Wombat News | Recent Awards | Latest books: The Girl from Snowy River and Queen Victoria’s Christmas
Schedule for 2013 | The November Garden
A Few Recipes:
.Berry Cake | .Vegan Gluten-Free Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies
.The Best Lemon Cordial | .Frozen Fruit Salad
.Simple but Stunning Strawberry and Cream Cake –.Strawberries and Cream Cheese cake (no baking)
Sometimes life is perfect.
Five seconds ago Bryan said, ‘Do you know you have flowers in your hair?’ I fluffed my hair and he was right – tiny mauve white cedar flowers that must have dropped last time I wandered through the garden, among roughly six million four hundred thousand and twenty two roses in every shade from red to pink with a detour into parchment (Buff Beauty).
Even the climbing roses I planted years ago in the drought to clamber up the fruit trees are blossoming now after two good years of rain. Irises, grevilleas, banksias, species gladioli, still fluffs of native clematis and the wattle yet to bloom all up the hills.
The veg garden is already full of spring greens, the tomatoes look determined to fruit by Christmas, and every single carrot seed I planted has germinated, for possibly the first season ever. Oranges, macadamias, cumquats, citrons, lemons, limes, the fattest avocadoes ever, so many that a mob of 30 currawongs has been carolling in them for the past month, in between guzzling and they still haven’t put a dent in the crop.
And Bryan has mown the grass. Cut grass and roses is the scent of paradise.
Plus The Girl From Snowy River is about to be released and it is a book that works on every level including, I hope, pure reader enjoyment. I’m working on the next in the series now and that is extraordinarily fulfilling too.
And perhaps the best conference ever at the Fremantle Literature Centre – hopefully for the audience too, but definitely for the authors, with no concurrent sessions so we actually got to listen to each other and talk and sometimes argue but mostly laugh. James Roy is angelically wicked and Isobelle Carmody as warm and deep as her books. For some reason – possibly due to the sheer quality of those books – I had assumed she’d be detached and fiercely intellectual. And Bryan has spent each afternoon since I’ve been back pouring over the signed new Shaun Tan book I brought back for him (Bryan only reads fiction by Patrick Robinson or Shaun Tan).
And we are just about to eat our post-dinner strawberries, the first of the season – though not our season, brought up from the coast, ours are still hard and white. And ... okay, it’s magic. Sheer magic. What else can I say?
Wombat News
There’s been no Mothball at the door or bashing up the garbage bin; no Bruiser looking hopeful outside my study window; no wombats at all, actually, in the holes around the house. Wombats are bad weather friends. When the grass is lush and the springs seeping way up on the mountains the wombats leave the garden for the wide open spaces.
There are still wombats about – every few days one deigns to leave a dropping by the front steps, like a colonial inspector just checking if the colony they established ten years ago is still loyal to the Crown. I even saw one of Totally Confused’s offspring grazing by the side of the road when I drove in last night – he goes round and round in circles, just like his dad did, while he tries to work out which side of the road he’s going to dart to.
Up on the mountain, wombat holes abandoned for more than a decade are being renovated.
They’ll remember us – and the grass in the garden and carrots in the vegie patch – as soon as the summer browns off. But just now it’s a paradise for wombats, too.
And they are making the most of it.
Recent Awards
I’ve just been nominated again for the international Astrid Lindgren Award – with many thanks indeed to those who nominated me. It is an enormous honour.
Nanberry: Black Brother White and Flood (with Bruce Whatley) were named CBC Honour Books this year. (I wish I had been able to be there – the night clashed with my niece’s engagement party.)
Flood has received an international White Raven Award.
Flood was also a Highly Commended book in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Pennies for Hitler has been included in the Year of Reading ‘Fifty Top Reads’ booklet.
New Books
The Girl from Snowy River will be released on December 1st. It is the sequel to A Waltz for Matilda, the second in what will be a series of five books.
I fell in love with Clancy of the Overflow when I was seven-years old. But when I moved to the bush and met the women of the land – women like a ninety-year old neighbour who rode in a white lace blouse and tartan skirt and never opened a gate if it could be jumped over – I wondered why the bush poets had made all their women just wives and mothers, sweethearts who ‘wait by the sliprails for you’ or the sad, beaten mother of The Drover’s Wife.
The women I knew drove their cattle from Queensland to Adelaide, as their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmother’s had done. Just say the name Nancy of the Overflow and you can see her, in her battered felt hat among the gum trees. She’ll ride as hard, and far, as any man – and make the damper at the end of the day, too. It’ll be a good one.
And what of The Man from Snowy River? I loved that poem, as well. But no one who loves horses would ever ‘race them down the mountain like a torrent down its bed’, not when ‘the hidden ground was full of wombat holes, and any slip was death.’
Was Patterson’s poem based on a real ride, just as Waltzing Matilda was based on a real tragedy by a billabong?
It was. But Patterson changed that story, too. On that real ride the young man rode his horse to death. When ‘the stockmen tell the story of that ride’ it was a cautionary tale. A willing horse will force itself till its leg or heart breaks, for the rider it loves. You do not ask that of your horse.
The Girl from Snowy River also continues the story of Australia begun in A Waltz for Matilda. The new nation has been tested by war. It is over, but you never do leave the past behind.
My father-in-law fought at Gallipoli. (He married late, if you are trying to do the maths). Like most of his generation, he never spoke of what he had endured, though his lingering horror almost destroyed his family. Boys I knew marched off to Vietnam. But when they returned, few wanted to listen. Those two experiences, the men and the wars divided by fifty years, were the basis for Flinty McAlpine’s meeting with the crippled soldier from 1969. She needs to listen, and he to talk. Both need outsiders to be able to see their worlds clearly. Together they will create futures for each other.
And once again, this is a love story to the land. A Waltz for Matilda is set on the plains. The Girl From Snowy River is set in the mountains. Both are part of the land where I live, a valley deep in a flat tableland surrounded by mountains, that is the core of my life and my writing. Each book in this series will show another side of this land. Book five will take you to its secret heart.
Queen Victoria’s Christmas, with the wonderful Bruce Whatley, is out now, too. It’s the story of the tree that made Christmas trees part of our modern Christmas celebrations, told from the point of view of Queen Victoria’s dogs and parrot. And, yes, the dogs and the parrot were at war with each other, just as they are in the book. Just like Queen Victoria’s Underpants, this book is based on a real event.
Dingo
This is the story of Australia’s first dingo and the young man who is shipwrecked with her on the unknown land of Australia. Together, both boy and dog learn that together they can survive.
Pennies For Hitler
This is the story of Georg, torn from his family in Germany in 1939. In Germany he cannot exist, because his grandfather was Jewish. In England he must pretend to be George, not the German enemy. In Australia he must be George too. Hatred is contagious and everywhere he goes, he is the enemy.
But when Japan threatens Australia suddenly the enemy is no longer him/he is no longer the enemy. Now there is an enemy he can hate too.
Hatred is contagious. But slowly Georg realises – with the friendship of the indomitable Mud and the love of the Peaslakes – that kindness is contagious too.
Sometimes many stories come together and become a book. More than ten years ago a story told to me in my childhood from a man – a kind man – who had once been a guard in a concentration camp, became the book Hitler’s Daughter.
But there were more stories of that time. The whispered memory of a friend’s father who had watched his fellow students thrown out of a high window at a graduation day by a band of Nazis; the oral history of a Jewish boy who was told he had the ’most Aryan head’ in the whole class; a neighbour who had escaped Nazi persecution in Germany as a small child, but then become a German enemy in England before finally – unexpectedly – discovering love and happiness in Australia.
All of these stories are in Pennies for Hitler.
You never know quite what you create when you let stories loose. Pennies for Hitler is an adventure and, in a strange way, a love story, too. But I suspect that readers will find more in it than I knew I’d written, just as with Hitler’s Daughter.
Schedule for the Year to Come
It’s unlikely that any more talks can be fitted into the next eighteen months, unless they are next to somewhere I’ll be already, and a large part of next year has been pencilled in too, though not confirmed yet.
It may look like there are gaps where I can give more talks, but there are other commitments not listed – like writing books, sleeping, birthday parties, weddings, watching wombats and having lunch with friends – though not much of any of those till the end of November.
November 17 and 18: Four Open Garden workshops here, on the Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoons. Bookings are essential and bookings and details need to be arranged through the Open Garden Scheme. (We leave it all to them – I’m not even sure how much they charge. Participants are brought here by bus as there isn’t room to park here.)
November 21 and 22: Talks in Lithgow, NSW. Contact the Lithgow Library if you or your school would like to be part of the visit.
2013
March 12-16: Somerset Literary Festival, Queensland.
March 21-24: Children’s Book Festival, State Library of Victoria.
Late March onwards: Hitler’s Daughter: the play, by the wonderful Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People tours the USA and Canada. At this stage I don’t know which openings we may go to.
May 20-24: School days at the Sydney Writer’s Festival.
July 23-25: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen at Speaker’s Ink for bookings and details.
9-11 September: Ipswich Festival, Queensland.
13-14 September: Celebrate Reading National Conference (Picture Books) , Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.
The November Garden
This is possibly the lushest, most luscious spring I have ever known. Every carrot seed has germinated, every avocado tree is laden with fruit, every apple tree has set an amazing amount of blossom. There are so many cherries that – surely – there is enough for us and the birds too. (I am greedier than a starling for cherries.)
Speaking of birds, it really is possible to share you garden with them.
Step 1. Buy bird netting or use old panty hose to slip over green fruit. You don’t have to net birds out for long – just for a couple of weeks, till you’ve picked the fruit you want. It may seem like a lot of work, but trust me … repellents, even noisy radios, don’t work for long and just postpone the inevitable. Netting is much easier in the long run. And if you have rainbow lorikeets, those beautiful, noisy, aggressive, jewel-like birds, you will have to net your apricots just to preserve their leaves which they seem to love as much as the fruit!
Step 2. Plant fruits that the birds REALLY like.
Birds prefer sour fruit – they only eat our sweet apples because there’s no sour fruit around. (And that’s why they eat the apples when they are still green and sour, too – a couple of weeks before they are ripe enough for our taste buds.)
If you give the birds the food they DO like, they’ll mostly leave yours alone. Try ‘wild’ kiwi fruit, the ones that don’t need a male and female and produce lots of small round fruit. Grow it all along the fences. Kiwi fruit are so prolific and so hardy that, once established, you'll have plenty for you and the birds – and as they're winter croppers the fruit will hang there for a long time.
Grow a calamondin tree, too – a sort of very hardy, very sour cumquat that will fruit all of autumn, winter and spring.
Kiwi fruit and calamondins will help protect your winter fruit and vegies. In summer, try elderberries, lillypillies and native figs.
Step 3. Encourage resident birds
The worst fruit losses usually come from birds like white cockatoos or silvereyes who don't spend their entire year in your area but move from food source to food source in large numbers.
Many birds are territorial and will keep out other birds. Learn to know the ones who live with you – they may give you some protection against strangers.
For example -– a friend had a currawong that feeds on her strawberries. The currawong and its friends don't start feeding till eleven – she picks the strawberries at ten and they get the squashy or earwig-hollowed ones. But, in exchange for their rather shabby share of the fruit, the currawongs are fiercely protective of their strawberry bed and scare off any smaller bird that approaches.
Step 4
Provide water
Up to 40% of bird damage may be halted (more if there is a drought or you are in a dry area) if you provide water – preferably fresh and out of the reach of cats and dogs.
Step 5
Grow rambling roses and grape vines up your fruit trees. I’m serious – that’s what we do, and the birds don’t like it. Who knows what might be lurking in that jungle?
The Taste of Chilli
Chilli adds spice – literally. They are also incredibly easy to grow and can look as stunning as any ornamental. Most of the punnets of chillies you buy are from annual chillies. In other words, they give a big crop from summer to autumn, then die down in winter. We grow perennial chilli, which eventually grow into two-metre high and wide bushes – though they may grow even larger in less frozen winters. They do die back each winter, but manage to sprout again, or rather, the four bushes out of nine that survived the first winter here have survived another ten or so of them. From this I deduce that there is a large variation in cold tolerance – keep planting till some survive and breed from those. Or in a frost-free climate, just plant and watch them grow.
Chilli does best in sunny, well-drained, fertile soil. They need about five months of hot weather to crop. Chillies can also be added to strings of garlic for extra colour or can be strung into garlands of flowers with bright yellow marigolds for harvest festivals and other festivities of fertility, or added to any wreath of dried flowers. Try hanging fresh or dried chillies on your Christmas tree.
What to Plant in November
Plants: Strawberries, sweet potatoes, choko, herbs; seeds: artichokes, asparagus, basil, beans, beetroot, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, celery, celtuce, chicory, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce (may not germinate when the temperatures go over 26º C), melons, okra, parsley, pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens, like mizuna and mitsuba, and zucchini. Avoid pumpkins, cucumbers, melons and zucchini in humid areas.
Flower garden: Achillea, ageratum, alstromeria, alyssum, amaranthus, aster, balsam, Bellis perennis, brachyscome, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnation, celosia, clarkia, cleome, coleus, coreopsis, columbines, cosmos, delphinium, dichondra, echinacea, echinops, erigeron, euphorbia, foxglove, gaillardia, gazania, globe amaranth, gloxinia, godetia, gypsophila, helichrysum, heliotrope, hellebores, honesty, lavender, marigolds, nasturtium, petunia, phlox, Flanders poppy, portulaca, rudbeckia, salpiglossis, salvia, scabious, sweet William, viola, zinnia and snapdragons.
Garden Jobs for November
This month I have:
. planted just about everything, and then a bit more;
. mulched the vegie garden weeds with decayed wood chips from two years ago’s pruning – the veg are sprouting and the weeds lie decaying and turning back to soil;
. admired Bryan’s efforts with the lawn mower;
. decided we need more lillypillies, for us and the birds and to fill a few gaps – but not right now; and
. sniffed 1,982 roses and picked a few baskets full.
PS Did you know that blowflies are territorial? I have been swatting them on my study window (left the door open accidentally while cooking soup). As soon as you swat a large fly on the window – the flies are attracted to the light – a smaller one moves in, but they won’t arrive while the big fly is there.
The flies are now small corpses on the study floor; my fly swatter’s handle has broken, but at least I didn’t have to use fly spray and any spiders who eat the remnants won’t be poisoned. And I will not leave the door open again, or at least not till blowie season is over.
A Few Recipes
Mulberry (or other berry) cake
- Non-stick cake tin, or one that is well buttered
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 200 gm butter, softened so it mixes easily.
- 1 cup sour cream
- 4 large eggs
- 1 tbsp vanilla paste
- Topping
- Whipped cream
- Berries, stems removed
- Optional: 2 tbsps sugar and 1 tbsp Cointreau or kirsch to add to the cream
-
Mix gently but thoroughly. (No, you don’t need to cream the eggs, butter and sugar first and, yes, you can use a mixer.) Bake for about an hour at 200º C – the top will be brown, not burnt, and will bounce back if you press it lightly. Cook a little longer or less if necessary – ovens vary and so will baking times depending on the shape of the tin and the size of your oven. I use a wide one, so you get a lower cake with maximum surface to spread the berries and cream on.
Remove from the oven. Turn out. Cool thoroughly before topping with berries and cream.
The Very Best lemon Cordial
3 cups lemon juice, sun ripened from your own trees
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
1 tbsp citric acid
1 tbsp tartaric acid
Boil for five minutes. Seal in clean bottles. Keep in a cool dark place for up to three weeks. Throw out of it goes cloudy, though some of the sediment will rise to the top – this is natural and harmless.
Drink very, very cold.
Vegan Gluten-Free Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies
To my surprise, I’ve managed to come up with a gluten-free vegan brownie mix that works – it’s moist and very rich. I suspect it might be better with eggs, but to keep it vegan (for our Open Garden workshops – no one has actually said that they’re vegan when asked for food needs, preferences or allergies, but as I too forget to tell festivals that I prefer vegan, I’m pretty sure there’ll be some who are (NB I’m not vegan – just only eat meat every three months or so, and then either from ethical sources or served by someone I love – and once for a good cause on 60 Minutes and it was just one mouthful of battery chook).
The pumpkin adds moisture and structural integrity – gluten-free flour tends to give a dry result.
3 cups gluten-free SR flour
1 cup cocoa
3 cups cooked pumpkin, cold and very well drained
2 teaspoons vanilla paste
1 cup olive oil
1 cup brown sugar (I ice the brownies, which makes them sweeter. If you don’t intend to you may like to add more sugar)
1 tbsp cinnamon
Mix gently. Bake at 200º C in a shallow pan – or two shallow pans – for about an hour or until the sides have shrunk from the tin and the top springs back when you press it lightly. If it seems to be growing crusty on top, put a baking tray above it.
Ice with chocolate icing – 1 cup icing sugar to 3 tbsps cocoa with just enough water to mix, or dust with icing sugar. Keeps for about 3 days in a sealed container or can be frozen. Note: because of its high pumpkin content, it can go bad quickly, so keep in a cool place and watch out for mould.
Frozen Fruit Salad
1 small pineapple, peeled, cored and chopped
1 banana, chopped
half a rockmelon, ditto
half a cup caster sugar
juice of 1 lemon.
Mix well till sugar dissolves. Place in plastic cups or ice-block moulds. Stick in a teaspoon or an icecream stick. Freeze. Run the tap over the mould till the iceblock pops out. Eat when life is hot.
Simple but Stunning Strawberry and Cream Cake
- 200g unsalted butter, softened
- 200g caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 4 eggs
- 200 g SR flour
- Topping:
strawberry jam (optional)
carton cream, whipped
lots of strawberries – at least 15, but more is best
Heat the oven to 200º C. Line two tins with baking paper. Mix all the cake till mixed. Divide between the tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes until they are light brown and spring back when lightly pressed. Leave to cool in the tins then turn out and peel away the paper.
When they are quite cold (not before or the cream will turn sloppy), spread jam (optional) over one of the cakes, add a layer of chopped berries and spread on cream. Top with the other cake and be lavish with the berries and cream on top.
Serve within half an hour, though if you don’t mind a slightly, gloriously soggy cake you can keep leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge for (a wicked) breakfast.
Strawberries and Cream Cheesecake (no baking)
Note: I make cheese cakes without the base, as most people leave the base anyway. Who wants to waste calories with crushed crumbs and butter?
But I include a base here for traditionalists.
Base:
- 200g biscuits
- 100g butter, melted
- Mix. Press into a greased or not pie plate.
- Cheesecake:
- 3 envelopes gelatine
- 1 carton cream
- 300 g mascarpone
- 100 g caster sugar
- finely grated zest of an orange and/or 1 tbsp Cointreau
- 1 egg white, whipped till firm
- Heat the cream and gelatine, stirring till the gelatine dissolves. Don’t boil or simmer. Take it off the heat, mix into the mascarpone, sugar and orange. Gently fold in the egg white and scoop mixture on to the base. Leave till set – about an hour or two in the fridge. Top with whipped cream and berries just before serving.
- Topping
- 1-2 punnets fo strawberries
- extra whipped cream
|
