Wombat News | Recent Books | 2013 Awards
Schedule for the next 12 months | The May Garden
A Few Recipes: Chocolate Classics
. Rich Chocolate Tart
. No Bake Simple Chocolate Tart
. Chocolate Banana Cake

Wombats always win.
It was a simple plan. Feed Phil the young wombat early every morning till he put on a bit of weight.
Phil came to us over a month ago, after having had surgery for most of his young life. Miraculously- or rather, as a result of excellent surgery- he is able to walk even though his front leg was badly hurt as a baby.
 All went well for a few weeks. Phil industriously dug out the hole under our bedroom to make a more luxurious wombat residence.  But then a fortnight ago he turned up with big patches of fur missing, a classic ‘in hole’ attack from a bigger wombat.
He was a sore and sorry little wombat. He even followed me around the garden for two days, though he’d been avoiding me ever since he arrived.
I spread cream on his wounds, which were nicely scabbed and not infected. As the lotion is bright pink, Phil became a pink and grey wombat. . But he was a bit thin when he arrived, and was even thinner now. A bit of extra feeding was needed.
Except every time I put out food for Phil one large wild wombat with luxuriant whiskers would turn up, snarl and Phil would scamper for the burrow.
I spent a week shooing off Wild Whiskers, and hovering protectively over Phil, till one day the phone rang as Phil was eating, and I left Phil alone for a few minutes to answer it.
I came back to find Wild Whiskers eating from Phil’s bowl, while Phil cowered behind. Suddenly Phil seemed to have had enough. He reared, like a small pink and grey bear. He leapt on Whisker’s back and bit his neck.
Whiskers bolted, with Phil in hot pursuit.
     But the next day Whiskers was back, snarling. The simple solution was to train Phil to come when he was called, to eat when Whiskers wasn’t there, early in the morning or early evening.
    You can’t train a wombat. A wombat, however, can train a human.
    Last night when I went out to feed Phil there were two wombats sitting side by side by my study door, two food bowls in front of them. No, I hadn’t put the bowls there. One had been pushed from the front of Phil’s hole. The other bowl must have been brought – somehow – from the other side of the house.
    No snarling. Instead the two wombats simply sat there, staring at me.
    ‘Shoo,’ I said to Whiskers.
He didn’t move.
    ‘Come here,’ I said to Phil, trying to get him into a corner where Whiskers couldn’t pass me to steal the food.
    Phil didn’t move either. Instead they both looked at me with the reasonable expression of wombats who had worked out that the only possible solution to two hungry wombats was two bowls of food, and a human filling them on demand. 
So I have been.
    They were both out there tonight, too, side by side. When I left them they were eating together. No snarling. They eat the grass beside the bedroom afterwards. And, no, I’m sure Whiskers has never met a human before – he was wary and uncertain when we met. Somehow Phil taught him that humans are a source of food; that a dish is needed for the food to appear; and that there is no need for snarls and competition as long as you can manage to get it through a humans often dim head that their duty is to feed the wombats.
Okay, I’ve been hypnotized by a wombat. Just don’t tell Bryan, for a while anyway, that we have another wombat on the dole at my study door. It’s not much food, just some supplementary feeding before they begin to graze; nor is it for long, just till Phil gets a little older and a little fatter. (Whiskers is quite large and fat enough.)  No matter how pleading their furry faces, I will be stern and not feed them all the way through winter. Unless they hypnotise me again.
    In the meantime they are contented wombats.

2013 Awards and Short Listings
Baby Wombat’s Week and Nanberry: Black Brother White have been shortlisted in the combined Kid’s Choice Awards  (WAYBRA, KROC and COOLO). Thank you and thank you again to all who voted for them – reader’s choice awards mean more than you can possibly know.
Pennies for Hitler and The Girl from Snowy River were made Notable Books in the Young Adult section of the recent CBCA Awards, and Pennies for Hitler was a Notable Book in the Younger Readers category. A Day to Remember, with Mark Wilson, was a Notable Book in the Picture Book category.
    Pennies for Hitler and A Day to Remember have also been shortlisted for the CBC Book of the Year Awards to be announced in August. I am thrilled and honoured and more grateful than I can say to Mark – his illustrations are so powerful and profound it is still impossible to read the book quickly. Every image gives the most extraordinary insight into the decade it comes from and the people and stories behind it.

Book News
Dinosaurs Love Cheese is out!
    Nina Rycroft has done brilliant and hilarious things with dinosaurs – and gorillas, zebras and giraffes, with a few camels too.  It’s a complete joy. Some time in September or October the Lu Rees Archives at the University of Canberra will be featuring the book’s artwork in an exhibition as part of Canberra’s centenary celebrations, and Nina and I will talk about creating the book. It will be released next month, for everyone who loves dinosaurs (and cheese).
    The Girl from Snowy River is out – the sequel to A Waltz for Matilda – and has just been made a CBC Notable Book, as has Pennies for Hitler.
    Pennies is a sort of sequel to Hitler’s Daughter. It answers the questions that were central to Hitler’s Daughter – how can someone like Hitler gain so much power and what can any one of us do about it. Hatred is contagious – and anyone who tries to make you angry is gaining power over you. But kindness is contagious too and, in the end perhaps, more powerful than hatred.
   
Diary of a Wombat
After eleven wonderful years Diary is finally going to be released in paperback. I hope Mothball wombat would approve. (I did show her a copy of the hardback book once. She sniffed at it but didn’t bite it, or me. I took that for approval.)

A Day to Remember: The Story of Anzac Day
This too was shortlisted for the CBC awards, and has been reprinted for this Anzac Day. Each time I read it, I find even more in the artwork. Mark Wilson’s images are extraordinary, capturing the hurt of a hundred years. 
And the next books …
I have just finished the rewrite of Let the Land Speak: How the Land Shaped our Nation, coming out in October. It’s a history for adults, though younger readers may enjoy it too, about how the land itself shaped our history from 60,000 years ago and the first foot on the beach to the Eureka Stockade and then on to tomorrow. I’m now working on the rewrite of The Road to Gundagai, the third in the series that began with A Waltz for Matilda and The Girl from Snowy River. This book is set in 1932. The susso camps grow in the Depression and the soup kitchen lines grow longer. But at the circus there are dreams and spangles … and a mermaid on an elephant. It will be out on December 1.
Refuge will be out on August 1. And I think that is all I’ll say about it, till it emerges.

Schedule for the next 12 months
I’m afraid there’s not much else that can be fitted into this year, or for much of next year too. I’m so sorry – there are a couple of invitations to speak every day, or even six and, much as I’d love to, I can’t do more than a small number of them, especially if it involves a day’s travel to get there – and we are at least two hours away from just about anywhere. I’m only accepting about eight ‘away from home’ invitations a year now, which soon get filled up. Am also giving myself a year’s holiday from giving writing workshops. They are good to do, but they break my focus from whatever book I’m working on. There are so many requests for talks that for the next year, at any rate, workshops aren’t possible.
    The schedule below doesn’t contain all this year’s bookings, or time spent in travelling to get there, or things like a dentist’s checkup, weddings, so if there is nothing on a particular date it doesn’t mean I’m free. 

March onwards: Hitler’s Daughter: the Play, by the wonderful Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People tours the USA.
May 20-24: School days at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. Video conferences on Nanberry: Black Brother White and A Waltz for Matilda. Contact jacqui.barton@harpercollins.com.au
July 20/21: Bryan will be at Questacon, Canberra, as part of the Canberra centenary celebration talking about his days at the deep space tracking station. You can read about it in our book To the Moon and Back.
July 23-25: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen at Speaker’s Ink for bookings and details, though I think all sessions are booked out now.
August 18: Talks at the Australian Jewish Museum, Sydney.
August 19, 20, 21: Talks at Sydney schools (already booked).
9-11 September: Ipswich Festival, Queensland.
13-14 September: Celebrate Reading National Conference (Picture Books), Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.
October: Children’s Day, Canberra.
November 2: Opening paediatric conference, Canberra.
November 9, 10: Open Garden Workshops here. Contact the Open Garden, who organise it, for bookings.
November 13: Talk to Australian Society of Authors (ASA) members, Canberra, Gorman House, 6 pm. Contact the ASA for details.
March 29, 2014: Pete the Sheep, the Musical opens at the Lend Lease Theatre, Darling Harbour, with the magical Monkey Baa Theatre Company.
May 6,7, 8: talks in Adelaide. Contact Carole Carroll  c.carroll@internode.on.net for bookings.
June 9-15, 2014: Darwin.
August, 2014: School talks in Geelong, Victoria. Contact Booked Out for bookings.

The May Garden
This is the magic time, the most glorious autumn I’ve known. The leaves are hanging on the trees, a stunning blaze of colour instead of a succession of one tree after another. The tree dahlias are beginning to bloom, every salvia except one in the garden has decided to flower at the same time, and the medlars are waiting to soften a bit more before I make medlar jelly.
    Another frost or two and the navel oranges will be sweet, as well. The Tahitian limes are ripening, the chestnuts falling from the tree, and the winter lettuces nearly big enough to pick.
    Anne has been turning what had decided to be a dichondra lawn back into a vegie garden, and the lyrebirds have been helping, digging up the now dichondra free soil with their great talons and leaving lyrebird droppings behind.  Anne’s also slightly tamed Climbing Albertine’s skirts, so the stone wall at base of the steps can be seen again.
    But mostly, we’ve just been looking: the green hills, despite the lack of rain; the creek running clear again after the sediment washed down from the new mine above us; at the autumn colours, which don’t really fit into the categories of red, orange and yellow, but their own colours which aren’t so much bright as glow. The moon bounces up fat and gold from behind the ridges, flooding the valley with light; the powerful owl is booming again; and the world is beautiful.
Frost-free climates
Just about anything can be grown now! Put in lots of mixed salad leaves, apple cucumbers, basil, butter beans, huge New guinea beans, coloured capsicum, Chinese cabbage, chillies, chokos, sweet potatoes, long oval eggplant, melons, okra, rosellas, pumpkin, shallots, sweet corn and tomatoes. Try above-ground beds for parsley – the roots may rot in hot damp soil. In warm areas, evergreen fruit trees can be planted now – they won’t be burnt by harsh summer sun. In cool and temperate areas, deciduous fruit trees can be planted from now until the beginning of spring.

Cold to Temperate:
    Don't be tempted by blue sky and warm breezes. If you live in a very frosty area stick to onion seedlings and broad beans and lots of seedlings of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.
In temperate areas: Seeds of radish, onions, winter lettuce, silver beet, spinach, broad beans, peas, snow peas, winter lettuce, spring onions, parsnips, fast maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba. Seedlings of beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chicory, leeks, lettuce, leeks, onions and spinach.

Harvest:      Let perennial beans dry on the vine and pick them for dried bean soup and stews during winter; dig up potatoes, pick year-rounders like celery, beetroot and silver beet. Strip corn stalks for ‘baby corn’. Root vegetables are good now – much sweeter after the first frost. You should have a glut of chokoes. Dig up sweet potatoes now in cool areas; in frost-free areas, dig them when you want them. Potatoes should have been harvested by now – and another crop put in if you can grow them in above-ground beds of old tyres where they will get little frost. Pick rose-hips for winter teas and syrup.
Fruit: Early mandarins, limes, pomegranates, late apples, late Valencias or early Navel oranges, tangelos, citrons, cumquats, tamarillos, early kiwi fruit, late passionfruit high up on the vine, late raspberries, late strawberries if grown on a high garden away from early frost, olives and persimmons if the birds haven’t finished them, feijoa, bananas, avocados, custard apples, lychees, macadamias, banana passionfruit, elderberries, medlars, olives, melons, guavas, carob, fig, pomegranate, Brazilian cherry, Jakfruit, calamondins, lillypilly, kerriberry, olives, stored walnuts, chestnuts and other nuts.
Other jobs: Make use of a slow garden and warm weather to revamp the chook house for next spring’s chickens; build a mobile hen run to keep down the grass; build more compost heaps; make potpourri and dry herbal teas with the last of the rose petals and scented leaves before they are frosted.
Pests: This is a month of prevention. Prune off dead twigs, mummified fruit, band apple trees with grease, corrugated cardboard or old wool to help control codling moth and oriental peach moth and clean up old ladders and fruit boxes where moths may shelter. Let hens scavenge round the orchard to pick up old fruit or insects on the ground.

A Few Recipes
Chocolate Classics
No Bake Rich Chocolate Tart
1 pastry shell, or none

• 200gm dark chocolate
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or 1tbsp rum or 1 tbsp finely chopped hot chilli or hot chilli sauce
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 200 ml cream, whipped

Melt chocolate in the microwave for 2-3 mins on medium, stirring halfway through, or in a dish over a pan of boiling water. Don’t overcook or it will turn grainy – remember it will be melted without losing its shape. Stir in the flavouring and icing sugar. Gently fold in the whipped cream. Spoon into the pie shell or a bowl and leave in the fridge to set. This will take about two hours.
Serve small portions with ice cream or crème fraiche. Raspberries, strawberries or blueberries go well with it, too.

Rich Chocolate tart

•        200g butter
•        200g r dark chocolate
•        4 eggs
•        200 g caster sugar
•        50 g flour
•        100 g ground almonds
• Optional: 1 tbsp rum
• Cocoa powder, for dusting

• Line a pie tin with baking paper, or use a non-stick one where the base can be removed. Melt butter and chocolate together in the microwave, as above – do not overcook! Beat eggs and sugar for about ten minutes – it needs to be pale and thick and the sugar dissolved. Gently spoon in butter, chocolate, flour and almonds. Spoon into the tin. Bake at 200 ºC for 40 mins until just set. Leave in the tin till quite cool. Serve with cream, ice cream, crème fraiche and berries.

Chocolate Banana Cake
This is rich and moist.
Ingredients:

• ¾ cup olive oil
• 1¾ cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1¼ cups mashed bananas
• 1 tbsp vanilla paste or rum or Cointreau
• 2 cups SR flour
• ¾ cup cocoa
• ¾ cup sour cream

Mix gently. Spoon into a cake tin lined with baking paper. (Note: Non-stick coatings often don’t work very well with recipes that contain olive oil.) Bake at 200 ºC for about 40 minutes, or until the top springs back when you press it gently. Turn out carefully – it will get firmer as it cools. Keep in a sealed container in a cool spot or the fridge for up to four days.