Consternation over Sale of Patrick White's Home
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has expressed its concern over the forthcoming public auction of Patrick White's former home at 20 Martin Rd, Centennial Park in Sydney. Neither the New South Wales (NSW) government nor the University of NSW has shown substantive interest in purchasing the property despite suggestions that it be preserved as a museum or writers' centre. The ASA asks 'What other nation would treat such a significant literary site with such disdain?' ('Outrage as Patrick White's House Offered for Sale', Newsletter no.8, 2004) and urges a letter writing campaign directed to the Hon. Bob Carr, Premier of NSW, in an attempt to thwart the sale.

Sydney musicologist Dr Tony Souter and poet Paul Knobel have established the Committee to Save Patrick White's House in the hope that the house and gardens can be preserved for the benefit of the writing community. The Committee argues that the property could be purchased jointly by the Australian government, the NSW government and the City of Sydney. The Committee is particularly keen to enlist international support for the preservation of the house in public hands and urges people to contact the NSW Premier or the Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. John Howard to express their concern.

In late October the NSW Heritage Office initiated the listing of the house on the state's heritage register, describing it as being of 'outstanding value' (Patrick White House draft submission). Sydney property agent, Di Jones Real Estate, refers to the proposed heritage listing on its website promotion of White's home, but makes no reference to the former occupant of the house.

In Flaws in the Glass : A Self-Portrait, White commented on his affection for the home he shared with partner Manoly Lascaris: 'Built in the year of our birth [1912], the house in Martin Road might have been put there for us [...] The inevitable black moments we have lived through, and would have lived through anywhere, have been offset by an atmosphere of compatibility contributed by the house.'

The auction is due to take place on 24 November.

Purcell Establishes Links During USA Fellowship
Leah Purcell has completed a three-month tour of the USA as the first Indigenous Australian recipient of an Eisenhower Fellowship. Established in 1953 to honour the US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the fellowships foster 'international understanding and leadership through the exchange of information, ideas and perspectives among emerging leaders throughout the world.' Purcell was one of the youngest recipients of this year's award and one of a small number of women to receive it.

During her tour Purcell discovered that 'many Americans were not aware of the issues affecting Indigenous Australians' and she 'used the opportunity to its maximum and rubbed shoulders with all walks of life, while also educating people about black Australia.' (Koori Mail, 20 October 2004) Purcell performed readings of her award-winning play Box the Pony on Broadway and screened Black Chicks Talking at Harvard University. Purcell is negotiating for possible tours of both the play and the film documentary to theatres in the USA including Chicago's Steppinwolf Theatre.

In the Bad Books
An unrepentant Andy Griffiths is proud of the 'cavalcade of gratuitous violence, general unpleasantness and nonsensical incongruity' that pervades his latest offering for children. (Age, 25 September 2004) Oozing titles like 'The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Poo' and 'Bad Mummy and the Very Busy Six-Lane Highway', The Bad Book is brim full of the awful fates that befall bad grannies, bad babies and even a bad Red Riding Hood. The book of poems and jokes has brought harsh reaction from some parents, teachers, booksellers and librarians. Sydney bookseller Kate Colley is reported as saying 'I'm not a prude and a lot of the book is fun. But after reading the whole thing, I couldn't sleep ... This is the first book I've refused to stock in 15 years ... some of us have to take a stand ... and I don't think children need this, with so much violence going on.' (Age, 25 September 2004) In further fallout The Bad Book has been removed from the nationwide Children's Summer Reading catalogue that has a distribution of 700,000 copies.

In a reply to the adverse and censorious publicity, Griffiths recollected his own youthful excursions into literature. He had barely had recovered from 'the horrors of Mother Goose' before he progressed to 'the unsavory Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Nothing, he confessed, prepared him for the gruesome 19th century German classic, Der Struwwelpeter. For Griffiths, The Bad Book is 'primarily a work of humour. Much of this humour relies on the fact that the reader recognises the conventions of good story-telling and good behaviour. This intention is clearly signalled in the title of the book ... The "badness" in The Bad Book is taken to such ridiculous extremes that it parodies both itself and the entire genre ... If you recognise the genre as a blend of absurdity, black humour and parody, then it all makes perfect sense. Or to be more accurate, perfect non-sense. Nonsense allows us to think the unthinkable and to entertain the impossible.' (Sunday Life, 17 October 2004)

Griffiths's website is currently displaying a tongue-in-cheek 'Content Warning' suggesting that The Bad Book is a tool that no good parent should be without'. 'Nevertheless', it warns, 'The Bad Book should be handled with extreme caution. It contains many examples of extreme badness, including ... 52 cases of failure to provide children with uplifting and thought-provoking literature.'

Milestone in Bibliographic Scholarship Reached
The Bibliography of Australian Literature: F-J, or BAL as it is known by AustLit staff, will be launched by Jan Fullerton, the Director General of the National Library of Australia, at the Fryer Library within The University of Queensland on 26 November at 5pm. Edited by John Arnold and Professor John Hay, AC, with Associate Editorship by Kerry Kilner and Terry O'Neill, the publication of the second of four planned volumes marks a milestone in bibliographic scholarship in Australia. BAL aims to record, in print format, the essential details of all separately published creative literature by Australian writers from the late 18th century to the early 21st century and this new volume covers the works of some 3,000 authors. (Volume one of BAL, covering A-E authors, was published in 2001.)

The publication of BAL : F-J also demonstrates the successful integration of various elements of Australian literary scholarship into AustLit and shows the multiple uses of the resources provided by AustLit. The Bibliography of Australian Literature Project, which originated at Monash University in the early 1990s, was one of the foundation projects, along with the old AUSTLIT database from University of New South Wales @ ADFA, that merged to form the national collaboration between eight universities and the National Library of Australia that AustLit is today.

Over the past three years research to compile the data for BAL was undertaken by AustLit staff at a number of the partner universities. The research is stored and available (often in an expanded format) in the AustLit database. The broad inclusion criteria of the Bibliography of Australian Literature Project, which has influenced AustLit's scope, will ensure that by the end of 2008 there will be, in both print and electronic formats, the most detailed collection of information about a nation's literature in the world. The Bibliography of Australian Literature sits alongside other special research projects also supported by AustLit, ranging from Australian Literary Responses to 'Asia' , Writers of Tropical Queensland and other regions of Australia, and various subject specific subsets. To create multiple uses for AustLit with an understanding of its place in national information infrastructure is AustLit's aim.

The 800-page The Bibliography of Australian Literature: F-J, is published by University of Queensland Press and will be available in stores in February but is available now at a special pre-publication rate. Click here to download a brochure with an order form.

From Book Shelf to Cinema Screen
Australian Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman will star in the film adaptation of Murray Bail's 1998 Commonwealth Prize winning novel Eucalyptus. Filming is scheduled to begin in January 2005 in the northern New South Wales town of Gleniffer. Another Oscar winner, Geoffrey Rush was to join the cast, but may be forced to withdraw from the project due to a clash of dates. Rush is already committed to appear in a film based on Luke Davies's novel, Candy and that production will also be shooting early in 2005.

Director Phillip Noyce has also nominated Crowe and Kidman as ideal actors for parts in a proposed adaptation of Tim Winton's Dirt Music. Noyce has suggested Kidman for the role of the disaffected Georgie Jutland and believes Crowe could play Jutland's husband, Jim Buckridge, or the poacher, Luther Fox. Winton has confirmed that he and Crowe have discussed the venture. Winton believes Crowe should play the role of Buckridge 'because he'd bring a kind of complexity to the film that very few other actors could affect.' (Sunday Mail, 24 October 2004)

(See also Film Producers Seek Inspiration Between the Covers below.)

Depiction of Roadhouse Culture Wins Vogel
Julienne Van Loon, who grew up in Dubbo, New South Wales and subsequently graduated from Wollongong and Queensland universities, has won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2004. Van Loon's 'Road Story' tells of a teenage girl who flees a car accident and heads west into outback New South Wales. After securing a job in a roadhouse she becomes submerged in a culture of truck drivers and chip fryers. Stella Clarke, one of this year's Vogel judges, said Van Loon 'writes with passion, intelligence and assurance. [...] She deals with an aspect of Australian existence rarely privileged in local fiction and provides a female perspective on a very male world.' (Australian, 18 September 2004)

Van Loon, who currently teaches creative writing at Curtin University, Western Australia, says the story is 'not autobiographical, though there are some aspects of me in the girl.' Echoing Clarke's observations, Van Loon says 'I grew up in a working-class part of Dubbo where my parents – a forester and a charity worker – struggled without much money. I wanted to depict their kind of working-class life, outside of farming, which is under-represented in our literature, particularly from the female point of view.' (Australian, 22 September 2004)

Van Loon receives $20,000 in prizemoney for the award and Allen & Unwin will publish 'Road Story' in 2005. Her next work, a companion novella titled 'Town Story', centres on a township dominated by the mining industry.

Sex, Sisters, Scandals and Free Speech Summon Up Awards
Diverse themes emerge in this year's winning Victorian Premier's Literary Award entries. Annamarie Jagose won the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction with Slow Water, the tale of the relationship between a missionary and a seaman en route to Sydney in 1836. In Her Sister's Eye, Vivienne Cleven portrays the lives of two sisters living in a country town where everything is not as it seems on the surface. Cleven won the Prize for Indigenous Writing. Stephen Sewell added to the list of awards garnered by Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America by winning the Louis Esson Prize for Drama. Sewell's play has already won the Drama Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Stage Award in the 2004 AWGIEs. The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate went to Barry Hill's 'The Mood We Are In : Circa Australia Day 2004'. Hill originally presented his essay as a lecture marking the 50th anniversary of Overland. He discusses the changing shape of Australian culture and identity in the wake of social change in Australia and global change in an environment where the USA is the sole superpower.

A full list of winners is available on the State Library of Victoria's website.

Literature Board Disperses Increased Funds
Chair of the Australia Council's Literature Board, Dr Peter Goldsworthy was pleased to have a larger funding pool to disperse in this year's round of New Work and Fellowship grants. The Board received increased government funding and benefited from an internal re-organisation at the Australia Council. In all, $4,244,000 was available for the 2004/2005 grants. Having digested over 4,500 pages of pre-meeting reading and additional support material from applicants, the Board allocated a third of its funds to three Fellowships and between 18-19% to each of the Emerging, Developing and Established categories in the New Work Grants.

Recipients of the $80,000 fellowships are:

• Robert Adamson for non-fiction and poetry
• Alex Miller for fiction

and

• Henry Reynolds for non-fiction

Emerging writers to win grants include poets Lisa Gorton, Felicity Plunkett and editor of the online journal Cordite, David Prater. In the Developing Writers category successful applicants for fiction writing include Wayne Ashton, Arabella Edge, Andrew Lindsay and Stephen Orr. Twenty-five established writers received grants, three of them for writing in a language other than English. Vietnamese playwright Duong Le Quy will work on a play set in the basement of a backpackers' hostel. Tosn Ozmanian will write an historical novel in the Kirmanji dialect based on the life of Kurdish poet, Masture and her struggle for self-realisation in an Islamic society. Bajram Rezepagic, a Bosnian novelist and medical specialist, will continue work on his Steps of Destiny trilogy.

A full list of recipients is available from the Literature Board section of the Australia Council website.

Behrendt's Achievements Recognised with a 'Deadly'
Dr Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, has been awarded the 2004 Deadly for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. The Deadly Sounds Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music, Sport, Entertainment and Community Awards (also known as Deadlys) promote 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement as a marketable and growing force within Australia'. Behrendt was nominated for the literature prize alongside Melissa Lucashenko, Dr Anita Heiss and Alexis Wright.

Behrendt's award citation recognises that she was 'the first Aborigine to go to Harvard Law School, where she gained a doctorate. She became a professor at the age of 31 and in 2002 was the joint winner of the inaugural Neville Bonner National Teaching Award.'

Behrendt published her first novel, Home, during 2004. The book was written while Behrendt was studying at Harvard and is a personal response to the 1997 Bringing Them Home report that examined the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from their families. Behrendt's grandmother was one of those affected and the author says 'I felt impassioned about writing a story of those voices [...] And I realised I was better able to explore issues of politics and race through story-telling rather than non-fiction.' (Good Reading, July 2004)

Behrendt's second novel is now underway. It will explore the intergenerational divide between Aborigines of Behrendt's generation and those of her father's, and will examine differing perceptions of knowledge between the age groups.

Somersault Scoops the AFI and AWGIE Awards
Cate Shortland's debut feature film, Somersault, created history in October by winning all 13 film categories in the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards. The tenderly told story of an adolescent girl's search for love in the snowy recesses of Jindabyne explores in almost painful detail the awkwardness of youth and the mistakes made along the path to adulthood. Shortland's original script underwent intense scrutiny in an Aurora script development workshop. Having let the script languish in 'the bottom of the cupboard for three years' Shortland had released her emotional attachment to the manuscript, but still found the workshop process daunting. 'It was still really confronting because your work is you so when people start saying, "That bit's really predictable and that whole character line reads like bad television", you start to think you're the worst writer in the world. And then you get excited about the potential. I wrote a backstory for every character on screen, in their own voice, from the moment they had their first memory to the moment the film starts. The mother, for example, is only in the film for eight minutes and I wrote 40 pages in her voice. Everyone on screen has a life history.' (Sun-Herald, 19 September 2004)

Shortland's work also fared well at the Australian Writers' Guild (AWGIE) Awards. AWGIE nominations are based purely on the written script (not the finished product) and are judged solely by writers. Shortland's script received both the Film Award for an original script and the Major Award.

Other winners at the AWGIEs were John Doyle for the miniseries, Marking Time, Stephen Sewell for Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America and Verity Laughton for The Lightkeeper and a radio play, The Fox.

Complete lists of winners in the film and writing awards can be found on their respective websites:

• Australian Film Institute

and

• Australian Writers' Guild

Family Tragedy Reaps Prizewinning Drama
Kate Mulvany's 'The Seed' has won the 2004 Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award. Mulvany based her play on the experiences of her own family – a grandfather who supported the IRA, a father who migrated to Australia to avoid conflict and then faced conscription in the Vietnam War, and her own struggle with cancer which she believes resulted from her father's exposure to Agent Orange. However, Mulvany says the play is not entirely tragic. 'There's also the Irish humour infused with the English working-class humour infused with the laconic Australian humour, and I wanted to get all of that in it as well.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 2004)

Mulvany was also shortlisted this year for the Patrick White Playwright's Award for 'The Danger Age'. Born in Geraldton, Western Australia, she began acting as a child and graduated from Curtin University in 1997. Mulvany has performed with Perth Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Company B. With STC she played the part of Zoe in the 2002 world premiere of Nick Enright's A Man with Five Children.

Armanno to Dig into Queensland's History
Dr Venero Armanno has been awarded the inaugural $20,000 John Oxley Fellowship. Announcing the award, Queensland Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Anna Bligh stated that 'Dr Armanno will have the extensive resources of the State Library of Queensland's John Oxley Library at his fingertips, as well as the expertise of an array of specialist librarians and archivists.'

Armanno will undertake research for his next novel, tentatively titled 'Godbless'. The novel is set in the 1930s in the Brisbane suburb of Brookfield and Armanno will conduct extensive research into the area's history 'with a particular focus on its farming background and the relationship between white farmers and the local indigenous population.' (Ministerial media release, 29 September 2004)

Keneally Wins with The Tyrant's Novel
Thomas Keneally has won the Colin Roderick Award for 'the best book published in Australia in 2003, dealing with any aspect of Australian life'. The value of this year's award was doubled from $5,000 to $10,000 and was presented in Townsville on 21 October. The Tyrant's Novel relates the story of an author living in a dictatorship who is conscripted to write a favourable account of his country. Failure to praise his homeland will result in death.

The award is Keneally's first significant win since taking the Booker Prize in 1982 for Schindler's Ark.

Khouri Investigation May Reap Reward
Sydney Morning Herald journalists, Malcolm Knox and Caroline Overington have been nominated as finalists in the Investigative Journalism category of the 2004 Walkley Awards for their uncovering of Norma Khouri's true identity. (See AustLit's September/October newsletter for background.)

The Walkley Awards were established in 1956 and recognise excellence in Australian journalism across all mediums including print, television, radio, photographic and online media. The winners will be announced in Melbourne on 2 December.

Film Producers Seek Inspiration Between the Covers
Australian film producers are searching the bookshelves for novels with positive screen adaptation characteristics. As noted in In the News, production will soon begin on adaptations of Murray Bail's Eucalyptus and Luke Davies's Candy.

Other novels that have been optioned or are in one of the various film production phases are:

• Thea Astley's Drylands
  Tony Buckley, who recently produced the television mini-series based on Bryce Courtenay's Jessica, will team with Peter Yeldham (script writer) and Bruce Beresford (director) to adapt Astley's final novel
• Gregory Roberts's Shantaram
  Warner Bros owns the film rights and has signed Johnny Depp to play the part of Roberts
• Tim Winton's Dirt Music
  Australian director Phillip Noyce has optioned the rights to the novel and his production company, Rumbalara is seeking a script developer and financier
• Nikki Gemmell's The Bride Stripped Bare
  Andrew Bovell, who adapted his own play Speaking in Tongues for the film Lantana, is now working on the film script of Gemmell's controversial novel
• Robert Drewe's The Drowner
  Justin Monjo, who worked with Nick Enright to bring Tim Winton's Cloudstreet to the stage, has developed the script

and

• Elliot Perlman's Three Dollars
  Perlman and director Robert Connelly have adapted the book for film. The production stars David Wenham and Frances O'Connor

And the youth market has not been overlooked. Plans are underway to adapt Morris Gleitzman and Paul Jennings's Deadly books for an animated television series funded by the Film Finance Corporation of Australia, and both Michael Noonan's The December Boys and Ben Rice's Pobby and Dingan are in production phases.

However, before authors become too excited about possible film deals, those with some experience of the industry offer a few warnings. In July 2004 Sydney Morning Herald journalist Richard Jinman interviewed several writers whose works have been optioned or produced for film. ('Small Print, Big Picture', Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 2004) He discovered Derek Hansen's salutary experience. Hansen has written seven novels over the last decade and prior to that worked as a highly successful copywriter. When he began work on his third novel, Sole Survivor, he intentionally set about writing a book that could translate easily into film. 'I kept the cast small, set it one location and made the props fairly minimal', Hansen told Jinman. Initially, the plan seemed to have worked. A Hollywood production company showed strong interest and Hansen was well paid to write the screenplay. What he couldn't know was that in 2000, the Tom Hanks film, Cast Away would be released and 'Sole Survivor went from being hottest property to dead'. Hansen concluded there is no easy way into movies 'You have to write a book that appeals to yourself, that you believe in [...] If other people see it as a movie, fabulous. But you have to use your own judgement.'

Jinman also spoke to the Sydney author of Candy, Luke Davies. Unlike Hansen, Davies had no expectation that his novel could be dramatised in a film version. Despite the fact that he has now collaborated with Neil Armfield on just such a project, Davies told Jinman that gearing writing towards film adaptations was a 'doomed proposition [...] It's poisonous to your creative process to write with those kinds of ends in mind [...] The duty of the writer is to abdicate from a sense of audience. The moment you start to write from a sense of who's this for, how's it going to work, it's all over. You have to stick to your creative guns and let the rest work itself out.'

Maybe Davies's approach is the safer option. Another Sydney writer, Matthew Reilly had high hopes that his novels Ice Station and Contest would be filmed. Both books were optioned, but the options have now lapsed and the film rights have reverted to Reilly. 'I got my hopes up the first time I was approached by Hollywood', Reilly told the Australian's Kerrie Murphy, 'and they got dashed [...] I'd heard that Tom Cruise's company was reading Ice Station, that [Pearl Harbour] director Michael Bay's people were reading it and ultimately it came to nothing, not a single thing ... I learned not to get my hopes up.' (Weekend Australian, 27-28 December 2003)

Shane Maloney's early experience with the filming of Stiff and The Brush-Off followed a similar trajectory. The books were optioned and Maloney commissioned to write the screenplays. 'Initially when there was film interest, I of course got excited; and then I learnt after about three or four of these approaches and after I'd sold the rights, I just learnt not to be too excited.' ('A Conversation with Shane Maloney', Metro no.142, 2004) Ultimately, the hapless Murray Whelan did reach the screen in the form of two telemovies written by humourist John Clarke.

Perhaps the last word should come from the realistic voice of director Mark Joffe. Joffe has recently optioned Steven Carroll's The Art of the Engine Driver. He believes the book 'could make for a interesting film [...] It's poignant and relevant and much more than just a depiction of an era.' However, when pondering how long the project will take to reach production, Joffe recalls that he worked on The Man Who Sued God for 'a solid ten years'. With The Art of the Engine Driver, Joffe guesses 'Hopefully it will be this decade.' ('The Patient Filmmaker', Age 14 June 2003)

More information on the Australia film industry can be found in the following sources:

• Inside Film
• Metro
• Encore
• Australian Film Commission

and

• Film Finance Corporation of Australia

Hot-Off-the-Presses Holiday Reading
With the Summer holidays fast approaching, Australian publishers are releasing an array of new books for those with some leisure time.

In the general fiction category

• Colleen McCullough's newest book, Angel Puss, is set in a Kings Cross boarding house in 1960
• Jaclyn Moriarty has written a 'fairy tale for grown-ups', I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

and

• In The Reef, Di Morrissey explores the tensions between the tourism industry and environmental science on the Great Barrier Reef

The crime genre offers

• A new London-based Barry Maitland mystery. In No Trace, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla are called on to investigate a series of abductions from an artists' colony

and

• Kirsty Brooks picks up where she left off in The Vodka Dialogue. Brooks's new novel The Happiness Punch re-introduces private investigator Cassidy Blair. On this occasion, Blair is thrown into the worlds of pop stars, film shoots and illicit drugs

Edging toward the 'literary' end of the fiction market

• Susan Johnson delivers The Broken Book. Johnson re-imagines Charmian Clift's fictional character, Cressida Morley and creates a mid-twentieth century journey through the streets of Sydney, London and Greece
• Tim Winton has completed a book of loosely connected stories set principally in the fictional town of Angelus on the Western Australian coast. The characters in The Turning emerge gradually and it is the reader's task to fit the jigsaw of lives together

and

• Frank Moorhouse presents The Best Australian Short Stories 2004. This is the first volume of the annual publication edited by Moorhouse following Peter Craven's departure from Black Inc. (See AustLit's March/April newsletter for background.)

For travel without leaving home

• Peter Carey explores Japanese culture in Wrong About Japan. Readers can travel with Carey and his son as they navigate the world of manga and anime, and explore their environment through the eyes of the fictional Mr Yazaki
• Michael McGirr rides the length of the Hume Highway on a bicycle in Bypass : The Story of a Road. McGirr captures the essence of the people and landscapes he encounters via the myriad of bumper stickers seen en route

and

• Nicholas Shakespeare's In Tasmania links the story of Tasmania's history since European settlement with Shakespeare's family history and his personal response to the island where he now lives for six months of each year

And on the voyage inward

• Sandy Jeffs journeys through mental illness accompanied by angels and a sustaining humour
in The Wings of Angels: A Memoir of Madness
and

• Michael Leunig shares a prayerful spirit of hope and joy in When I Talk to You : A Cartoonist Talks to God

365 Sonnets of Sydney
The Sydney Morning Herald website is currently publishing Matt Rubinstein's newest novel, Equinox. The novel tells the story of four Sydney residents over the course of the year 2000. 'Glenn is a young artist trying to keep his head in the flashy new world of advertising. Joanna is a stoic deckhand looking after her underemployed father. Natasha is a party girl negotiating with the city's dark side, and Arthur is a homeless man just trying to survive.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 2004) Each day the Herald uploads a new instalment and readers can click on individual dates in a monthly calendar to view the latest sonnet.

(For an alternative view of the same year see Bob Ellis's The Ellis-Leak Almanac : 2000AD. Ellis's poems, in monthly rather than daily instalments, are accompanied by Bill Leak's cartoons.)

Irish Residency for Australian and NZ Writers
The Rathcoola Residency has been established by the London-based Richard and Sophie Nicoll Trust. The residency, located at Rathcoola House in Donoughmore, County Cork, 'is available to writers and artists resident in Australia or New Zealand who would like to pursue their work in Ireland.' The inaugural residency will commence on 1 July 2004 and will be followed by another opportunity beginning in early January 2006.

The closing date for applications for both initial residential periods is 30th November 2004. Inquiries can only be made via email.
Contact: patricia.hurley@xtra.co.nz

IBBY Calls for Help
John Foster, president of the Australian section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) is calling for assistance in running and promoting the local branch. IBBY is represented in 65 countries around the world and aims to 'promote international understanding through children's books'. Foster would like to hear from anyone who wants to become involved in the organisation either through membership of the national committee or in raising the profile of the local branch.
Contact details are:
Email: john.foster@unisa.edu.au
Phone: (08) 8302 4545
Mail: University of South Australia
St Bernards Rd, Magill SA 5072

Hay, Hell and Booligal
'Banjo' Paterson's 1896 poem 'Hay and Hell and Booligal' reported that 'people have an awful down upon the district and the town', but a bad reputation hasn't stopped Hay's five museums in their preparations for a 2005 exhibition titled 'Hot as Hell'. Community Curator of the museums, Dr Martha Sear is inviting all Australians to 'contribute their stories about coping with the heat' and she is keen to 'discover literary responses to hot weather'. Dr Sear is particularly looking for 'slang, expressions or sayings about the heat'.
If you are able to assist with contributions, contact Dr Sear at:
Email: haymuseums@bigpond.com

General information about the museums is available on the Hay Museums website.

ABR Inaugural Poetry Prize
Australian Book Review (ABR) is calling for entries in its inaugural poetry prize. Previously unpublished single poems of not more than 100 lines may be submitted and must be accompanied by an entry fee of $15.00 (or $5.00 for ABR subscribers). Morag Fraser, Peter Rose and Peter Steele will judge the award and the winner will be announced in April 2005. The winning poem will receive $2,000 and shortlisted poems will receive a $200 prize. An entry form is printed in the October and November issues of ABR and is also available on ABR's website.

The closing date for entries is 15 December 2004.

From Tall Stories to Serious Satire
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) is hosting a conference at the National Library in Canberra in February 2005 with the theme '"My Life as a Joke"': Australian Comic Writing and the Language of Laughter'. The conference will explore 'Australian writing in the comic mode whether in fiction, drama, poetry, film, radio or television'.

For further information on this and other conferences see AustLit's Events Directory.

Eureka: 150th Anniversary
December 2004 marks the 150th anniversary of the first raising of the Eureka flag and the bloody miners' rebellion at Bakery Hill in Ballarat. The Victorian Government and regional city of Ballarat have organised a range of events to celebrate the occasion including conferences, debates, bushwalks of the goldfields and art exhibitions. (For details see the Eureka 150 website.) Coinciding with the anniversary is the production of a new musical, Eureka : Our Story, with lyrics by NSW poet Maggie May Gordon and theatre historian, John Senczuk. Eureka runs at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne until 30 January 2005.

The events of the Eureka Stockade uprising have been a strong source of inspiration for writers. The earliest works recorded by AustLit were constructed through migrant eyes. The first is Italian dramatist Raffaelo Carboni's eye-witness account, The Eureka Stockade : The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion (1885) and the second is Englishman William Withers's novel, Eustace Hopkins : His Friends and Foes (1882). The first play to be based on the rebellion was 'The Democrat; or, Under the Southern Cross' by Edmund Duggan. The play was performed in Melbourne in 1891 and subsequently toured other states.

Dozens of plays, novels and poems have followed these early works. (They can be found on AustLit by undertaking a Basic Search using the subject concept 'Eureka stockade'.) With a view no doubt to Eureka's sesquicentenary, novelists Ann Whitehead (under the pseudonym Ann Charlton) and Robyn Annear have recently published books for young readers. Dangerous Places traces a youthful friendship through the sea voyage from England to the goldfields of Ballarat and Annear's Fly a Rebel Flag : The Battle at Eureka uses fictional diary entries to convey the anger and frustration of the miners.

AustLit Adjustments
Two small but significant changes will occur at AustLit in the coming months. AustLit's name will be slightly altered and the publishing schedule for the newsletter will be adjusted.

1. From Gateway to Resource
   AustLit, previously known by the full title, AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway, will become AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature. The name change will take effect in late November 2004.
   
   As Australia's premier resource in the field of Australian literary research, AustLit will continue its mission to enhance and support research and learning in Australian literature, and will maintain its on-going commitment to develop and deliver enhanced services and research capabilities to all users.



2. Newsletter Distribution Dates
   From February 2005 AustLit's regular two-monthly newsletter will be released on the even, rather than the odd, month. Since 2002 the newsletter has been published six times a year with the first issue of the year being the January/February number. In 2005, six issues will again be published, but will begin with a February/March issue. The final number for 2005 will span December 2005/January 2006.
   
   Newsletter readers can automatically receive an email alert when a new issue is available. To receive email notification follow the instructions for Newsletter Subscription.

New AustLit Records
During September and October 2004, the Content Development Team added:

• 7,109 new works
• 1,243 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 6,700 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

We welcome your feedback on our service, and will work hard to develop content and services to meet your needs. If you have any comments and suggestions, please contact us at:

info-austlit@austlit.edu.au

Or spend two minutes filling out our User Feedback form.