Intro | Wombat news | Recent Awards
New Books | The August garden
A few recipes - parsnip bread, oats bars, chocolate muffins, orange pumpkin muffins, apple and quince sauce.

Apologies, apologies, apologies… In retrospect, having two large books due in the same month was too much even for someone who keeps creating books in her sleep. Actually, writing the books was fine. It was the unexpected ballooning of footnotes, bibliographies, biographies, blurbs, covers, pics, proofreading and all the things my daydreams never included when I dreamed of being a writer.
Even the worst of a writer’s profession is good. But for the first time in my life, last month there were times when I didn’t want to write another word. Which meant no newsletter.
Plus the last two months have been full of other wondrous times, the birth of a grandson who is gorgeous and darling and funny and has the same smile as his father and great-grandmother, uncle and aunt, magically familiar as soon as he grinned at me. A niece married, and much family happiness.
Plus the not so good – another two pollution events from the mining project upstream, which makes five times in six months that our household water has been quarantined during tests. How can it be allowed to continue? I don’t know. Nor do I know what comes next.
But the good has far outweighed the bad, a truly wonder-filled few months.

Wombat News
Mothball is a grandmother! Wild Whiskers, Mothball’s daughter, has a baby in her pouch. It is a very large pouch, just like Mothball’s was when Wild Whiskers was in it. The pouch is so large it’s almost dragging on the ground – and still no glimpse of the baby. Any day now we should see a tiny face peering out from between its mother’s legs, and then we’ll have a two-headed wombat for a while, with a head eating grass at either end. Or perhaps the baby will actually dare to get out of the pouch, and bounce around us.

Recent Awards
Pennies for Hitler has just won the CBC Honour Book for Younger Readers. A Day to Remember with Mark Wilson was shortlisted for Picture Book of the Year. Pennies has also been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Award and the NSW Premier’s History Award, as has Dingo. The Girl From Snowy River was made a CBC Notable Book in both the Younger and Older Reader categories.

Recent Books
Refuge has just come out. It’s… different. But the reviews are wonderful and the emails from kids have begun. Usually it takes a year or so to get the first emails. And I am beginning to think just possibly it has worked.

Let the Land Speak: how the land created our nation will be out on October 1. It is a re-interpretation of Australian history, focusing on how the land itself, as much or more than social and political forces, shaped the major events that led to modern Australia.

Our history is mostly written by those who live, work and research in cities, but the land itself has shaped our history far more powerfully and significantly than we realise. Let the Land Speak reinterprets the history we think we all know – from the impact of indigenous women, who shaped their nations far more profoundly than firestick farming, to Eureka and to the role of the great drought of the 1890s in bringing about Federation, the land has shaped our past. Let the Land Speak also provides insights into ways we can read the land, predict the future – and survive it.

Down the Road to Gundagai will be released on December 1. It’s the third in the Matilda saga, following a Waltz for Matilda that began in 1892, and continuing with The Girl from Snowy River, set in 1919. Each book can be read separately or as part of the series.
In Down the Road to Gundagai Blue Lawrence has escaped the prison of her aunt's mansion to join The Magnifico Family Circus, a travelling troupe that brings glamour and laughter to country towns gripped by the Depression. Blue hides her crippled legs and scars behind the sparkle of a mermaid's costume; but she’s not the only member of the circus hiding a dark secret. The unquenchable Madame Zlosky creates as well as foresees futures. The bearded lady is a young man with laughing eyes. A headless skeleton dangles in the House of Horrors.

And somewhere a murderer is waiting… to strike again.

The Road to Gundagai is set in 1932, at the height of the Depression. Matilda is still running Drinkwater Station, but has put aside her own tragedy to help those suffering in tough economic times and Joey, from The Girl from Snowy River, uses his new medical skills to solve a mystery.

And the wombat is back! When a Wombat Goes to School will be released in October 1, too. It is simple and hilarious and Bruce Whatley at his wickedest. The scene outside the principal’s office is priceless. We had enormous fun with it. And I suspect that kids will have even more.

The August Garden.
Just plant. And plant! Except not veg till the soil warms up enough to sit on it. But do get trees in now, before summer heats up, and shrubs and vines.
Don’t mulch yet- it attracts frost. Spray with bordeaux if rots and fungi were a problem last year. But mostly just dream of spring planting...which is another way of saying that I had better get this newsletter out, without waiting for gardening inspiration to strike. It’s hard to get into the gardening mood, when I’ve been told the water might kill the frogs.

A Few Recipes
It's time to celebrate the parsnip. If you don’t eat them now, they’ll get hard centres and go to seed as soon as the days heat up. All sorts of other once unfashionable foods are venerated nowadays... quinces, chicory (actually I don't quite believe anyone actually LIKES chicory; it just looks so very, very chic), dandelion leaves and other veg that grow like weeds and used to be regarded as only suitable for strengthening the peasants – a bit like oysters, once so cheap and plentiful that they were really only fit for the poor.
Parsnips were the veg you ate when there wasn't anything else to gnaw on, or the soil was too cold and damp to grow carrots. Parsnips were horse food, and not for the best bred horses at that.
Parsnips were definitely supposed to be a healthy veg though. Like just about every other plant in medieval times, eating parsnips was supposed to cure the bite of a wild dog (how anyone came to actually die of a mad dog bite escapes me, what with all those curative herbs and veg lying around).
Eating lots of parsnips was also supposed to make you immune to snake bite, or at least stop the snakes from biting you. Presumably snakes are too aristocratic to enjoy the taste of secondhand parsnip... don't suppose it works with red-bellied black snakes though.
Like all veg, parsnips were once wild weeds and there are still wild parsnips in much their original form around the eastern Mediterranean and northwards, presumably still warding off snakes and mad dogs. In fact even cultivated parsnips soon turn into weeds. Parsnips used to grow up the driveway and through the lawn here till an intelligent wombat named Pudge discovered that carrots didn't just grow in cupboards, you could find them in gardens too, and that if carrots were nice parsnips were even better.
Pudge corrupted all the rest of the wildlife around here, which means that now we only have parsnips in the bit of the rose garden that's fenced off from wombats and wallabies (well, that's the theory anyway) and, of course parsnips in the vegie garden too. I plant them each spring from seed I saved the year before. Parsnip seed is only viable for a year, which is why bought seed often doesn't germinate.
The parsnips grow slowly and steadily all summer, with an occasional water so they don't turn stringy and whatever fertiliser washes down from the veg around them – parsnips grow all leaf and no bum if you feed them too much. Then after a few good cold mornings when your breath fogs round your face and your finger tips turn blue, you haul them out all plump and white and tempting.
Today is the perfect time to eat a parsnip. Parsnips aren't really sweet and fat till winter. Summer parsnips are either skinny and insipid, or corpulent and woody because they're last year's crop about to go to seed.
The thing to remember about the parsnip is that it's a sweet veg, and all the sweeter in winter when the frost has been lying on the ground for a few mornings. In Queen Elizabeth 1’s day, parsnips were eaten more as a sweet than a savoury veg. They were mashed and buttered and used as a filling for tarts, or pies or instead of part of the flour in recipes for sweet pastry.
There's a lovely recipe of John Evelyn in the 1600's for sweet buttered parsnips... you peel and slice them very thinly and toss them in flour, then fry them in butter and sprinkle with sugar (brown is best) and cinnamon and eat all hot and gooey. Actually the whole affair tastes rather good once you get over the shock, but it does have to be cholesterol rich butter instead of marg for the recipe to work.
My favourite parsnip recipe is Parsnip Bread. Don't shudder... parsnip bread is moist and sweet and slightly nutty, though it does have a tendency to grow green mould after a few days. In fact it's one of the nicest breads I've ever eaten, and those who aren't present at its making will never guess that the mystery ingredient is parsnips.
It's a really lovely thing on a cold winter's morning, and a damn sight more luxurious for Sunday breakfast than fatty commercial croissants, but that's another story...

Parsnip Bread
4 cups bread-making flour
1 sachet dried yeast
1 cup boiled peeled parsnips, generously mashed with butter
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Place a teaspoon of flour and a teaspoon of sugar in the water with the yeast. Leave it till it bubbles, then mix with the flour and parsnip. Add more warm water if necessary. Knead for at least 20 minutes; leave in a bowl in a warm place covered with a tea-towel till it doubles; bash it down again; let it double in size again; bake at 225 ºC for about half an hour or till it looks dark brown on top. And yes, a dear friend tells me you can make this in a bread machine, though I haven't got one of the things myself.
Eat AT ONCE. It's wonderful hot with honey for breakfast, even better with soup for lunch, and very nice with toasted cheese and a Lady Williams apple for a snack instead of dinner.

Apple and Optional Quince Sauce
1 large quince, peeled, cored and chopped (can be omitted, but is very good)
3 tablespoons sugar
6 firm fleshed late apples (Granny Smith will do)
finely grated zest from an orange and a lemon
a bottle of cider
Simmer all ingredients till broken down and thick. Add water if necessary, but it probably won't be, and stir to stop it singeing on the bottom. Bottle and seal and keep in the fridge for up to a month, unless it grows interesting flora or fauna in which case throw it out pronto.
Late Apple and Optional Quince Sauce can be used either as a jam, with thick cream and pikelets, or as a sort of chutney. It's great slopped onto slices of roast pork or turkey. You can also ladle it over pancakes or ice cream.
Or just scoff the lot the night you make it

Orange Oatmeal Bars
¾ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1¼ cups orange juice
¼ cup melted butter
1 tbsp grated orange rind
1 cup plain flour
1 cup SR flour
1 cup dried blueberries or cranberries
1 cup rolled oats

Soak the oats and dried berries in the orange juice for ten minutes. Add other ingredients and mix well. Place in a shallow greased pan or one lined with baking paper. Bake at 200 ºC till firm (about 30 minutes). Cut into bars before it cools. They’ll be quite firm and travel well.

Pumpkin and Orange Muffins
1 cup (plain flour
1 cup SR flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
½ tsp (2 mL) ginger
½ tsp (2 mL) nutmeg
1 egg
1¾ cups well-drained mashed pumpkin
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp grated orange zest
½ cup (125 mL) orange juice

Mix gently. Pour into greased muffin cups or small coffee mugs. Bake at 200 ºC for 20-25 minutes till the tops are brown and they spring back when touched. Best eaten the same day they are made, or frozen and reheated.

Double Chocolate Muffins
2/3 cup cocoa
1 cup SR Flour
¾ cup plain flour
1¼ cups brown sugar
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2 eggs
½ cup cream
½ cup extremely strong coffee
2 teaspoons vanilla butter
125 gm butter, melted
Mix gently. Pour into greased muffin cups or small coffee mugs. Bake at 200 ºC for 20-25 minutes till the tops are brown and they spring back when touched. Best eaten the same day they are made, or frozen and reheated.