AustLit Statistics for 2006
Over 115,000 individual searches were made against the AustLit database in 2006 and more than six million pages were viewed by subscribers. The number of searches increased by 20,000 from the almost 95,000 performed in 2006, proving that AustLit is an increasingly useful research and information tool around Australia and internationally. These figures do not include web crawlers or non-subscriber searches.

During 2006, the Content Development Team added:

• 44,582 new works

and

• 9,341 new agents (individuals and organisations)

Over the course of the year, upgrades and enhancements were made to over 22,000 exisiting agent records and more than 46,000 existing work records.

Position with AustLit Available
AustLit is seeking an experienced Project Officer/Administrative Officer to provide administrative support and assistance (finance and general) to the activities of AustLit. The position is a full-time fixed term appointment for 12 months with a possibility of renewal. Full details of the position are included in the advertisement on the Seek jobs website. (Enter the keyword 'AustLit' in the Quick Search box.) Applications close on 23 February 2007.

Children's Literature Flourishing on AustLit
Christine Oughtred joined the AustLit team in 2006 to develop biographical and bibliographical content on Australian children's writers and writing. While scouring the Deakin University Library collection for children's literature that was not yet represented on AustLit (and developing quite an affinity with of the adventure/mystery genre of the 1940s and 1950s along the way) Christine became aware of the rich deposit of children's literature in the Ken Pound Collection at the State Library of Victoria.

Writing about the collector and his collection, Christine says: 'Ken Pound lived in a men's refuge in suburban Fitzroy, Victoria, where he was the caretaker and his collection was housed in cramped conditions in the loft of a converted church. His aim to acquire every edition and reprint of every Australian children's book resulted in a collection of 29,000 volumes dating from the late 19th to the mid-20th century including both fiction and non-fiction items, games, posters and card sets. Approximately one-third of the collection is made up of variant copies, issues or reprint editions. The number of shelves needed to accommodate Ethel Turner's Seven Little Australians must be seen to be believed!'

During 2007 Christine will sight material in the Pound Collection and add relevant items and information to AustLit. Another activity beginning in 2007 is her two-year tenure as joint coordinator of the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards. In this capacity Christine has already had the opportunity to check all 334 titles submitted for the 2007 CBCA awards. As a result, AustLit's Australian Children's Literature subset is the beneficiary of numerous additions and enhancements.

AustLit Farewells Foundation Team Member
William Dolley has been a member of the AustLit team from its inception in 2001. A qualified teacher and librarian, William had worked in the secondary and tertiary education sectors prior to joining the Arts Faculty at Deakin University in 1997. After working on several projects within the Faculty, William transferred to the Library where he was involved with the updating of two Deakin University initiatives – A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers and the Australian Multicultural Literature Database – both of which were later incorporated into AustLit, the latter forming the basis of the Australian Multicultural Writers subset.

In the last six years William has contributed over 5,000 work and agent records to AustLit and has enhanced nearly 8,000 existing records. With a Master's Degree in Classics and Archaeology, he also structured the AustLit thesaurus terms for Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.

Bidding farewell to AustLit in his inimitable style, William declared that he was moving 'from the divers tongues of literature to the language of lawyers and licences' – in other words, he will be the Licensing and Research Officer with Deakin's Australian Digital Theses Program. The AustLit team extends its best wishes to William for the future. We are grateful for the knowledge and expertise he brought to the database, and the wisdom and good humour he shared with his colleagues.

Professor Belle Alderman Honoured in Australia Day Awards
AustLit Advisory Board member, Emeritus Professor Belle Alderman, was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on 26 January 2007. Professor Alderman was recognised for her service to Australian children's literature as an academic, researcher and mentor to emerging writers and illustrators, for her work in the development and management of the Lu Rees Archives of Australian Children's Literature and for her contribution to professional associations. Responding to the announcement, a delighted Professor Alderman said: 'I am especially pleased that my AM recognises the value of children's literature and its place in our society. One of my goals in life has been to inspire adults to share literature with young children, for a reader from birth is a reader for life.'

Robert Ingpen was also made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to literature as an illustrator and author of children's books and Neil Armfield is now an Officer in the Order of Australia for service to the arts, nationally and internationally, as a director of theatre, opera and film, and as a promoter of innovative Australian productions including Australian Indigenous drama.

The full list of Australia Day honours can be searched on the Australian Government's It's an Honour website.

Kolkata Book Fair Controversy
From 31 January to 11 February 2007, Australia was to have been the focus country for the annual Book Fair in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, but an eleventh hour decision by the Calcutta High Court delayed and severely curtailed this year's Fair. The Kolkata Book Fair has run each year since 1976 and is marketed as the major occasion on India's literary events calendar. It was expected to attract crowds in excess of 1.5 million and Australia's presence was to have featured a Bondi Beach-themed pavilion. Writers including Thomas Keneally, Judith Beveridge, Margo Lanagan and Indian-born Bem le Hunte had prepared for readings and workshops.

Trouble brewed for the Fair with the presentation of a public interest litigation citing potential environmental damage to the Maidan Park venue. A temporary injunction stopped construction on the site in mid-January after doubts were expressed about permissions granted to the Fair organiser, the Calcutta Publishers' and Booksellers' Guild. A final decision by the Court was made on 29 January – the ruling stated that the Fair could not proceed at the Maidan as it violated environmental and other laws.

By that time a number of Australian authors and visitors had arrived in India (including Professor Bruce Bennett, one of AustLit's Advisory Board members). Some were combining their presence at the Fair with attendance at writers' programmes at the Jaipur and Mumbai Festivals, and with seminars and forums in Kolkata and Chennai being held under the auspices of the Australia-India Council's education programme. These events were able to proceed and included a production of David Milroy's award-winning play, Windmill Baby, at the Mumbai Festival. In addition, the Australian High Commission speedily facilitated the presentation of a ten-day event, 'Australian Books and Writers,' at the National Library of India. The High Commissioner, John McCarthy, said a series of displays and presentations would provide 'a good opportunity for the book-loving people of [Kolkata] to get a flavour of Australian writing and literature'.

AustLit's Executive Manager, Kerry Kilner, who had planned to attend the Fair to showcase AustLit, said: 'The cancellation is a great shame for all of the people who had spent an enormous amount of time and energy organising events and trying to make it all come together.' Although the ancillary events continued, these could 'not equal the exposure the million-plus visitors to the Australian pavilion at the Fair would have provided'.

A scaled-down Fair eventually opened on 2 February at the Salt Lake Stadium, a venue well away from the centre of Kolkata.

Macquarie PEN Anthology Centre Launched
On Monday, 11 December 2006, David Malouf launched Macquarie University's Centre for the PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. The Centre's genesis lay in a conversation between Professor Nicholas Jose and literary agent Mary Cunnane during 2003, in which they noted the number of significant Australian works that were out of print. They went on to discuss the possibility of an Australian anthology in the style of the Norton anthologies for American and English literatures. Research at Macquarie's Centre will bring their idea to fruition with the publication of an anthology of Indigenous literature in 2008, to be edited by Peter Minter and co-ordinator of AustLit's Black Words subset, Dr Anita Heiss, and an anthology of Australian literature following in 2009.

Malouf told guests at the launch that it is a 'national disgrace' that so many Australian novels are out of print. He believes the decline in availability is partly due to 'readers defining themselves in a more global way. People define themselves as belonging more to a time than to a place.' This temporal identification greatly diminishes 'people's sense of the particular, and what writing is about is the particular'. (Australian, 12 December 2006)

An Australian Research Council grant and a contribution from the Myer Foundation are providing initial funding for the anthology project. Joining Macquarie University are partners at The University of Adelaide, Deakin University, The University of Sydney and the PEN International Sydney Centre. Work will be co-ordinated by Centre director Professor Jill Roe and the general editor of the volumes will be Nicholas Jose. Allen and Unwin will publish both books.

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Hit the Boards
May Gibbs's Gumnut Babies and Banksia Men have begun an Australia-wide journey in a new musical, The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and Little Ragged Blossom. Premiering in January at the Sydney Festival (where the opening night was attended by Her Excellency the Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir), the show moves to the Perth International Arts Festival during February and will then be produced at the Adelaide Festival in March.

The originator of the musical adaptation is Cate Fowler, artistic director of Adelaide's Windmill Performing Arts Company. Fowler had the idea for a stage production based on Gibbs's characters over a decade ago, but development has not been straightforward. Collaborating with director Neil Armfield, Fowler's initial idea was to involve Nick Enright. The Sydney playwright accepted the project and was working on a script at the time of his death. Following a hiatus, Fowler and Armfield again looked at the project. Armfield decided that if the work was to be resurrected 'we needed to scrap everything ... we needed a completely fresh start'. (Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 2006) Enter the comic genius of satirist John Clarke. Sydney Morning Herald theatre critic, Bryce Hallett, describes Clarke's book and lyrics as 'witty and sparkling, not just quips about mateship or mismatched flora and fauna but sly, satirical observations about the media, celebrity, sport and politics'. (15 January 2007)

Fowler's dream is that The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and Little Ragged Blossom will show that 'May Gibbs is not a museum piece. She has contemporary resonance and hopefully this will place Gibbs where she should be in our cultural history.' (Advertiser, 25 October 2006)

(See the Time & Tide section of this newsletter for news of activities celebrating the anniversary of Gibbs's birthday.)

Lawson Comes to Life in Musical Drama
Following hot on the heels of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie at Sydney's Theatre Royal, Lawson : Demons and Dreams will soon bring another Australian character to theatrical life. Veteran character actor Max Cullen will personify Henry Lawson in this new 'folk-rock musical drama'. The show, written by Lawson specialist Professor Brian Matthews, depicts Lawson in his later years reflecting on an embattled life. In Matthews's view, 'Understand Lawson and you understand a lot about Australia, past and present.' (Advertiser, 13 September 2006)

Under the shorter title Lawson, the production premiered in Adelaide in September 2006 before embarking on a regional tour of South Australia. Reviewing it at that time Matt Byrne described Matthews's script as 'a compelling biographical play, with Lawson drunkenly looking back on the pros and cons of a literate [sic] life that tragically, but not surprisingly, slurred its way to oblivion'. (Sunday Mail, 17 September 2006)

The production incorporates musical renditions of some of Lawson's poems by singer/songwriter John Schumann and The Vagabond Crew. The 'Crew' takes its name from Lawson's poem 'Knocking Around', the tale of an absent son who is 'Knocking around with a vagabond crew'. (See 'Lawson Poems Inspire another Musician' in AustLit's October/November 2005 newsletter for further details on Schumann's work with Lawson's poetry.)

Lawson : Demons and Dreams opens in Sydney on 2 March. Seasons in Melbourne, Canberra and Newcastle will follow.

UQ Honour for Jackie Huggins
In December 2006 The University of Queensland (UQ) awarded an honorary doctorate to author, historian and educator Jackie Huggins. Huggins, a Bidjara and Birri-Gubba woman, and an advisor on AustLit's Black Words subset, told the Koori Mail: 'I feel very humbled by it. I know that I will be able to use it to good effect.' (6 December 2006)

One of Huggins's passions is the teaching of Australian history. In 2006 she was a participant in the Australian History Summit that focused on the teaching of Australian history in primary and secondary schools. Huggins began her own schooling at a time when Indigenous Australians were not included in the national census, but the encouragement she received from one teacher in particular was evident in the presence of Beryl Roberts at the UQ awards ceremony. Roberts was Huggins's fifth grade teacher and Huggins credits Roberts with motivating her pursuit of higher education.

One of Huggins's endeavours is the Seven Years On oral history project for the National Library of Australia. With Peter Read, Huggins is interviewing Indigenous Australian leaders on a seven-yearly basis. The recorded interviews provide an ongoing record of personal, professional and social change. Interviewees include Huggins, Melissa Lucashenko, Wesley Enoch, Larissa Behrendt, and Dr Anita Heiss.

Australia Loses Presence at TLS
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) has recently dispensed with its Australasian representative. For over a decade Nicola Walker has worked for TLS, first from its London offices and then from her base in Sydney. Writing for the National Library of Australia News in January last year, Walker sensed her own demise. Discussing the impact of changes in ownership at TLS Walker said: 'It is possible that "our woman in Sydney", or the Australasian editor, as I am officially described, will be quietly retired. This would end an association of 13 years and result in fewer books by Australian authors appearing in the TLS, particularly in the In Brief pages which soak up reviews at the rate of 10 to 12 a week.' (NLA News, vol.16 no.4, January 2006)

The last piece commissioned by Walker appeared in the 3 January 2007 issue of TLS. It is a reappraisal of Patrick White written by David Malouf following the acquisition of White's papers by the National Library of Australia.

(See This Month's Spotlight for a further insight into that purchase.)

Garth Nix to Piggyback Harry Potter Success
Amid media reports that the final instalment of the hugely popular Harry Potter series will be published in July 2007, Australian fantasy writer Garth Nix is anticipating a significant promotional benefit. British bookseller W. H. Smith will give away a free copy of Nix's Mister Monday with every pre-ordered copy of J. K. Rowlings's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Nix told the Sydney Morning Herald's Susan Wyndham that he will get little financial reward for the arrangement: 'It's being sold at cost price to W. H. Smith and I get 10 per cent, probably 10p [25 cents] a copy. But that doesn't matter because it's publicity and the hope is that I will sell my backlist.' (26-28 January 2007)

Mister Monday is the first book in Nix's The Keys to the Kingdom series. The fifth book in the series, Lady Friday, will be released by Allen and Unwin in March 2007.

State Library Promotes Summer Reading
The State Library of Victoria ran a summer reading programme promoting contemporary and classic novels set in the southern state. Under the banner '20 Novels Set Close to Home' the Library specified the book titles and encouraged Victorians to 'read, discuss and enjoy' and then to vote for their favourite. The list presented various eras of Victoria's life from Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, Henry Handel Richardson's The Getting of Wisdom and Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock through to the 1920s in Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood, the 1930s in Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany and the 1950s in The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham. More recent time frames tended toward urban settings with Shane Maloney's Stiff, Elliot Perlman's Three Dollars and Joanna Murray-Smith's Sunnyside.

A full list of the novels is available on the State Library's website. Results of the reader poll will be announced on 22 February.

Project Gutenberg Australia Builds Digital Library
Project Gutenberg Australia is steadily creating a digital treasure trove of e-books that are freely available to the public. Volunteers source books in the public domain and prepare them for electronic scanning onto the Project's website – a process that takes about 40 hours for a 250-page book. Colin Choat, the founder of the Australian organisation (a sister to the US-based Project Gutenberg), told Good Reading Magazine that Project Gutenberg Australia has digitised over 1,100 books since being established in 2000. During 2006 more than one million hits were recorded on the website.

Choat is disappointed in restrictions resulting from the most recent US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. (Under the Agreement copyright has been extended from 50 years to 70 years for authors who died after 1954.) 'We lost a generation of writers ... We have to wait another 20 years to see that work ... So many of those works don't get published again ... They're just stuck down in these dusty stacky areas of the libraries and we just hope they're still there in another twenty years.' (Good Reading Magazine, February 2007)

Australian titles available on Project Gutenberg Australia include classics for adults and children alike. Some of the e-books are:

• Rigby's Romance : A Made in Australia Novel by Tom Collins
• Ralph Rashleigh, or, The Life of an Exile by James Tucker
• The Romance of a Station : An Australian Story by Rosa Praed
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson
• The Complete Adventures of Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall

and

• Dot and the Kangaroo by Ethel Pedley

Novel for Sale
Aditya Kesarcodi-Watson, an Australian currently undertaking PhD studies in New Zealand, has devised a plan to create 'the largest authored story in history'. Kesarcodi-Watson's idea is to generate two multi-authored, write-your-own-adventures by asking aspiring authors to pay $US1.00 for each word or character they contribute. The two stories are currently known as the 'Million Word Story' and the 'Million Character Story'. Kesarcodi-Watson promises authors will 'receive royalties from the book sales' should the completed works ever be published in hard copy format.

The project began in July 2006. As of mid-January this year, 998,428 words are still available for sale and 997,168 characters. To read the stories' progress or to contribute your own words go to the NovelMillion website.

Nigel Jamieson a Winner in Performing Arts
Nigel Jamieson has been successful in the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards and the Sydney Theatre Awards for his work as a playwright and director. Jamieson won the $35,000 Individual Award in the Sidney Myer Awards and was doubly successful in the Sydney Theatre Awards. His play Honour Bound won the awards for Best Mainstream Production and Best New Australian Work. The other nominations in the Best Mainstream Production category were Tommy Murphy's Holding the Man, and Tom Wright and Barrie Kosky's The Lost Echo.

Jamieson's Honour Bound deals with the detention of Australian David Hicks at the US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was staged in Sydney and Melbourne during 2006 and Jamieson has accepted an invitation to have the work performed at the Vienna Festival in May 2007. Discussions are underway for productions in other European cities before Honour Bound heads to Wellington, New Zealand. Jamieson retains a strong commitment to the stage show: 'It is about a really dark chapter in Australian history that America would not tolerate for any of its own citizens.' (Age, 13 January 2007) In addition to strong physical performances, the show uses projected text and film clips, along with amplified sound and voice overs to deliver what the Australian's John McCallum describes as 'an assault on all the senses'. (7 August 2006)

Speculative Fiction Awards Gaining Ground
From humble beginnings in the corner of a Melbourne bookstore, the Aurealis Awards for speculative fiction are now presented as part of a weekend-long event in Brisbane. The 11th annual awards were announced at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts on 27 January before a crowd of 200 people and, for the first time, prize money was offered to the overall winners. Will Elliott won the Golden Aurealis novel prize for his debut book, The Pilo Family Circus, and Shaun Tan received the major short story prize for his wordless tale, The Arrival. The two authors won $1,000 and $500 respectively.

Sydney-based Margo Lanagan was nominated in three different categories. Six of her short stories were shortlisted across the Young Adult, Horror and Fantasy divisions. Five of these nominations were from her 2006 collection, Red Spikes, but her winning nomination, for the fantasy tale 'A Fine Magic', was published in the anthology, Eidolon 1.

Winner of the Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence was Bill Congreve. The Award recognises 'a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas' and was presented to Congreve for his work with MirrorDanse Books and the Infinitas Bookshop and for his reviews in Aurealis : Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction. Congreve responded to the win by saying that he felt the Award was for 'everyone in the small press rather than the person who's lucky enough to pick it up in one particular year'. (ABC News Online's Articulate, 29 January 2007)

Among other winners in the 2006 Aurealis Awards are:

• Edwina Grey's Prismatic – joint winner (with Elliott's The Pilo Family Circus) of Best Horror Novel
• Damien Broderick's K-Machines – Best Science Fiction Novel
• Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing – Best Fantasy Novel
• D. M. Cornish's Foundling – Best Young Adult Novel

and

• Mardi McConnochie's Melissa, Queen of Evil – Best Children's Novel

Short Story Collection Wins ACT Prize
John Clanchy's collection of short stories, Vincenzo's Garden, is the winner of the 2006 ACT Book of the Year Award. Announcing the winner, ACT Chief Minister and Minister for the Arts, Jon Stanhope, said: 'Artists and cultural practitioners give a great deal to our community, often for very little monetary return. The ACT Government believes strongly that awards and prizes provide the catalyst and the support that many artists, writers and performers need in order to take their work to the next level.' (Media release, 12 December 2006)

Other recipients of the ACT Awards include:

• Judith Wright Prize for a published collection – Susan Hampton for The Kindly Ones
• Alec Bolton Prize for an unpublished collection – Lucy Dougan for 'White Clay'

and

• Creative Arts Fellowship – Judy Horacek. Horacek will use her fellowship to undertake a three-month residency in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where she will 'explore the issues of origin, identity, migration, sense of place, the idea of home, and old culture versus new culture'.

Winner of Inaugural Calibre Prize Announced
Elisabeth Holdsworth is the winner of the inaugural Calibre Prize for an outstanding essay. The prize is a joint initiative of Australian Book Review (ABR) and the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) and offers a $10,000 reward to the winner. ABR's editor, Peter Rose, says the Calibre Prize, one of the most lucrative essay prizes in the world, 'is intended to advance the art and appreciation of essay-writing' in Australia. It combines ABR's long commitment to the genre with CAL's vision for 'a world that encourages and supports creativity'.

Holdsworth's essay describes her recent return to her birthplace in the Netherlands and reflects on 'her family's vicissitudes and suffering' during World War II. The essay, 'An die Nachgeborenen : For Those Who Come After', is published in the February issue of ABR.

Other Recent Award Winners

• Quentin Beresford's Rob Riley : An Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice won the Arts Non-Fiction Award at the 2006 Human Rights Medal and Awards
• Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes won the AFI Award for Best Screenplay; Luke Davies and Neil Armfield won the AFI for Best Adapted Screenplay for Candy

and

• Elizabeth Campbell won the $1,500 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize for 2006 with her poem, 'Structure of the Horse's Eye'. Poems by Kathryn Lomer, Anne Morgan and Robyn Rowland were highly commended.

On 3 November 2006, the National Library of Australia announced that it had acquired the personal papers of Patrick White, long thought to have been destroyed before or just after his death. Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, Curator of Manuscripts at the National Library of Australia, reports on the significance of the collection.

'My mss are destroyed...'
Those words were spoken on 9 April 1977, by Patrick Victor Martindale White, Australia's only Nobel Laureate in Literature, to Dr George Chandler, then Director-General of the National Library of Australia: 'I can't let you have my "papers" because I don't keep any. My mss are destroyed as soon as the books are printed. I put very little into notebooks, don't keep my friends' letters... and anything unfinished when I die is to be burnt. The final versions of my books are what I want people to see...' (National Library of Australia, Letter, MS 8469)

White repeated these stern denials for the rest of his life, even denying the existence of these papers to his biographer David Marr. And the world believed him...

But White had not 'destroyed' everything. By 1977, he had burnt many priceless documents, including manuscript and typescript versions of his great novels Voss, The Solid Mandala and The Eye of the Storm. He destroyed most of his incoming correspondence. But he did keep ten of his working notebooks (extending back to his service during WW2), typescripts of early short stories, and typescript versions of The Vivisector and A Fringe of Leaves. He had kept two unfinished novels, 'The Binoculars and Helen Nell' and 'The Hanging Garden', and an unfinished novella, 'Dolly Formosa and the Happy Few'. He kept a few letters precious to him, including one from his London landlady. And he retained drafts of difficult letters to foes. White held onto hundreds of photographs, many featuring his partner of 49 years, Manoly Lascaris, and many more featuring their beloved Schnauzer dogs. And as he got older, he kept more. He kept all drafts of his memoir Flaws in the Glass, and draft after draft of many of his later plays, some produced during his lifetime, others not. Several late short stories exist in multiple drafts. He kept increasing numbers of incoming letters and drafts of difficult to write letters to friends and foes. He left a couple of pocket diaries (one noting a last, unkept appointment with Elizabeth Riddell for the day of his death) and a 1988 affirmation succinctly stating his mission to use the written and spoken word to advance human understanding and peace.

At last we have a good sense of how he worked. The notebooks make clear that he was a meticulous researcher, and that many of his characters and opening paragraphs were crystallising in his mind long before he sat down, took up his fountain pen – and wrote. We can see how he wrote, what he struggled with, and what he abandoned. We can and should be astonished at the absolute assurance with which he puts pen to paper when writing a novel, how little changes from the first paragraphs scrawled in notebooks, through the successive manuscripts written in fountain pen in completely distinctive 'bundles' of folded paper, then corrected in blue and red biro, through successive typescripts to the final product. His inspiration, his forward impetus, and the sheer flow of these manuscripts are awe-inspiring.

We can also see that he struggled more with his plays and that prose was his 'natural' form. Unlike his novels, the manuscripts for his plays show him changing titles and character names, adding and subtracting characters, and not infrequently slipping from dialogue to prose in early drafts as he struggles with what is to come next.

We can see what he abandoned, and ask ourselves questions about why. Why did he abandon his complete first drafts of 'The Binoculars and Helen Nell' and 'Dolly Formosa and the Happy Few' without so much as a blue or red biro correction? Why did he correct 'The Hanging Garden' when it was clearly so far from being complete? Why did he publish so little poetry when his notebooks are full of poems?

Despite ample opportunities to destroy his entire personal archive, Patrick White did not do so. Australia must be grateful that he did not, that his loyal literary agent and executor – Barbara Mobbs – disobeyed his instructions to destroy his papers and that they are now held safely in one of Australia's great research libraries, where they are available for scholars to satisfy their curiosity about these and many more questions. In addition to reading those 'final versions' of his books, we can now see how he wrote them, works that he abandoned, some of what he treasured – and in the nearly 200 condolence letters sent to Manoly after White's death, how much he was treasured.

A detailed finding aid for the Papers of Patrick White, National Library of Australia, MS 9982 is available online.

Sensational Conference for Sydney
The first annual conference of the newly formed Australasian Association for Literature will be held at the University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus, from 12 to 13 July 2007. The conference is titled 'Literature and Sensation' and organisers are inviting papers that 'develop an understanding of sensation (in any of its senses) in relation to works of literature'. They are particularly interested in the ways literature 'interacts with other disciplines and intellectual standpoints (such as science, philosophy, history and politics) and encourage contributions that seek to question what works of literature can do (how they affect us, and why)'.

Proposals between 200 and 300 words in length should be sent via email to Associate Professor Anthony Uhlmann (a.uhlmann@uws.edu.au) by 13 April 2007.

What Are We Afraid Of?
Nathanael O'Reilly, Jean-François Vernay, and Robyn Walton are seeking international submissions on the topics of fear and protection within the scope of Australian Studies. They are planning to gather a range of international perspectives for an essay collection with the working title 'Protect Australia Fair: International Perspectives on Australian Culture'.

The suggested length for essays is 4,000 words. Essays should be suitable for an interdisciplinary and international readership. All submissions will be refereed by an international panel of distinguished scholars in the field and should conform to the MLA Style Guide (6th ed.).

Enquiries and expressions of interest should be submitted to the editors via email (fearozproject@yahoo.com) by the end of March 2007; final submissions are due by 30 June 2007.

Celebrate Lindsay's Legacy at Springwood
The Norman Lindsay Festival of Children's Literature will be held at the Norman Lindsay Gallery & Museum in the Blue Mountains on the weekend of 24-25 March 2007. The Gallery is housed in Lindsay's former home, Springwood, in the mountain township of Faulconbridge, and is now under the management of the National Trust of Australia. The Gallery is a showcase for a selection of Lindsay's artworks. His etching and painting studios are also on the property along with a range of original sculptures in the gardens.

The 2007 Festival of Children's Literature will feature writing, storytelling and illustration workshops as well as talks for children, adolescents and adults. Writers Jackie French, Anna Fienberg and John Heffernan are among the writers presenting workshops.

Further details, including a registration form, are included on the Festival's brochure.

(See the Time & Tide section of this newsletter for details of the Henry Handel Richardson birthday celebrations at Chiltern's Lake View homestead – another event based at a National Trust property.)

Judith's Wright's Flame to Burn Bright at Two Fires Festival
After a successful inauguration in 2005, the Two Fires Festival of Arts and Activism will again be held in the New South Wales country town of Braidwood, home to Judith Wright for several decades. The Festival celebrates Wright's legacy and provides an opportunity to 'explore the ongoing relevance of that legacy in a variety of domains'. The 2007 Festival will run from 30 March to 1 April under the theme 'Identity and Environment – Taking up the Challenge'. The programme includes readings, writers' panels and dialogues together with the announcement of winners in the Two Fires Poetry Competition. Participating authors include Peter Hay and the United Kingdom's Terry Gifford, both of whom are poets and authorities on environmental literature.

Time & Tide generally carries news of recent deaths in the Australian literary community. This month the focus is on birthdays and anniversaries.

HHR Birthday Celebrations
A Picnic Tea marking the 3 January birth date of Henry Handel Richardson has been held annually at her Chiltern childhood home since 1970. Lake View homestead was home to the Richardson family during 1876 and 1877 and figures in Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. The property is now in the care of the National Trust of Australia. Those who gathered at the 2007 Picnic Tea heard a talk by Graeme Charles about Richardson's sister Lillian who, like her more famous sibling, attended the Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne (the setting for The Getting of Wisdom) and also studied at the Royal Conservatorium in Leipzig, Germany. Lillian Richardson later married British educationalist A. S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill School in England. Charles echoed Dorothy Green's view that the relationship between the two sisters is worthy of study in its own right.

For the last two years the picnic tea has been accompanied by a Literary Heritage Day. One of the features of this associated event in 2007 was a talk by Bronwen Hickman on Chiltern-born writer Mary Gaunt. Hickman drew on research from her Master's thesis to discuss Gaunt's travels in China during 1912.

The Picnic Tea and Literary Heritage Day will be held again in Chiltern on 3 January 2008.

And Birthday Celebrations Too for May Gibbs
Nutcote, overlooking the waters of Sydney Harbour's Neutral Bay and home to writer and illustrator May Gibbs for over 40 years, was host to Gibbs's 130th 'birthday bash' on Sunday, 21 January 2007. Gibbs was born in England on 17 January 1877 and moved to Australia with her family at the age of four. In 1901 she returned to England to study art and later began work there as an illustrator. Back in Australia in 1913, Gibbs began to publish her drawings of gumnut, boronia and wattle babies. Since then, generations of Australian children have been entranced (and occasionally terrified) by Gibb's wonderfully named characters – Snugglepot, Cuddlepie, Little Ragged Blossom, the Banksia Men, Little Obelia, Nuttybub and many others.

In a 130th birthday greeting to Gibbs, English-born Age journalist Jane Sullivan recalled: 'I grew up with the gumnut babies and the big, bad banksia men – who gave me goosebumps – and Mr Lizard and the rest of them. Which was odd, because I lived in London and I'd never seen a gumnut or a banksia or lizard. When I came to Australia, many years later, it was your drawings that helped me. I knew where I'd seen leaves that dropped and curved like that.' (Age, 13 January 2007)

Gibbs's legacy survives in her published stories and illustrations, and in her public gift of Nutcote (initially to UNICEF, but now owned by North Sydney Council and managed by the Nutcote Trust). She is also honoured in the work of the May Gibbs Children's Literature Trust. The Trust supports 'the creativeness and careers of contemporary Australian children's writers and illustrators'. Since 2000 the Trust has awarded 76 fellowships offering writers and illustrators a one-month residency in a May Gibbs studio and an opportunity to focus intensively on their work. This year's fellowship recipients include Elizabeth Honey, Libby Gleeson and Michael Gerard Bauer.

Birthday Milestones in 2007
Significant milestones are in store for a number of Australian poets during 2007. Some of those marking major birthdays are:

• Angela Gardner, Anthony Lawrence, Roland Leach and Archie Weller – all born in 1957
• Eric Beach, Grant Caldwell, Peter Hay, Peter Kocan, Rhyll McMaster, David P. Reiter and Graham Rowlands – all born in 1947

and

• Philip Hammial and Graeme Hetherington – both born in 1937

Fiction writers are also reaching important birthdays this year. They include Liam Davison, Sara Douglass, Susanne Gervay, Kim Scott, Lucy Sussex and Brenda Walker who will all turn 50, and Gary Crew, Terry Dowling, Bruce Pascoe, Arnold Zable who will reach 60 years of age.

La Mama Turns 40
La Mama Theatre was established in 1967 'to nurture new Australian theatre practice'. Less than 20 years later The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1st ed.) stated that La Mama was 'one of the most important influences in the 1970s "new wave" of Australian theatre'. In its early years La Mama produced work by a 'who's who' of modern Australian playwrights – Jack Hibberd, Alex Buzo, John Romeril, Valerie Kirwan, David Williamson and Louis Nowra. In more recent times there have been plays by a newer wave including Raimondo Cortese and Daniel Keene.

This year La Mama's playbill includes a 20th anniversary production of Michael Gow's Europe (14 February - 14 March) and the premieres in March of The Sinners and Kit Lazaroo's award-winning Asylum. Both new works explore the confusions and possibilities of crosscultural relationships. Evidently La Mama is continuing its commitment to 'exploring diversity of artistic approach, to innovation in form and to exploring minority as well as general cultural and social concerns'.

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