Children's Literature)
• John Hughes – Someone Else: Fictional Essays (Award for Innovation)
• Jacob G. Rosenberg – Sunrise West (Award for Non Fiction)

and

• Roger McDonald – The Ballad of Desmond Kale (Award for Fiction)

In the Award categories specifically for South Australian writers, Stephen Orr's 'The Second Fouling Mark' won the Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an emerging writer and Duncan Graham's ' Merger – Art, Life and the Other Thing' won the Jill Blewett Playwright's Award for the creative development of a play script. Children's writer Rosanne Hawke won the Carclew Fellowship and poet Steve Evans received the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship. The $15,000 fellowships will assist Hawke and Evans with the writing of their next books.

Other Recent Awards and Shortlistings

• The 2007 Children's Peace Literature Award went to Michael Gerard Bauer for Don't Call Me Ishmael!. The judges were impressed with the main character's ability to 'put himself into the shoes of his adversary in order to resolve conflict'.
• Ross Clark is the winner of the fourth Australian Book Review (ABR) Poetry Prize valued at $3,000. Clark's says that his poem, 'Danger: Lantana', began in 'the rag-and-bone shop of history and locality'. With its rural setting, he hopes that readers will 'hear the creek flowing again' in his words. (ABR media release, 2 April 2008)
• Judith Clarke's One Whole and Perfect Day is one of three honour books in the 2008 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The Award is offered by the Young Adult Library Services Branch of the American Library Association.
• Jackie French and Shaun Tan were Australia's nominees for the 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Awards. French was chosen in the author category and Tan in the illustrator section. The award is offered bi-ennially to 'a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature'. To date, the only Australians to win the Award are Patricia Wrightson (author) and Robert Ingpen (illustrator), both in 1986.
• David Malouf's The Complete Stories was shortlisted for the fiction section of the 2008 Kiriyama Prize. The award, won this year by New Zealand novelist Lloyd Jones for Pip, recognises 'outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region'.
• Nine novels have been longlisted for the 2008 Miles Franklin Literary Award. They are:
  • Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller
  • Love Without Hope by Rodney Hall
  • Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital
  • Secrets of the Sea by Nicholas Shakespeare
  • Sorry by Gail Jones
  • The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks
  • The Memory Room by Christopher Koch
  • The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
  • The Widow and Her Hero by Thomas Keneally
  The shortlist will be announced on 17 April and the winner, who will receive $42,000, on 19 June.

and

• Gail Jones's Sorry (2007) has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The shortlist will be announced on 15 April and the winner on 4 June. Her 2006 novel Dreams of Speaking has been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Dublin Award winner will be announced on 12 June.

Indigenous Writing Showcased in New Anthology Allen and Unwin has published the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, edited by Dr Anita Heiss and Peter Minter. The Anthology includes 'speeches, petitions and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as major works that reflect the blossoming of Aboriginal poetry, prose and drama from the mid-twentieth century onwards'. (Allen and Unwin) The Anthology is part of the Macquarie PEN Anthology project (see 'Macquarie PEN Anthology Centre Launched' in AustLit's February/March 2007 newsletter for further background) that seeks to emulate the famed Norton anthologies. Co-editor Peter Minter told Bookseller + Publisher Magazine that although the compilers had been looking for writing that was 'part of major events in Aboriginal history and politics, major works of poetry and prose', they had also found 'small, forgotten pieces' that 'shone for their honesty and humanity'. Pressed for a personal favourite, Minter nominated the poetry of Oodgeroo Noonuccal whose writing 'led the way for later generations of Aboriginal poets, artists and political leaders'. (March 2008)

Cover of Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008) Used with permission of Allen and Unwin

For further information see the website of the Centre for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.

'Everything Old Is New Again'
Australian publishers appear to be following singer-songwriter Peter Allen's advice: 'And don't throw the past away / You might need it some other rainy day / ... When everything old is new again'. Several publishers are launching 'classics' series or dipping into the backlist during 2008. They include:

Giramondo Classic Reprints Giramondo Publishing is 'testing the waters' in the classics market with its Classic Reprints series. Publisher Ivor Indyk told AustLit: 'We have a hit list of some 15 Australian classics that we would like to see reprinted, but a proper reprint series is a costly undertaking, and would involve a number of collaborators – and right now we are not sure there is a market for it'. The project is being managed by Giramondo's Writing & Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney and will require collaboration between different publishers and the support of academic institutions and funding organisations. The first book in Giramondo's series is Gerard Murnane's 1974 novel Tamarisk Row. Cover (right) of Tamarisk Row (2008) Used with permission of Giramondo Publishing

Penguin Modern Classics While Helen Garner's most recent book, The Spare Room, is published by Text in Melbourne, much of her early work was published by McPhee Gribble which was later sold to Penguin. In March Penguin released two of those early books, Monkey Grip and Postcards from Surfers: Stories, as part of its Penguin Modern Classics series. Garner now joins such Australians as Patrick White and Henry Handel Richardson in this series. Cover (left) of Monkey Grip (2008) Used with permission of Penguin Group (Australia)

Australian Vintage Classics Random House Australia will launch Australian Vintage Classics in April 2008. The series will start with four books including Thomas Keneally's Three Cheers for the Paraclete and David Marr's Patrick White: A Life. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald's Susan Wyndham, Random publisher Meredith Curnow said: 'We wanted to do some more recent and some older classics and bring back some books that were not in print.... There's no doubt the whole series is not going to return the investment but we felt it was an important thing to do.' (21 March 2008) Random House Australia has committed to issuing between ten and fifteen classics a year for the next five years. Cover (right) of Three Cheers for the Paraclete (2008) Used with permission of Random House Australia

Australian Literature in a Global World
The 30th anniversary conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) will be held at the University of Wollongong from 29 June to 3 July. The conference will address questions surrounding the idea of a national literature in the global era: 'Globalisation affects Australian literature in many ways: the global flow of people, ideas and cultural forms; globalisation of publishing and education; global markets where Australian texts may be read as part of world literature in English'.

Details of the program are available on the University of Wollongong's website. Further information can be obtained by contacting Mrs Jenn Phillips via email: jenn@uow.edu.au

For more submission opportunities, and news of upcoming conferences and festivals, see the AustLit Events Directory. If you have new events of interest to the Australian literature, teaching and research communities and the general public please complete the form provided on the Events Submission page on our website.

Discovering HMAS Sydney
On 17 March 2008 Australia's Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, announced the discovery in Western Australian waters of the HMAS Sydney II by the Finding Sydney Foundation. The Sydney sank on 19 November 1941 after a fierce battle with the German raider HSK Kormoran. 317 of the 390 crew on the Kormoran were rescued. All members of the Sydney's company were lost.

As national and international media provided extensive coverage of the find, one of AustLit's Bibliography of Australian Literature researchers, Dr Stephany Steggall, made her own discovery. Stephany was investigating the poet, novelist and short story writer H. H. Wilson. In Wilson's Occasional Verse: 1942-1943, Stephany found a poem titled 'To H.M.A.S. Sydney'.

Wilson's poem rings with wartime fervour in phrases like 'the maraud'ring foe' and 'those who taunted us with brazen boast'. It concludes in homage to HMAS Sydney II and Australia's 'heroic sons' who died at sea:

No grey and wintry seas nor alien tide
Shall wash your silent guns,
And your heroic sons
Sleep soundly, gathered to their country's heart.
Blue seas and golden beaches that were part
Of life they loved, grey ships that were their pride,
Keep guard for ever here, where brave men died.

AustLit records other works about HMAS Sydney II. They can be easily found by entering 'hmas sydney' as the search term in the Quick Search box located on AustLit's home page.

John Merewether (1923-2008)
John Merewether was well-known in Sydney as an architect and a supporter of music. In Australian literary circles he was known as the great grand-nephew of David Scott Mitchell and as the recent benefactor of two scholarships at the Mitchell Library (named after his famous forebear). Merewether's daughter recalled her father as a man who, while not inclined to academic pursuits himself, 'had a vision to support students and scholars' in a very generous way. (Newcastle Herald, 10 March 2008) Merewether was also a regular volunteer at the Mitchell Library and a memorial gathering was held thre in his honour on 15 March 2008.

Applications for the inaugural David Scott Mitchell Fellowship and the inaugural Merewether Fellowship close on 15 May 2008. Further information is available via the State Library of New South Wales's website.

Brian Clouston (1925-2008)
In 1954 Brian Clouston established Jacaranda Press as an avenue for publishing books by Australian writers specifically for Australian students in Australian schools. An example was Jacaranda's Endeavour Reading Programme. Starting in 1967, it produced well over 100 readers and was eventually adopted across schools in every state and territory.

Clouston agitated for a truly Australian dictionary. He worked with an editorial board from Macquarie University in the development phase of what would become the Macquarie Dictionary, a widely-recognised standard. Clouston spent five years as director of Australian National University Press and, in 1980, he established the Canberra-based business Academic Remainders, now known as Clouston and Hall Booksellers.

In an obituary for the Courier-Mail, Robert MacDonald noted that Clouston spent much of his free time on Stradbroke Island. It is on that island that 'one enduring monument to Brian Clouston remains. On the road out of Point Lookout is a sign pointing to a "historical cattle dip". At least, that's what it used to say until Mr Clouston and a friend turned up late one night and amended the sign to read "historic cattle dip". To the well-trained eyes of one of Australia's pioneering publishers, that was much better English.' (25 January 2008)

Greg Dening (1931-2008)
Professor Greg Dening is described by his friend Stan Katz as 'one of the preeminent historians and anthropologists of the South Pacific'. (Chronicle Review, 16 March 2008) Dening trained as a Jesuit, but then turned his attention to academia. He gained his doctorate at Harvard University and went on to a build a distinguished career. At the time of his death, Dening was Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Melbourne.

In a personal profile written for the Australian National University's Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Dening described his writing in the following way:

Writing fills the hours of my day and the years of my life – reviews, launches, reports, lectures, essays, books. It is a good life constantly trying to find words that discover myself in my relationship to the good and evil of the world, the ugly and the beautiful of living. Maybe it is self-indulgent. I'll have to live with that. I tell myself that I write to change the world in some small way – morally, intellectually, politically, culturally.... I work at the fictions in my non-fiction, because there is no humanity and no representation of humanity without fiction – the transformation of one mode of experience into another mode. That is why I see writing as theatre – where the artful magic of stage, performance and dramatics close the attention of an audience down, to see things they otherwise would not have seen.

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