Hear This 28th February 2025

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Episode Transcript

UU (00:05):
Let's. Take a look. To take a look inside the book.
Take a look.

S1 (00:24):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Frances Keeland, bringing
you the Vision Australia library show. Today we have a
great variety of books, so I do hope you enjoy
listening to the show. The Brimbank Writers and Readers Festival
is happening this year from the 13th to the 22nd

(00:46):
of March. Brimbank is a very vibrant area out west
of Melbourne, and this is a yearly event that celebrates
and encourages a love of reading, storytelling, creativity and diversity
and learning. Brimbank City Council is delighted to present the
2025 25 program supported by principal sponsor Victoria University and

(01:08):
partnered events with the Bowery Theatre, Borrow Box, Vision Australia.
Local writers and community groups so Vision Australia Radio have
partnered up and will be hearing more about this as
the festival begins. When I thought people might want to
know what they can come and see, Kate Ceberano will

(01:29):
be there on the opening night at 630 till 8 p.m.
on the 13th of March. So that's the opening day,
and this will be at the Bowery Theatre in Saint Albans.
Join Aussie music icon Kate Ceberano in conversation with Paul
Bateman as they explore Kate's beautifully illustrated memoir, unsung, and

(01:51):
this features Kate's inspirational song lyrics, stories and artwork celebrating
four decades of songwriting and recording. There are drinks and
complimentary food will be available from 5:45 p.m.. This event
is also Auslan interpreted. There is wheelchair access and it
is a free event. If you would like to contact

(02:12):
Brimbank and find out more about the Writers Festival, there
is an email writers festival at Brimbank Dakovo. That's writers
festival all one word at Brimbank Gov.au. Or you can
phone 9249429692494296. So there are a number of libraries and

(02:42):
venues around the Brimbank area that you can attend. But
there's some great things. I know. Our very own Jason
Gibbs was going to attend one on comedy writing, a
little workshop on comedy writing, and there's also been a
micro fiction competition, so the awards ceremony and celebration will
be on the 21st of March and we we as

(03:03):
partners with the Brimbank Festival, will be highlighting some of
those microfictions and and talking to somebody from the festival.
I do hope if you're in the area or if
you just want to travel out for the day, as
I said, it's such a vibrant area out west and
I was lucky enough just to drop in at some
water gardens and just had a look around the shelves,

(03:25):
and they were making pancakes for the kids because it
was about 330. So kids were coming out and going
to the library after school, and there were pancakes being made.
Our libraries are always such great community areas, so check
out Brimbank Festival. The spelling for Brimbank is B r
I'm for Mary, b a n for Nellie k. That's

(03:48):
b r I'm b a n k. The first book
today is one that commemorates the birth date of John Steinbeck,
a famous American author. Janine sent me in a list
of authors birthdays for February. Earlier on in the month,

(04:11):
and John Steinbeck was the last on the list. His
birthday was the 27th of February. What a fabulous author
he was. Many people would have studied him at school, either.
Of Mice and Men or Cannery Row. But I thought
I'd play a sample today of East of Eden, and
this was recorded in 1995. 30 years ago, set in

(04:34):
the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and
often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families,
the Trasks and the Hamiltons, whose generations helplessly reenact the
fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of
Cain and Abel. Let's hear a sample of Are East

(04:57):
of Eden. And rather than start with a story, I
thought I'd play the foreword. This was written in 1995
by his partner at the time, Elaine Steinbeck. He had
died already, but she writes a lovely, lovely foreword about
John Steinbeck.

S2 (05:14):
When John Steinbeck and I began to fall in love,
he took me for long drives around Northern California in
what is now called Steinbeck Country, to show me the
land where he had grown up and the places he
had especially loved. One day he drove through a green
valley into a town called Salinas, took a turn onto

(05:37):
Central Avenue, and stopped in front of a pretty Victorian
house with big trees and a well-kept lawn and flowers.
He pointed to a window on the first floor and said,
that's the room I was born in. Then he pointed
to the window above and said, that's the room I
wrote in. I asked, when did you begin to write?

(06:01):
And John said, almost in wonder. I don't remember a
time I didn't write. You, a reader, are holding in
your hands something he wrote. And I, his widow, his wife,
for the last 18 years of his life, would like
to tell you some things I remember about the way

(06:22):
he wrote the places in which he wrote his moods
while writing ether. Of course, I can't tell you why
he wrote what he did. That's every writer's secret. Having
co-edited a book of his letters, I know a little
about his beginnings, especially during the years of the Great
Depression when he lived in Pacific Grove, California, just beside

(06:46):
Cannery Row and near to Monterey. He lived in a
little old house with great old trees and a walled garden,
which still belongs to the Steinbeck family. There was no
money for writing material, so he wrote in old ledgers
gathered from his father's civil service job, and he boasted

(07:07):
about having bought from a local shop a cheap bottle
of ink that had been so long in stock it
was as ripe and rich as Napoleon brandy.

S1 (07:15):
So that was a sample of the recording done 30
years ago of East of Eden by John Steinbeck. John
is j-o-h-n. That's j-o-h-n. Steinbeck is s t e I
n b e c k s t e I n
b e c k. And he was born 1902 and

(07:36):
passed away in 1968. It's a long one. It goes
for 23 hours and 52 minutes. And that narrator was
Eliza Ross. And there is a male narrator in this
story as well in the recording. There are many other
books by the wonderful John Steinbeck in the library, The
Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and a cute

(07:58):
little one that I've always quite liked. I had a
copy of this at one stage in print, travels with Charley,
in which Steinbeck and his French poodle Charley travel across
the states of America from Maine to California, moving through
woods and forests, dirt tracks and highways, to large cities
and glorious wildernesses. Steinbeck observed America and the Americans with

(08:22):
humorous and sometimes a sceptical eye. What he sees is
a lonely, generous nation, too, packed with individuals for single judgments.
His vision of how the world was changing, however, speaks
to us warningly and prophetically through the decades. Travels with
Charley was published in 1962. Lately I've been reading some
articles from 1925, so from 100 years ago and this

(08:48):
particular year in 1925. crosswords became the absolute craze, the
crossword as we know it today. There had been word
puzzles before this, but 1925 crosswords became much debated. Libraries
were reporting that people weren't borrowing as many books. People

(09:08):
were doing crosswords. It was sort of the, um, what
would you call it, gaming of the 20s. So I
don't have any history of the crossword puzzle, and I
found that so interesting. But we have a book called
A clue for the Puzzle Lady, and this is part
one of the Puzzle Lady books by Parnell Hall. When
the body of an unknown teenage girl turns up in

(09:30):
the cemetery in the quiet town of Baker Haven, Police
Chief Dale Harper finds himself investigating his first homicide. A
baffling clue leads him to consult Baker Haven's resident puzzle expert,
and soon Cora's meddling, mischief making behavior drives Chief Harper
to distraction. But when another body turns up in a

(09:50):
murder that hits much closer to home, Cora must find
a killer before she winds up in a wooden box
three feet across and six down. Let's hear a sample
of A clue for the Puzzle Lady by Parnell Hall.
It's narrated by Agnes Blake.

S3 (10:07):
The first clue came with a corpse. The body lay
next to a gravestone in the Baker Haven Cemetery. Police
chief Dale Harper stood in the pouring rain and looked
down at it with displeasure. What was a corpse doing
in the cemetery? Chief Harper was not unaware of the
humor in the question. A body in the cemetery. The

(10:28):
press would have a field day. Chief Harper frowned and
wiped the water off his face. The body was that
of a young girl in her late teens or early 20s.
She was lying face down with her head twisted to
the side. Her left eye was open. Chief Harper wished
he could close it. It was eight in the morning.
He had barely had his coffee, and the sight of

(10:51):
her made him queasy. What in the world was she
doing there, and why was she in the cemetery if
she'd only been on the other side of the fence,
not a hundred yards away. She'd have been in the
township of Clarksville, and he wouldn't have gotten the call
that dragged him away from the breakfast table before his
toast had even popped. On a rainy Monday morning. The

(11:12):
last day in May. But no, this corpse fell under
his jurisdiction. The good citizens of Baker Haven would expect
him as chief of police to do something about it.
It was up to him to find out who killed
her and why. At the moment, he didn't even know
who she was. Never seen her before, the caretaker said.

(11:34):
It was the fourth or fifth time he'd said so.
A shriveled little man with a somewhat belligerent nature. Fred
Lloyd had found the body when he'd arrived for work
this morning. He'd driven in the gate and his headlights
had picked up the girl's silhouette. He'd called the police station.
The cop on duty had called the chief, and now

(11:54):
Lloyd and Harper were standing together in the cemetery in
a drenching rain. So you said Chief Harper knew he
should interview Mr. Lloyd. But at the moment he couldn't
think of a thing to ask him.

S1 (12:07):
And that was a clue for the puzzle. Lady by
Parnell Hall. Parnell is p a r n e double
l p a r n e double l Hall is
a double l. That's a double l. That book goes
for eight hours and 40 minutes. And it is part
one of the Puzzle Lady Mystery series. So there are

(12:29):
others in the collection so that you can follow on with.
I think there's about 6 or 7. And just to mention,
I did some research and I found an article from
The Guardian in 2011 by Alan Corner, um, about the
and he did a bit of research on newspapers from
the time talking about news crosswords. He says some people

(12:50):
associate crosswords with respectability. The suburbanite knocking off the times
on the 722 from Twyford, or the Major's wife tidying
away her coffee morning and settling into the Telegraph. It
wasn't like that when they first appeared. There are quotes
in it from different newspapers, different publications. One publication said
everywhere at any hour of the day, people can be

(13:12):
seen quite shamelessly poring over the checkerboard diagrams, cudgelling their
brains for a four letter word meaning molten rock or
a six letter word meaning idler in trains, trams or omnibuses,
in subways, in private offices and counting rooms, in factories
and homes, and even although as yet rarely, with hymnals

(13:32):
for camouflage in church. These pernicious puzzle, the Herald goes on,
have dealt the final blow to the art of conversation
and have been known to break up homes Not only
were dictionaries being stolen from libraries, but also the damage
caused to dictionaries in the library at Wimbledon in in
Britain by people doing crossword puzzles has been so great

(13:53):
that the committee has withdrawn all the volumes, and poor
zookeepers were being hounded by people asking them what is
what is a word of three letters meaning a female swan?
What is a female kangaroo? Oh dear. The disruptive evil
of crossword puzzles. A different time indeed. And next. It's

(14:13):
been a few years now. 2018, when we lost Peter Temple,
Australian mystery crime writer. There is a book here in
the collection and its title is the Red Hand Stories,
reflections and the last appearance of Jack Irish. Peter Temple
didn't start publishing novels until he was 50, but then

(14:33):
he got cracking, writing nine of them in 13 years.
When he died in March 2018, there was an unfinished
Jack Irish novel in his drawer. This substantial fragment, entitled
high Art, reveals a writer at the peak of his powers.
The Red hand also includes the screenplay of the ABC
telemovie Valentine's Day, an improbably delightful tale about an ailing

(14:59):
country football club, as well as stories, essays, autobiographical reflections,
and a selection of temples brilliant book reviews. What connects
them all is his trademark wit, his ruthless intelligence and
his abiding love of his adopted homeland of Australia. Peter
Temple held crime writing up to the light, and with

(15:19):
his poet's ear and eye made it his own incomparable thing.
His work transcends all notions of genre. He remains a
towering presence in contemporary Australian literature. This wonderful book pays
tribute to all the achievements of the master. Let's hear
a sample of the Red hand stories, reflections and the

(15:40):
last appearance of Jack Irish are so their workings. Writings
by Peter Temple. The narrator is Dennis Challenger.

S4 (15:49):
I took the swatting branch with me. It would harbour
bits of my sweat and serve, only to confuse the
forensic geniuses who had Joe in their future low gear
all the way. I drove the Falcon out of the valley,
grinding up the steep and winding road to the junction

(16:10):
on the spine of the mountain. You could see the
sea from here. The tower blocks at the water's edge
and the houses packed in behind them. Soon everyone would
live at the sea in Chinese subdivisions, and Chinese peasants
would farm the outback near Brisbane. I stopped at a

(16:33):
service station and rang the number. Hello, said a man.
I could hear the clicking of pool balls. Coarse laughter.
I asked for Colo. Which colo, mate? A pigtail and
missing front tooth. My mate. That's all. The cholos and

(16:58):
spider tat on his forehead. Dead center. Or narrows it.
And you are Jeremy. Tried, Jeremy. He shouted. Colo, darling,
it's a Jeremy. No. Any Jeremy's doll? I listened to

(17:18):
laughter and rude words while I watched a man shouting
at two small boys trying to kill each other in
the back seat of a station wagon. Yeah. Jack the car.
How'd it go? Top machine purrs. Done with it, then

(17:40):
dusted back where you got it. He said, ticket on
the seat. Lock up. Chuck the key down a drain.
Got lots of keys.

S1 (17:50):
And that was a sample of the Red hand stories, reflections,
and the last appearance of Jack Irish by Peter Temple.
Peter is p e t e r p e t
e r temple t e m p l e t
e m p l e. And that book goes for
14.5 hours. So quite a substantial body of work, however,

(18:15):
and I'm reading here from the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts,
in a review by Peter Maywald, he says Lovers of
temples best known anti-hero, Jack Irish, will be thrilled that
sport that this book contains 90 pages of riveting mystery
and adventure prose from Jack's last case, high art. Unfortunately,
the joy will be short lived. The novel is unfinished,

(18:36):
so we will never be able to unravel the usual
convoluted strands which make temple's mystery stories puzzling but intensely enjoyable.
But this novel also includes six standalone short stories and
16 reviews and essays, many of which were published in
respected journals including Griffith Review and The Bulletin. He was
a bit scathing of Agatha Christie. Some of temple's reviews

(18:59):
were searing in their criticism of Agatha Christie. He wrote.
Having money made her more and more satisfied with herself,
more and more convinced that the view from an English
country house was the only sane one. So Agatha Christie
was not around when he wrote that, but he wasn't
afraid to critique people's work that were around. On John

(19:20):
le Carré's Absolute Friends, he says it joins a list
of recent le Carré novels that resemble zeppelins huge things
that take forever to inflate, float around for a bit,
then expire in flames. His reviews sound very entertaining. He
was the only crime writer to win the Miles Franklin Award,
and that was for his novel truth, which isn't a

(19:42):
Jack Irish novel, it's a standalone novel. The next book
is a nonfiction book, and it is home to Billy Wheeler.
The story of the Tamil family that captured our hearts.
It is by Priya Nadesalingam. I'm sure most people already
know what this is about. It was written in conjunction
also with Rebecca Holt and Niromi de Soysa. It was

(20:04):
dawn in the small rural town of Biloela. Loud thumping
on the front door signaled the start of a four
year odyssey that would catapult Priya and her family into
national debate for the first time. Priya shares the story
of her sheltered childhood in war torn Sri Lanka and
her perilous escape across the Indian Ocean on an overcrowded

(20:24):
and leaking fishing boat. Alone in a strange country, she
had to make a new life without family or friends.
She marries Nardis and settles with him in Biloela, where
they have two daughters. The shocking Dawn raid was the
first of multiple attempts by Australian Government to deport the family,
but the people of Biloela wouldn't have it. A small

(20:45):
group swung into action and built an extraordinarily powerful social
media campaign that broke through into the mainstream, gathering support
from hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians around the country.
Journalist Rebekah Holt has been following the family's journey over
the four long, painful years, and she recounts the dramatic,
behind the scenes efforts to prevent the family from being deported. Finally, Priya,

(21:10):
nades and the girls were all granted the permanent visas
they needed by the new government and they were able
to return home to Biloela in the happiest ending they
could have wanted. Let's hear a sample of Home to Biloela,
the story of the Tamil family that captured our hearts.
It's by Priya Notice Langham and Rebecca Holt, and it's

(21:31):
narrated by Rachel Tidd. In the latter.

S5 (21:34):
Half of 2017, in the small Queensland town of Biloela.
Mayor Neville Ferrier was called by reception staff. There was
a woman who wanted to talk to him, but she
wouldn't give her name. Ferrier believes part of his role
is to talk to anyone if they're a constituent, even
if he's yelled at. He believes he should take the

(21:56):
brunt of public office rather than his reception staff. Nev
is a quiet and solid figure, not given to flowery language.
His rural background shows up in many mannerisms, not least
that he appears as ready to fix a fence as
he is to discuss the local power plant. Unusually for

(22:17):
a politician, he leaves a lot of space for other
people to speak, and remains a technically difficult interview for
a journalist because his sentences Gently trail away. When the
mayor brought the woman through to his office, he realized
he didn't recognize her, which was unusual in a town
with a population of only 5500. While the stranger continued

(22:42):
to insist she couldn't tell Ferrier her name, what she
did tell him, and with some urgency, was that she
held grave fears for the safety of one particular family
in Biloela. They were Tamil asylum seekers, and she believed
their lives were at risk because the entire family were
being assessed for deportation back to Sri Lanka. The family

(23:08):
she described were Priya and Nades and their two Biloela
born daughters, Kopika, then aged two, and Tharnicaa, only a
few months old. This would be the first time the
mayor would hear the names of a family who were
soon to become the most famous residents of his town.

S1 (23:27):
And that was the sample of home to Biloela. The
story of the Tamil family that captured our hearts by
Priya Nadesalingam and Rebecca Holt. That book goes for eight hours.
Priya is spelt Priya, Priya and Nadus. Dillingham is spelt
n a d e s a l I n g

(23:51):
a m n a d e s a l I
n g a m. The next book pays homage to Mrs. Dalloway,
the book by Virginia Woolf. This is called Daughter Dalloway,
and it's by Emily France. London, 1952 46 year old

(24:12):
Elizabeth Dalloway feels she has failed most everything in life,
especially living up to her mother, the elegant Mrs. Dalloway,
an ideal socialite and model of perfection until she disappeared
in the summer of 1923 and hasn't been heard from since.
When Elizabeth is handed a medal with a mysterious inscription
from her mother to a soldier named Septimus Warren Smith,

(24:35):
she's certain it contains a clue from the past as
she sets out, determined to deliver the medal to its
rightful owner, Elizabeth begins to piece together memories of that
fateful summer. London, 1923. At 17, Elizabeth carouses with the
Prince of Wales and sons of American iron barons, and
decides to join the Bright Young People, a group of

(24:57):
bohemians whose antics often land in the tabloids. She is
a girl who rebels against the staid social rules of
the time. A girl determined to do it all differently
than her mother. A girl who doesn't yet feel like
a failure. That summer, Octavia Smith braves the journey from
the countryside to London, determined to track down her oldest brother, Septimus,

(25:21):
who Her returned from the war but never came home.
She falls in with a group of clever city boys
who have learned to survive on the streets. When one
starts to steal her heart, she must discover whether he
is a friend or foe, and whether she can make
it in the city on her own. Elizabeth and Octavia
are destined to cross paths, but when they do, the

(25:43):
trusts they unearth will shatter their understanding of the people
they love the most. Let's hear a sample of Daughter
Dalloway by Emily France. It's narrated by Hannah Curtis.

S6 (25:55):
I picked the flowers myself. Elizabeth Dalloway said for every
flower shop in London was closed. Even mulberries was shuttered.
At least Miss Pym wasn't alive to see it. Her
shop locked for the past three days. What a storm.
What a morning to prepare for a party. Bleak as

(26:18):
if under someone's boot. Heel. Heal. I know this is disappointing.
Theodore said gently. He put a hand in his pocket,
looked out the window at the dense fog. He was
in his navy sweater, the one that made him look
like a captain in an advert for the Royal Navy.
It deny it? How dashing he'd always looked in that blue.

(26:42):
But I believe you need to send word to your guests.
Your party. No one will come. No one will come.
He slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her close.
But cheer up. That was Rose, who just rang. She's
bringing something over for you. Seemed very keen to bring

(27:05):
it straight away. Didn't say what it was. Perhaps it
will boost your spirits. Rose. Rose Purvis perfectly put together. Rose.
She was the same age as Elizabeth. She had grown
up next door. She'd married and become the dignified Mrs.
Alfred Foster. But to Elizabeth, she'd always be Rose Purvis.

(27:29):
Now she lived with her perfect husband and perfect sons,
three of them surely bound for Eton. She, of all people,
knew what disasters Elizabeth's parties typically were. There was that
spring affair when Elizabeth had made the salmon herself desiccated,

(27:49):
each fillet obstinate, impenetrable.

S1 (27:53):
And that was daughter Dalloway by Emily France. Emily is Emily.
Emily France is f r a n c e f
r a n c e. The book goes for 11
hours and 50 minutes. It was published in 2023. It

(28:14):
gets really favourable reviews, especially from people who are fans
of Virginia Woolf and who loved Mrs. Dalloway. So this
relies really heavily on that book. So it's not sort
of a a real cutaway. It references the book constantly throughout.

(28:39):
Thank you so much for joining us on here. This
today I'm Frances Keeland. If you would like to join
the library or if you have any inquiries about how
to join, please give the library a call on 1300 654 656.
That's 1300 654 656. Or you can email the library at Vision Australia.

(29:02):
Org that's library at Vision Australia. Org. Have a lovely
week and we'll be back next week in the autumn
months for our next episode of Hear This.