My 2017 Australian Reading Calendar (with thanks to the New York Public Library)

The New York Public Library has done a marvellous thing. Perhaps you've already seen it? Library staff have created three reading calendars for 2017 - to help us shape our reading habit, catch up on classics we might have missed, and make new reading discoveries. You can read all about it here. One of the best things about the reading calendar is that it offers one book a month. That sounds achievable, still leaving time to read many of the other things you might want to read in the new year.

Inspired by the NYPL, here's my 2017 Australian Reading Calendar, including some old favourites and some on my to-be-read list. Pick a couple or read the whole list. No promises but my goal will be to write about my reading throughout the year. It's good to begin a new year with a reading project, isn't it?

2017 Australian Reading Calendar 

January

See what one of Australia's best-loved authors does with the tales of his own life. This one has been sitting on my to-be-read pile for a few months now. It's bound to include stories of hot Western Australian summers, the surf, the bush - perfect reading for an Australian summer.

February

I adored Anita Heiss' 'Dreaming' books, Paris Dreaming and Manhattan Dreaming. I also adore Paris and Manhattan and a bit of romance. So I'm using the excuse that is St Valentine's Day to revisit an old favourite - city and book.

March

Just about everything I know about the Catholic Church, I learned from the novels of former priest, Morris West. He was also a writer much adored by my mother, so much so that his new releases were the obvious Christmas/birthday gift for her for many years. The Shoes of the Fisherman, a novel about the election of a new Pope, was published in 1963. It may be hard to find but I'm hoping it's as gripping to reread as it was the first time I read it.





April

I have to confess that Maxine Beneba Clarke's memoir of growing up black in Sydney was a highlight of my 2016 reading. I recognised my own childhood in it - except for one very important thing. My childhood was entirely white. If you haven't read it yet, please, please do, especially if you're a teacher or parent or human being. It will make you see Australia in a different way and given the year we've had, that's a very important thing.

May

Another confession - I haven't read any of Christina Stead's novels (although Hazel Rowley's biography is wonderful and highly recommended). I'm going to remedy that this year by reading her second novel, published in 1936, I promise this is the last book on the  list with the Eiffel Tower on the cover but it does promise a love triangle set against a backdrop of political upheaval.

June

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum which gave Indigenous Australians the right to vote and the 25th anniversary of the Mabo Decision which destroyed the concept of terra nullius. There's a lot for me to learn about both events. To begin, I'm going to read Mabo's story.

July

"The Rose Bower" from the
"Legend of Briar Rose"
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
via Wikipedia

I adore Kate Forsyth's reimaginings of fairy tales and the depths of winter seem to be the perfect time to curl up with her retelling of Sleeping Beauty through the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. What a combination! If you are curious, she has written about writing Beauty in Thorns on her blog. Begin your pre-reading here.

August

I feel a bit uncomfortable including Georgia Blain's novel on this list. Her death is so very recent and by all accounts the novel's terrain echoes aspects of the author's life. But the novel keeps appearing on 2016's 'best of' list and is probably demanding me to read it. So I'm going to read it before opening The Museum of Words, which the Sydney Morning Herald has gently described as her 'farewell book'.

September

Matthew Reilly has been writing best-selling novels for years, 20 years in fact. He's now published all over the world. I think it's time I explored what he's been up to. I could dive into the Scarecrow series or the Jack West novels. Instead, I'm going to start with The Great Zoo of China - with its female protagonist and a secret the Chinese have been keeping for over 40 years.

October

This list is a bit nostalgic and, having included Morris West, I thought I'd also include Nevil Shute, another of Australia's early international successes. A Town Like Alice was going to be my choice, until I discovered that On the Beach will be celebrating 60 years since publication in 1957. I've also never read Shute's post-apocolyptic tale, which was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and (hard to believe) Fred Astaire as an Australian scientist.

November

Rediscover Joan Lindsay's Australian classic as it celebrates 50 years of publication.That's right, 50 years! I know there's a film and a soon-to-be-released tv series, but let's all go back to the source this year and read the book.

December

Choosing the final book for the year is tricky. I've gone with a crime novel, Adrian Hyland's Diamond Dove. Another female protagonist, it's a murder mystery set in Central Australia. And Hyland's publisher, Text, promise it's 'the wittiest and most gripping Australian crime novel you'll read this year'. 

Five Australian Illustrators

I've been thinking about illustrators of children's books. I blame my work. One of the perks of my job at the National Library of Australia is that I have an opportunity to meet and listen to the greats of Australian writing, publishing and research. Recently, it was illustrator Robert Ingpen AM who, in 1986, received the Hans Christian Anderson Award for Illustration for his 'lasting contribution to children's literature'.

Over the past decade, Robert's work has focused on creating new illustrations for a collection of Children's Classics, published by Palazzo Editions. He has created new images for Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, A Christmas Carol, The Jungle Book, and The Secret Garden. The National Library has published a new book, Wonderlands: The Illustration Art of Robert Ingpen, which celebrates this work. During the conversation, though, Robert was asked why new illustrations were needed. Surely, the questioner asked, if new words weren't needed, the original images would be fine too?

It's Robert's reply that has kept me thinking. In a world full of colour, where children live on screens, the old line drawings of earlier days don't cut the mustard (I'm paraphrasing). And perhaps more importantly, he described his job as finding spaces in his illustrations for children's imaginations to occupy. Isn't that perfect? He isn't looking to supply the imaginative world of the book so much as to inspire the imaginative worlds of young readers.

This idea of illustrators creating doorways into the imagination has kept me thinking. I've been thinking about the illustrators whose work I love to look at and whose work I love reading aloud. So I thought I'd share with you five books b y Australian illustrators who have inspired reading and imagination in my house.

Jeannie Baker

Jeannie Baker's Belonging, published in 2004, is a book without words. It tells the story of an inner city suburb, transformed by it's community from an industrial wasteland into a vibrant environment. And it tells the story of a little girl who grows into adulthood in this urban space. Lacking words, the readers are free to follow whatever storytelling path they choose. Sometimes we followed the girl's story. Others, we looked at the changes happening outside the window that frames each illustration. And the illustrations are something to behold, each an elaborate, detailed collage. They provide another way to engage with the book, working out what materials were used to create the hammock, the pond or the paving stones.

Graeme Base

Another illustrator who creates wonderfully intricate images is Graeme Base. This image is from his counting book, The Waterhole (published 2001). More than a counting book, The Waterhole is a book about animals, environment and climate. Like Belonging, there is more going on here than the words on the page suggest. Graeme Base's books are like that. As an author-illustrator, he has created puzzle books that have defied my puzzle-solving abilities. But even when I can't solve the puzzle, I love the illustrations. My photograph doesn't do justice to his work but it gives you a hint of Graeme's sense of humour. Can you spot the anthropomorphised frogs in a work that is otherwise highly accurate? Those frogs travel around the world with you. Maybe they are you?

Freya Blackwood

Here's a fun fact - Freya Blackwood worked on special effects for The Lord of the Rings trilogy! Her illustrations are a long way, though, from the world of the Hobbits. They are gorgeous evocations of childhood, sometimes in what looks like watercolours, sometimes pastels. Freya Blackwood has created the images for some of our best writers of children's books, including Margaret Wild and Jan Ormerod, but she seems to have formed a beautiful partnership with Libby Gleeson. This illustration is from Amy and Louis (published in 2006), a beautiful story about friendship and losing a friend. It tackles a very common experience - what happens when your best friend moves away - but I think it is also a perfect book for starting to talk to a small person about death. Freya has also illustrated Libby's Clancy and Millie and the Very Fine House, which will make you want to build a box city.

Nick Bland

How I love Nick Bland's The Wrong Book (2009). I love Nicholas Ickle who desperately wants to tell us a story but whose storytelling is constantly interrupted by a parade of characters that young readers may recognise from other books. There's a dinosaur, a queen, a marionette puppet who looks remarkably like Pinocchio, and rats ... lots of rats. Bland is an author/illustrator who lives in Darwin but his books don't (yet) reflect that part of the world. He's perhaps most loved for The Very Cranky Bear, a character who seems to have taken on a life of his own and who now appears in a number of Bland's books. But Nicholas Ickle is my favourite. Who can resist that little face, his frustration, his dejection? It's a wonderful book to read aloud - especially as young listeners will try to beat you to the punchline.

Judy Horacek

If I'd been planning my blogs, I might have only talked about illustrators whose last names began with 'B', saving the letter 'H' for a later post. But I chose on the basis of love and Judy Horacek's classic, with text by Mem Fox, is dear to my heart. Where is the Green Sheep? was published in the same year my boy was born and we began reading it almost immediately. The story goes that Mem was inspired by Judy's drawing of a sheep. Until that time, Judy was known as a cartoonist. Where is the Green Sheep? has lead to a new career in children's books, as an author and as an illustrator, and as a collaborator with Mem Fox. This is my favourite image from Where is the Green Sheep? It reminds me of Singin' in the Rain, a movie that is also very dear to me. And that's the beauty of this book: as carefully chosen as the words are, Judy's illustrations give you so much to explore and share with your little one. There's a reason why it is much-loved and in print 12 years after publication.

Revisiting Little Women

Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott
Angus & Robertson Ltd, Sydney, 1934

Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott was the book of my early childhood. I can't remember a time when it was not part of my life. Before I started school, my older sister had read the story to me and I'm sure we all watched the MGM movie starring June Allyson as Jo and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy on many a Sunday afternoon.

Part of my fascination was no doubt due to being one of four sisters (like Louisa Alcott herself) - and having a brother coincidentally named Laurie. In my imagining, I was Amy. Jo was too boyish, Beth far too sickly and good, and Meg was boring. Who wouldn't want to be Amy with her golden curls and pretty nose that she helped to shape with the use of a peg? Looking back now there was another similarity too, one that I doubt I was conscious of. A couple of months before my 4th birthday, my father died suddenly. Like the March girls, I was growing up in a fatherless household.

The inscription by Ina Reynolds

But Little Women goes back further in my family story. In 1934, my mother was a pretty child with long ringlets created by curling her hair around rags each night. And, despite being a minister's daughter, she was desperate to go on the stage. She begged and begged her parents to allow her to take lessons and, although the country was in the grip of a depression and her father's income as a Church of Christ minister was meagre, somehow they found the money to allow her to follow her dream. So each week, little Joy walked up Frederick Street, Bexley to the top of the hill. She carried two shillings in her hand, payment for her elocution teacher, Ina Reynolds. When Mum was not quite 10-years-old, she was given a copy of Little Women by her elocution teacher. The gift, presented on 19 April 1934, was inscribed 'with many thanks for the help of both mother and yourself in Concert work ...'.

I'm the custodian of this family treasure. Published in early 1934 by Angus and Robertson, the blue cloth-covered edition features stills from the 1933 RKO Radio Pictures movie starring Katherine Hepburn as Jo and Joan Bennett as Amy. How I coveted this book! What a treat it was to be allowed to gently open it and look at the photographs.

Over the past week or so, I've done more than look at the photographs. It must be close to 40 years since I read the story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - although it is so embedded in my memory that I can still score 89% on the New York Public Library quiz, Little Women: Which March Sister Said It?

And here's the thing - for the first few chapters, I regretted ever going back to it. Those girls, at the start of book anyway, are such whiners: we're so poor; it's not fair; why did father have to lose all his money?

'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.'

They drove me crazy. No wonder they were given copies of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to inspire them to be better! I nearly stop reading to avoid having damage done to my childhood memory. But it is Marmee, Mrs March who turns the book around for me. Marmee, who was completely forgettable in all my earlier readings. She was barely a presence and, when she was, she was mostly offering a lesson in how to behave. But listen to her speaking to Jo:

You think your temper is the worst in the world; but mine used to be just like it ... I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.

Katharine Hepburn as Jo and
Joan Bennett as Amy - a still from the
RKO Radio Pictures movie

Marmee angry? Nearly every day of her life? Suddenly, I am aware of all the anger that sits beneath the surface of this seemingly gentle book for girls. Time and time again, Marmee leaves the room with her lips tightly compressed. It is wild fury that leads Amy to burn Jo's manuscript, and it is Jo's anger that almost leads to Amy drowning. Aunt March is cranky with the world - although perhaps she has a right to be, having buried a daughter and a husband. Old Mr Laurence's anger with his dead son, who ran away to play music in Italy, leads him to be tough with young Laurie. And what of Marmee? Wouldn't you be angry too if your husband's poor business decisions meant you were flung with four daughters into the world of the genteel poor and then he ran off to minister to the soldiers fighting in the Civil War?

In 1868, when the book was first published, Marmee is angry and a feminist, reflecting the views of the author herself. Although she wants to see her daughters 'well and wisely married', she also advises them:

better be happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands.

In a world where marriage seems to be the only option, Little Women offers it's readers alternatives. While Meg begins to yearn for marriage and her own home, Jo and Amy are planning on making their own way in the world, earning their fortune through writing and art. And the family newspaper, The Pickwick Chronicles, includes an advertisement for 'Miss Oranthy Bluggage, the accomplished Strong-Minded Lecturer', who is delivering a lecture on 'WOMAN AND HER POSITION'.

It's not until the sequel, Good Wives, published in 1869, that we see how Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy's lives play out. Somewhere I have my own, large-format illustrated copy. And yes, I'm going to read it. Not to see if Professor Bhaer is as lovely as I remember (although I hope he still is) but to discover whether Marmee manages her anger and continues to advise her little women to imagine alternative lives.

All quotes and images are from Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott, published by Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1934

Hal Porter: A writer I haven't read

The Tilted Cross by Hal Porter
Faber & Faber, London, 1961

Recently, I was given a copy of Hal Porter's Tasmanian novel, The Tilted Cross. Published in London in 1961 by Faber and Faber, the novel is set in Van Diemen's Land and is loosely based on the life of Thomas Griffiths Waineright, an artist, author and journalist, possibly a serial killer and 'multiple poisoner'. Surprisingly, given this colourful story, he was transported for forgery.

It wasn't Waineright who intrigued me, however (the Australian Dictionary of Biography provides a balanced overview of his life if you'd like to know more). It was the novel's author - Hal Porter.

Porter's memoir, The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony, was published in 1963. One of the first Australian memoirs, it is widely regarded as a classic and today it's the book for which he is best remembered. Now out of print and not a novel, it still managed to find its way onto Booktopia's 2010 list of 'The 50 Must Read Australian Novels'.

As an adult, Porter lived a peripatetic life. The ADB entry reveals he moved from Bairnsdale to Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart, Sydney, taking up short-lived teaching positions, tutoring, producing plays, running a hotel. In 1949 he joined the Army Education Unit and was posted to Japan twice. London beckoned in the early 1960s but he returned to Australia, spending the remainder of his life alternating between Melbourne and rural Victoria. Homosexual, his biographer Mary Lord revealed in 1993 he was also a paedophile. Was all this movement driven by the need to keep ahead of the law, of unhappy parents and school principals?

The one constant in his life seems to have been his writing. In an oral history interview recorded for the National Library of Australia in March 1964, Porter describes himself as a 'born writer', although one afflicted with a terrible disease.

Porter published Short Stories in 1942 and, according to the blurb on The Tilted Cross, 'won all the major short-story competitions in Australia'. A meeting with Angus and Robertson's editor Beatrice Davis in Sydney lead to the publication of poetry, novels and a trilogy of memoirs. Apparently a bit of a snob, he must have been over the moon to have been published in London by Faber and Faber, joining the likes of TS Eliot, Beckett, Harold Pinter and Ted Hughes.

The Tilted Cross received mixed reviews. In The Canberra Times review published on 9 December 1961, 'FX' wrote:

He spins his words like a thick spider's web and in the depths of the web he set an evil collection of characters - the impotent knight, his adulterous wife, the nymphomaniacal spastic, sadists, drunkards, homosexuals ... The book was written under a Commonwealth Literary Fund Scholarship. In spite of Mr Porter's previous achievements and record, I feel the money might have been better spent.

The full review is available via Trove.

Porter recognised that his writing wasn't liked by everyone, that some reviewers thought he was verbose, baroque and overblown. The opening paragraph of The Tilted Cross provides an example of why they might have thought that:

Van Dieman's Land, an ugly trinket suspended at the world's discredited rump, was freezing. From horizon to horizon stretched a tarpaulin of congealed vapour so tense that it had now and then split, and had rattled down a vicious litter of sleet like minced glass, that year, that winter, that day.

In his oral history interview, Porter claimed his large vocabulary was due to a childhood addiction to books and dictionaries.

Porter died in September 1984. A brief obituary in The Age noted that he once said that 'posterity would see him as a passable novelist, a fair playwright but a pretty good short story writer'. He was 73.

This post was written as part of the 2016 Sydney Story Factory Pen to Paper Challenge. I'm inspired by the work of Sydney Story Factory. I'd like to help them grow so that, one day, Martian Embassies will be all over this country. So during September I'm putting pen to paper - and hopefully rebooting my blog. If you enjoyed this post, please give whatever you can. Let's help the Sydney Story Factory grow.

Not Writing

I can't write. 

It's 6am and I've turned the computer on to write the blog post I've been mulling over for a week. But the internet connection is defeating me. The computer gives up before a page is fully loaded. I reboot the modem. Wait. Sip the mug of hot water that is part of my morning routine. Try again. Nothing. There's a message on the screen that assures me it's trying, that it will keep trying. Before it gives up.

The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clark -
a book that made me think about the thread
of racism that runs deeply in our society.

The idea for the post began simply enough. I wanted to review two recent reads. The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clark and Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss. One a memoir set in Kellyville on the edge of Sydney in the 1980s. The other a cross-cultural romance set in Cowra in 1944. Seemingly they have nothing in common. And yet both books allowed me to stand in someone else's shoes - young Maxine, who's Afro-Caribbean heritage made her a target in the school yard and 17-year-old Mary, living a life controlled by the Aborigines Protection Act during the war. Both books reveal what it's like to be black in Australia. And both books allowed me to learn what Australian racism looks like. I wanted to explain how they showed me how deeply ingrained racism is in our country. Most of us say we aren't racist. We love Chinese and Vietnamese food. We buy sushi for lunch and tickets to Bangarra Dance Theatre. But both books made me wonder about my very white upbringing, about whether I too am complicit.

One of the beautifully coloured
homes of Georgetown.

I am not writing. I thought participating in the Sydney Story Factory's Pen to Paper Challenge would be a wonderful reboot. Instead, I'm struggling. I'm avoiding. Yesterday, I helped the 11-year-old clean his room. I was thinking about the blog post, though. Thinking I'd write it in the evening. I'd turn it into a travel post on Georgetown in the US instead. I selected photos, researched the history of Georgetown on my phone. In the evening, with everyone else tucked in bed, I read Good Weekend. Sam Dastyari's problems and the role Scientology played in the end of Tom and Nicole's marriage were so much more compelling.

But my thinking was overwhelmed by my Twitter feed. All week, I scrolled through articles and comments about Lionel Shriver's speech about cultural appropriation, given at the Brisbane Writers Festival. I watched Twitter as Yassmin Abdel-Magied walked out. I read her impassioned explanation, Lionel's speech, Marlon James' Facebook post, Caroline Overington's comments, and Maxine Beneba Clark's report of meeting Lionel Shriver. And in the midst of it all, Pauline Hanson gave her second maiden speech in the Australian Parliament, replacing her 'swarm of Asians' with her 'swarm of Muslims'. 

Where, I wondered, did my simple review fit in all of this? Did I have anything new to add? Annabel Crabb in the Sydney Morning Herald and Nesrine Malik in The Guardian seemed to say it so much better.

Now, this morning, I'm here to face the screen. Willing. Committed. But the internet won't oblige. It's recalcitrant. It won't cooperate. It's a blank screen that will not load. I'm not putting fingers to the keyboard this morning.

If I want to write, I have to revert to first principals. I have to put pen to paper, follow the advice of the Sydney Story Factory to the letter. This isn't a keyboard challenge. It's pen to paper. I have to face the page, not the screen. Pick up the pen, hold it in my hand.

The pen bulges where my fingers grip it and my grip is tight. I dig words into the page. My hand can't keep up with the words. My hand tires in a way my fingers never tire on the keyboard. No matter how I twist the pen, how I adjust my grip, sooner or later the metal clip digs into the soft skin at the base of my index finger. It's uncomfortable. Awkward. But I'm holding on tight. Not giving up yet. Still writing.

This post was written as part of the 2016 Sydney Story Factory Pen to Paper Challenge. I'm inspired by the work of Sydney Story Factory. I'd like to help them grow so that, one day, Martian Embassies will be all over this country. So during September I'm putting pen to paper - and hopefully rebooting my blog. If you enjoyed this post, please give whatever you can. Let's help the Sydney Story Factory grow.

Richard and Ruby

I met Richard Neville in 1994. It wasn't a meeting he'd recollect. He was in Canberra to deliver the Ruby Hutchison Memorial Address at the National Press Club on 15 March. I was a young public servant, working for the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs. A bit starry-eyed. And he was a media star in a cream linen suit. Lanky, his deep fringe hid his forehead, emphasising his generous smile, disguising his critique of the 'sacred cow' of conspicuous consumption with wit and humour.

'Men and women are born free, ladies and gentleman,' he said, 'but today we are everywhere in chain stores.'

Last Sunday, Richard died. He was only 74. We have relived the founding of Oz Magazine, the court cases, the willingness to challenge the norms of the 1960s. For those of us who were too young to read Oz when it was first published, last year the University of Wollongong digitised it and, with Richard's blessing, made it available online for non-commercial purposes. Now we can read it and think about why it created the furore it did.

I, though, have been reliving that event at the Press Club. It turns out that the National Library of Australia (full disclosure: my employer) recorded the lecture. You can listen to it online. And there is Richard Neville's voice, his humour, his willingness to be a disruptor before 'disruption' was a thing. He argued for a 'Buy Nothing Day', saying that 'as long as we go on consuming it is the world that is going to die'. In less than an hour, he mashed up conspicuous consumerism, the Princess of Wales, Reeboks, Hey, Hey It's Saturday, the Body Shop, the Berlin Wall, poverty, wealth and cannabis.

Ruby Hutchison, after whom the lecture was named, was a disruptor too. Although if you compare photos of Ruby with her curled hair and cat's eye glasses with those of a young Richard Neville, it seems unlikely they would have anything in common. In 1954, she was the first woman to be elected to the West Australian Legislative Council. In her long parliamentary career, she argued for education, child welfare, and electoral reform. She was also a founder of the Australian Consumers' Association, publisher of Choice Magazine. When Choice Magazine was born in 1960 (three years before Oz), there was no consumer legislation as we know it today. Arguably, Ruby Hutchison's work helped to change Australian life as much as Richard's, paving the way for the passing of the Trade Practices Act in 1975. She died in 1974, a year before the legislation was enacted.

There is so much about the day at the Press Club that I've forgotten - but the recording of the lecture brings the memories back. Introducing Richard was the then Minister for Consumer Affairs, the Hon Jeannette McHugh MP. She launched a new resource for Australian school children, Consumer Power, the National Primary School Consumer Education Project. I sweated over that resource, working with colleagues in consumer affairs agencies across Australia and the ABC to produce a CD-rom, education kit and television series. There was a long evening in the State Library of South Australia, a few of us working on edits. I can see us hunched around a table in the reading room, searching the shelves in the children's section for references. What I can't see is what we were working on. Were we editing scripts, the education kit, the text for the CD-rom?

Consumer Power was distributed to every primary school in Australia. I still have a copy and there's one in the National Library too. But before we knew it, CD-roms were old technology, although the accompanying tv series was still being broadcast by the ABC in 2005.

I worked for the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs and its many incarnations until 2000. By then, it had changed shape significantly. It moved from under the umbrella of the Attorney-General's Department, eventually being absorbed into Treasury. But that's a story for another day and I wouldn't trust my memory to get the story right.

And it seems my memory is faulty in other ways too. For there was no cream linen suit. A photograph of Richard Neville published in The Canberra Times the next day, clearly shows him wearing a dark suit - and a tie covered in large white polkadots.

Richard Neville and Ruby Hutchison have both died. The Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs is possibly only remembered by those of us who worked there. But Choice and the Australian Consumer Association still exist. So too does the Ruby Hutchison Memorial Lecture. Supported by Choice and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, it is held on the eve of World Consumer Rights Day (15 March). And perhaps the creators of The Checkout, which has brought consumer education into the home, heard Richard Neville's Ruby Hutchison Memorial Address and are carrying the flame.

This post was written as part of the 2016 Sydney Story Factory Pen to Paper Challenge. I'm inspired by the work of Sydney Story Factory. I'd like to help them grow so that, one day, Martian Embassies will be all over this country. So during September I'm putting pen to paper - and hopefully rebooting my blog. If you enjoyed this post, please give whatever you can. Let's help the Sydney Story Factory grow.