This is the month when the lyrebirds yell across the valley in great singing competitions and scratch up the herb garden; when the chooks realise the days are getting longer and suddenly the laying boxes are full, not empty, and when I’m juggling plane schedules and trying to remember to fill up my car so I can get home from the airport when the flight gets in at 10 pm and there’s a two-hour drive ahead.
       Book ‘week’ lasts for a couple of months, and a good thing too. Fabulous schools in Brisbane, wonderful kids in Cairns, more kids to talk to in Brisbane tomorrow and then off to SA… I love it, but just sometimes wish that somehow I could be cloned or be in six places at once – and one of those places would be on the sofa with a book in one hand and an apple in the other, or dozing listening to the lyrebirds.
       It’s been the coldest winter in years, down to minus 9.6 one night, but there have been lots of ‘mild’ nights too and, so far, there’s been less frost damage than during the drought years, with clear skies and frozen ground.
       The wombats are fat and the oranges and avocadoes too, and I pulled out a radish almost as long as my arm this morning. Not that I’m going to eat it – it looked more like it could devour me than the other way around. But the chooks will like it.
       Sometimes, in the past month, I’ve been scared of what will happen if the mine proposed above us goes ahead. At other times I’ve been hassled when planes are delayed – when I just want to find a bed and sleep.
       That’s what it was like last week – a flight three hours late (the plane had steering problems) so I found myself in a taxi at midnight in Sydney instead of heading home via Canberra.
       Then the taxi driver got lost, and a five minute cab drive turned into forty, as I explained I didn’t know where the hotel was or what it looked like, as it had been organised by the airline when our flight finally touched down.
       The cab driver stopped the car. He touched his heart with both hands, and then put his hands in the position of prayer. ‘I am so happy for you,’ he said. ‘You are here on the ground, and you are safe.’
       He was young, Middle Eastern. This was his first night driving a cab, he said. His face was lit with genuine joy that I was safe, and suddenly I felt ashamed that I’d been grumpy when I was sitting in a comfortable cab with a good bed (somewhere) ahead of me, that I had no idea what he had been through to get here – or what his friends and family perhaps were still suffering – but that whatever it was, it had made him a person who would show and feel real joy just to hear that a stranger was safe.
       I was too tired by the time we found the hotel to thank him properly, or even to give him more than the taxi voucher the airline had given me. I wish I had – wish there was some way to thank him, not just for his kindness. I had been so wrapped up in my own discomfort. His ability to feel joy for a stranger made me feel part of the world again.
       And the bed was comfortable, and the camellias are beautiful outside my study window and if by any chance you get into a Sydney cab, and the driver is young – only eighteen perhaps, a thin face, and he’ll probably get lost (I don’t think he’s really meant for cab driving, but I suspect will be brilliant at much else), could you say how much that moment meant to me?

Wombat news
       Mothball has us well trained now. She only needs to bump the front door and we run out and feed her. She even knows that we might take a few minutes to get the food to the bowl, if we’re on the phone and/or stirring dinner.
       I wouldn’t exactly say she’s patient – wombats don’t do patient. But she no longer attacks the doorknob or chews the doormat, though that may be partly because we’ve given up on front doormats and Bryan had put more wombat proof reinforcing on the front door.
       But maybe she at last trusts that when we can, we’ll do her bidding.
       She’s never been a cuddly sort of wombat. Not pretty, either – scarred by battles with other wombats and I bet she won them all ­– coat like a chewed up doormat. She’s never been a friend, like the first wombat I knew so many years ago. Mothball would never want me to go roaming with her in the moonlight. I’d be a nuisance, slow her down.
       Not pet, not friend. I’m not sure there’s even a word to describe what I feel for Mothball. I certainly would never feed another wild animal. Just her. She’s thrived on it for sixteen years so I’m pretty sure it hasn’t done her any harm, though it may have added to the her muscles.
       But every night, even when it’s cold and raining, it’s good to hear that bash against the door.

Mine News- please help if you can
       The proposed Dargues reef mine just upstream of us may mean the end of so much I have loved and worked for. The mine will take water for processing; the 6km of tunnels reaching 130 metres below us may means that springs fail, the bush dies, and the animals I have tracked and studied die too.
       This is a small valley, and it’s a relatively small mine, so there is little chance to widespread publicity when so much else is threatened elsewhere.
       But this month, under new NSW planning processes, there is a chance for the public to comment again, to ask that the mine be stopped or at the very least, have the tailings dam moved to a safe spot, not at the headwaters of a river system.
On Tuesday 24 August three PAC commissioners will meet in Braidwood to hear public submissions. Submissions can also be written, and it’s also worth putting in submissions you have put in before, which the PAC commissioners may not have seen or known about.

       IF you can put in a submission, even just saying ‘please don’t do it’, please help us.
You will need to register by August 18 by emailing megan.webb@planning.nsw.gov.au, webb@planning.nsw.gov.au
You can send submissions to the same address, again by August 18.
       Please, if you can help. This may be the chance to make a real difference to what happens to this valley I love so much.

Latest Awards
The Tomorrow Book, with Sue de Gennaro, has just been awarded the 2011 Wilderness Society Award. Natalie Winter, the book’s fantastic designer, also won the Best Designed Children's Picture Book for the Australian Publishers Association and A Waltz for Matilda, Oracle and Queen Victoria’s Underpants were all listed as Notable Books for 2011 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia.

New Books
Nanberry: Black Brother White
Nanberry: Black Brother White has just been released. Mostly it’s plain exciting when a new book comes out. This time there is as much nervousness as pleasure. This is a true story, about incredible people. Have I even begun to do them justice?

Once there were two brothers: one black, one white, in a tiny colony at the end of the world.

This almost unknown story about the earliest days of European settlement in Australia captured me when I first saw the picture of Nanberry, the Aboriginal boy adopted by the colony’s first surgeon, John White.
       Surgeon White was a gentleman, a snob and scientist, who hated Australia. Yet he gave an Aboriginal boy the honoured names he’d later give to his own son.
       Rachel, the convict girl he loved but could never marry, had survived a death sentence to reach Australia. She would become the richest and most loved woman in the colony.
       Nanberry became a sailor in the British Merchant Navy, returning to Australia to fight as a warrior, and to help protect his brother. Andrew, the ‘white brother’, became a hero too, surviving the carnage at Waterloo to return to the place he truly remembered as home.
       The story of John White, Nanberry, Andrew and his mother Rachel, has all the ingredients of a saga. Battles, lives sacrificed to codes of duty, and survival against crippling odds of starvation, disease and isolation. Above all, it’s a story of one man’s abiding love for his children.
        It’s scarcely believable — and yet it happened.
       It's all there, in our history. Have I done them justice, those extraordinary people?  Is it even possible to recreate that time of desperation and love too?
        It’s has been a joy and privilege to track down their stories, from old letters and court transcripts to White’s own words. I hope it will be joy to readers to discover it.  I hope you find it as compelling a window into that strange and fascinating world of two hundred years ago as I do.

Coming soon
Christmas Wombat
       When it is wombat versus reindeer, who gets the carrots?
       This is the story of one stroppy wombat, and one special night of the year, when those expecting Santa’s sleigh get more than they expected down their chimneys – and in some other strange places too.
       I think this is Bruce’s most brilliant version of Mothball. Ever stroppy, ever lovable and, this time, finding all the carrots even a wombat could ever want.

Other recent Books
A Waltz for Matilda
       This is, perhaps, the best book I have written. It wasn’t quite the book I thought I was going to write, either. Other voices kept intruding, more whispers from the past. Finally the book was twice as long as I had expected, more saga than story.
       With the help of Aboriginal elder Auntie Love, the ladies of the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League and many others, Matilda confronts the unrelenting harshness of life on the land and the long-standing hostility of local squatter, Mr. Drinkwater. She also discovers that enduring friendship can be the strongest kind of love.
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams. Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this saga tells the story of how Australia became a nation. It is also a love story – about a girl, and about the land.

Queen Victoria’s Underpants
The (almost) true story of how Her Majesty’s underpants led to freedom for women.
      
The revised Chook Book is in the shops too now – twice as big as the original edition and much changed and updated. It’s all you ever wanted to know (and probably a bit more) about how to keep chooks in your backyard or at school.
      
The last in the Animal Stars series is The Horse That Bit a Bushranger – the true-as-I-can-make-it account of a few of my ancestors and the bushranger Ben Hall. The story of a young convict who rode a giant brumby stallion no one else could tame; who won a race, a farm and a wife… and of what happened next.
      
Oracle is out, too. It’s the most exciting of all of my books so far; set in ancient Greece at the court of Mycenae, where Nikko and his sister Thetis are acclaimed as the greatest acrobats in Greece, so valued by the High King that they are even sent on embassies to other kingdoms. But Thetis has both a curse and a gift – if she speaks at all, she must tell the truth. And when the walls of Mycenae fall in an earthquake Nikko and the wild horse dancer, Euridice, must follow Thetis as she finds her true place – as the first of the oracles of Delphi.

Schedule for the Next Few Months
       I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are often two or three invitations to talk somewhere each day and, much as I’d love to, there is no way I can do them all, or even most of them.
This year is especially crammed, as I’m the 2011 Australian Literacy Ambassador. Mostly I can only do one trip away from home a month, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I usually only speak to groups of more than 200 and when it will take no more than four hours travel each way (except Western Australia). I’ve also stopped doing breakfast and after-dinner talks (pre-dinner talks are still fine).
       But as I have friends and family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stopover in Perth, too.
       New South Wales bookings are done by Lateral Learning (bookings@laterallearning.com.au); Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc (helen@speakers-ink.com.au) Victoria by Booked Out, (simon@bookedout.com.au); SA bookings by Carol Caroll (c.carroll@internode.on.net); WA bookings by the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre; and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com

August 8-10: Talks in regional SA, some at schools, some for the community. Contact Megs Bookshop, mar23373@bigpond.net.au for details.
August 23, 24 & 25: Talks in Melbourne. Contact simon@bookedout.com.au for bookings or details.
August 30: Adelaide, talks at the S.A. Literacy and Numeracy Expo.
National Literacy Week, 29 August to 4 September: Talks and activities Australia wide for National Literacy Week as the 2011 National Literacy Ambassador.
August 31: National Literacy Day, which will involve something, probably in Canberra, with Minister Peter Garrett.
September 8: Annual Dymphna Clarke Lecture at the National Library, Canberra, ‘Once a Jolly Swagperson’.
September 28, 29 & 30:  Talks in northern Tasmania.
October 1, 2, 8, 9, 10 & 16: Talks in the Victory Garden, Floriade, Canberra.
Friday October 21st: Youth Literature Day, Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre.
Saturday October 22nd: possible PD Workshop Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre.
Monday October 24th: Youth Literature Day (Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre).
Tuesday October 25th: Albany, Youth Literature Day.
Wednesday October 26th: Albany Young Writers’ Day.
Thursday October 27th: Youth Literature Day Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre
November 12 and 13: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact The Open Garden Scheme at act@opengarden.org.au for bookings.
November 19:  Picture Book workshop at the Sydney Writer’s Centre. Contact the Writer’s Centre for details (20 places only). 
November 30: Eureka Day Dinner and Talk at the Irish Club, Canberra.
December: Free writing workshop here in Araluen, NSW. See September or October newsletter for the date. Numbers limited.
Schedule for 2012
May: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain for bookings.
July 22-25: Curtis Coast Literary Carnivale, Gladstone, Q’land.
August 22, 23 (Book Week): Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain.

The August Garden
       This is the exciting time, dreaming of what to plant, of twigs turning into trees and trees turning into jungles.
       It’s the time to take rose, hydrangea, wormwood, salvia, lavender or grape prunings, stick them in moist soil and wait for them to grow new roots.
       It’s the time to give your local school or preschool a strawberry plant for each kid so they can wait and watch and pick and wonder.
       It’s a time to plan how you are going to wage war on snails and how many varieties of tomato you want to be guzzling come summer.

What to plant:
Veg
Cold: Potatoes, onions, peas, spinach, turnips, broad beans.
Temperate and sub-tropical: IF (and only if) the soil feels warm to sit on, plant – beans, beetroot, carrots, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, eggplant, corn, lettuce, silver beet, spring onions, parsnips, tomatoes, zucchini, capsicum, chilli and melons. If it's still a bit chilly, stick to spuds and onions.
Tropical:  Beans, capsicum, sweet potato in well-drained areas, zucchini and melons where they'll mature before summer humidity zaps them.
Flowers: Whatever is in the nursery! This is the time to go wild with flowers.

A Few Late Winter Recipes
Parsnip Soup (and roast parsnips)
This is delicious. Try it even if you think you don’t like parsnip. (If you’ve never tasted parsnips, peel them then roast with a little olive oil till crisp and brown. Salt lightly and eat hot.)
Ingredients:
 6 cups stock
12 medium sized parsnips
2 tbsps curry paste
1 peeled granny smith apple
3 chopped red onions, peeled

Simmer till all is soft. Whiz with a hand-held blender. Eat hot.

Simple Lemon Chicken
Place a free-range chook in a large pot. Add two chopped red onions, a bunch of chopped parsley, stems and all, a bunch of thyme tied together so you can fish it out later – it’s too stringy to leave in. You can also add chopped celery, parsnips, capsicum, garlic – whatever veg you have on hand or have time for. But just the chook, onion and thyme are all you need to start.
       Cover with chicken stock, the packaged sort. Simmer for an hour or still the leg comes away easily and you know it’s cooked.
       Now add 2 tbsps brown sugar, the juice of three lemons or limes, and fish out the thyme.
Thicken if you like by adding a tablespoon or two of cornflour mixed with cold water to the stock, stirring at once so it doesn’t go lumpy. Simmer for ten minutes then serve.
       This is as good reheated as the first night.

Egg curry
Ingredients:
8 hard-boiled eggs, shelled
2 large onions, chopped
6 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons turmeric
6 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 cups natural yoghurt (not low fat or fat free or it will separate)

Method
Sauté the onion in the oil until transparent. Add the spices, ginger and garlic and cook at a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring so it doesn’t stick. Add the yoghurt and eggs and heat gently. Don’t boil or the yoghurt will separate or become too runny. Take off the heat as soon as the yoghurt is hot.
Leave for 30 minutes for the flavours to amalgamate (overnight, if preferred). Reheat gently and serve hot.

Baked Apples
Ingredients:
Apples
Butter
Brown sugar
       Cut the cores out of the apples. Slice through the skin thickly three or four times, otherwise the apples will split open as they swell as they cook.
       Fill each core with brown sugar. Top with a knob of butter. Bake at 200 ºC for about half an hour or till tender.
       This is simple but exquisite, perfect with cream, yoghurt or icecream.
       You can add other stuffings like chopped dates or soaked dried apricot, but they spoil that wonderful taste of caramel and apple.

Sweet apricot soufflé
This is a simple, low calorie pudding. The scent of apricot will pervade the kitchen.

Ingredients
4 egg whites, beaten
1 cup dried apricots, soaked and mashed
1 drop (no more) of almond flavouring (optional)

Method
Blend the apricots and egg whites gently. Place in a straight-sided baking dish in a hot oven (250°C) and bake for 15 minutes. Serve hot.