Hear This 9th May 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:09):
Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take
a look.

S2 (00:24):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Frances Kelland and
you're listening to the Vision Australia Library radio show, where
we talk about books in the Vision Australia library collection.
And today we have a great sample of a new
talking book into the catalogue. It is unsettled A Journey
Through Time and Place by Kate Grenville, and we're very

(00:46):
pleased to have that in the collection now. It's narrated
by Kate Grenville as well, and we also have some
samples of some interesting other books, so I do hope
you enjoy the show today. If you're a member of
the library, you may have been to Kooyong Library. A

(01:06):
Vision Australia here at Kooyong to see Kate Grenville in
person and to hear her talk about her book unsettled,
a deeply personal memoir of reckoning with what it means
to be on land that was taken from other people.
And as she was in conversation with Daniel James. And
in this discussion, she intertwines her family's history with the
broader story of First Nations peoples dispossession and displacement. Daniel

(01:32):
James was born in Melbourne and raised on Taungurung country
in north east Victoria. He is a Yorta Yorta Melbourne
based writer and broadcaster, and the winner of the 2018
Horne Prize for his essay Ten More Days. He is
the host of the 7 a.m. podcast for Schwartz Media,
and is a contributor to the Saturday Paper, indigenous X, SBS, Crikey,

(01:57):
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian and he
also hosts The Mission on Triple on three triple R FM.
Daniel's work explores the notions of empathy, intergenerational trauma, hidden history,
and the political landscape that continues to shape the lives
of Aboriginal people across the country. And also he has
a debut novel in the works. This will be available

(02:19):
for library members this whole, um, hour long chat. It
will be uploaded and, um, you'll be able to listen
to that on your devices. So Kate Grenville is no
stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a
writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005,
a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor,

(02:41):
an early settler on the Hawkesbury River. More than two
decades on, and following the defeat of the voice referendum,
Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend
from people who were, quote from Kate Grenville on the
sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation. So
she decides to go on a kind of pilgrimage back
through the places her family stories happened and put the

(03:04):
stories and the first people back into the same frame
on the same country to try to think about those questions.
Let's hear a sample of unsettled A Journey Through Time
and Place by Kate Grenville. It's narrated by Kate Grenville.

S3 (03:19):
Once I've left the common behind, the country becomes drier
and steeper and more uncompromising. There are no lagoons up here,
and none of those triangles of fertile land. Just the
narrow V of the valley and the stony hills rising
steeply on both sides. Every slope is studded with great

(03:40):
shelves and shards of the rock underneath the pale bones
of the planet bursting through. We colonists call land like
this inhospitable. There's something a bit accusatory about it. It's
as if we think the place is spitefully holding out
on us. That's why it's national Park now. No one

(04:00):
lives here in all those hundreds of thousands of acres. Because.
But the people who retreated from Wiseman's place, the people
who were pushed up the first branch bend after bend,
the people who were finally forced away from the greedy
strip of the common. They could have lived here for
a while anyway. This whole country was an intensely used landscape,

(04:22):
even up on the stony Heights, though these days it's
hard to see the evidence you have to be shown,
as I've been shown a few of the marks left
by those generations of life. Engravings there once fresh gold,
now the same gray as the rest of the rock,
so they're hard to find among the trees and leaf litter,

(04:43):
grinding grooves in the rocks. A cave with stencils made
by spitting out a mouthful of clay tinted water. There
are outlines of boomerangs and stone axes with their big
rounded heads and short, thick handles. I've seen the shape
of a hand with the thumb bent like a hitchhiker's,
another hand beside it with a kink in the middle finger,

(05:06):
another that belonged to a child. I've put my own
hand up to them, a greeting, palm to palm across,
who knows how long.

S2 (05:14):
And that was unsettled. A Journey through Time and Place
by Kate Grenville. Kate is k e k e Grenville
is g e v I e g e v double e.
And that book goes for 7.5 hours. I played a

(05:35):
sample of The Secret River recently on the show, which
I adore as an audiobook, and also reading it in print,
but we have a lot of earlier works of Kate
Grenville as well. And we have Bearded Ladies, a collection
of contemporary Australian stories based around the author's childhood experiences
in Sydney and her later travels in Europe. They're often

(05:57):
darkly humorous, sometimes savagely so. The idea of perfection that's
also available in Braille. Joan makes history. Another novel in
which Kate rewrites Australian history from the standpoint of a
woman who is never rated a mention in the schoolbooks.
The Lieutenant also available in Braille. Lilian's story, another one

(06:20):
of my favourite stories and many Sydneysiders may remember. Bea miles,
a famous Sydney eccentric, and this story is loosely based
on the life of Bea miles. It's a beautifully written book.
We also have one life My Mother's Story. This is
also available in Braille and Restless Dolly Maunder. The list

(06:44):
goes on. But, um, if you would like to find
out more about what books are available by Kate Grenville
in the library, just give them a call or go
online and have a have a search. I think we've
got most of her books now. I think we're pretty
up to date. And now for something completely different. I
just noticed recently it's Michael Palin, he of Monty Python
fame and travel author and television presenter, just turned 81.

(07:10):
And we have many books by him, including the diaries
of his Monty Python years and a few of his
travel books. But I thought I'd take a little sideways
view and have a sample of Eric Idle's autobiography. Always
look on the Bright Side of Life. A Sorta Biography
by Eric Idle. We know him for his unforgettable roles

(07:33):
on Monty Python, from The Flying Circus to The Meaning
of Life. Now, Eric Idle reflects on the meaning of
his own life in this entertaining memoir that takes us
on a remarkable journey from his childhood in an austere
boarding school. Through his successful career in comedy, television, theatre
and film. Coming of age as a writer and comedian
during the 60s and 70s. Eric stumbled into the crossroads

(07:57):
of the Cultural Revolution and found himself rubbing shoulders with
the likes of George Harrison, David Bowie and Robin Williams,
all of whom became lifelong friends. With anecdotes sprinkled throughout
involving Mike Nichols, Mick Jagger, Steve Martin, Paul Simon and
many more, as well as the pythons themselves, Eric captures

(08:18):
a time of tremendous creative output with equal parts of
hilarity and heart. Let's hear a sample of Always Look
on the Bright Side of Life, a Sortabiography by Eric Idle.
It's narrated by Eric Idle.

S4 (08:32):
Graham Chapman once said, life is rather like a yacht
in the Caribbean. It's all right if you've got one. Well,
I've been travelling at the speed of life for 75
years now, and I still don't have one. But then again,
I wrote Life's a Piece of Shit when you look
at it. While reminding everyone to look on the bright side.
A line that I discovered recently is as old as Coleridge.

(08:56):
This book is partly the story of that song, and
partly the story of a boy who became me. if
you like the memoirs of a failed pessimist. I still
remain foolishly optimistic, even with the threat of global warming,
which worries me slightly less than personal cooling. And so
I've written my recollections before I forget everything and develop amnesia,

(09:20):
which is what you get from being an old actor.
Of course I have faults, but you won't read about
them here. I've glossed over all my shortcomings. That is,
after all, the point of autobiography. It is the case
for the defence. But I will own up to not
being perfect. I have British teeth. They are like British politics.

(09:42):
They go in all directions at once. Writing about yourself
is an odd mix of therapy and lap dancing. Exciting
and yet a little shameful. So here is my own
pathetic addition to the celebrity memoir. On the advice of
my lawyer, I'm leaving out the shameful bits. And on
the advice of my wife. The filthy bits. But as

(10:03):
usual in my career, I will leave you wanting less.
If this isn't exactly what went down, it's certainly how
it should have happened.

S2 (10:12):
And that was Eric Idle introducing his memoir, Always Look
on the Bright Side of Life a Sortabiography. And it
is 50 years since their first film came out, Monty
Python and the Holy Grail, which came out in 1975.
And I'm looking at Wikipedia here, and it says here
that idle wrote, um, his Python material mostly by himself.

(10:34):
He was a little bit of an outsider, it seems.
The other pythons usually worked in teams. Idle's work in
Python is often characterized by an obsession with language and communication,
and many of his characters have verbal peculiarities, such as
the man who speaks in anagrams, the man who says
words in the wrong order, and the butcher who alternates

(10:55):
between rudeness and politeness every time he speaks. He was
the second youngest member of the pythons and closest in
spirit to the teenagers who made up much of Python's
fan base. He dealt with contemporary obsessions like pop music,
sexual permissiveness, and recreational drugs. Um, often characterized by double entendre,

(11:16):
he is most famously demonstrated in the nudge nudge, wink
wink character. In 2004, idle created Spamalot, a musical comedy
based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And to
finish off a little bit of trivia. Um, he is
David Bowie's godfather to his son, who is known as
Zowie Bowie or Zowie Bowie, but is now known as, um,

(11:38):
Duncan Jones and is a film director. Let's head off
to New Zealand now with a couple of books. The
first one is a mystery crime thriller and it is
by Michael Bennett. The title is Better the Blood. Hannah
Westerman is a tenacious Maori detective, juggling single motherhood and
the pressures of her career in Auckland's Central Investigation Branch

(12:01):
when she's led to a crime scene by a mysterious video,
she discovers a man hanging in a secret room. As
Hannah and her team work to track down the culprit,
other deaths lead her to think they are searching for
New Zealand's first serial killer. With little to go on,
Hannah must use all her experience as a police officer
to try and find a motive to these apparently unrelated murders.

(12:25):
What she eventually discovers is a link to an historic
crime that leads back to the brutal, bloody colonisation of
New Zealand. Then the pursuit becomes frighteningly personal, and Hannah
realises that while her heritage is a key, whilst her
heritage is key to finding the killer, their agenda of
revenge may include her and her family. Let's hear a

(12:47):
sample of Better the Blood by, um, Michael Bennett. It's
narrated by Miriama McDowell.

S5 (12:54):
Central Police Station is 12 storeys high and unattractive and
unspectacular grey concrete building in the middle of downtown Auckland.
The interview rooms are buried in the floors well below
street level. The rooms are claustrophobic and uncomfortable, which pretty
accurately describes how Addison is feeling right now. What? We're

(13:17):
just gonna sit here, she says on the opposite side
of the table. Hannah has a printed copy of Addison's
offence report in her hands. Next to Addison is Jay Hamilton.
Early 40s, warm blue eyes, no airs and graces. Despite
being one of the most senior cops in the Tamaki
Makaurau policing region, a detective inspector. But that's not the

(13:41):
reason he's in this interview room. Jay is Hannah's boss.
He's also her ex, and he's Addison's dad. Beside Jay
is Marissa, his partner of several years. Clear eyed and earnest,
Marissa is itching to step in and offer succour to Edison.

(14:01):
She's a born caregiver and comforter of birds with broken wings. Literally,
she's a veterinarian, but she manages to stay quiet. Edison,
after all, is Hannah and Jay's daughter, not hers. The
heavy silence in the room makes Edison want to turn
the table upside down. You can't put me in the

(14:23):
naughty chair and ignore me, she complains in a tone
of voice, not unlike a child put in a naughty
chair and ignored.

S2 (14:31):
And that is better. The Blood by Michael Bennett. Michael
is M.I.A. M.I.A. Bennett is b e e b e
e double t, and that book goes for nine hours
and 11 minutes. This is book one of the Hannah

(14:52):
Westerman series. It was winner of the Best First Novel
award at the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards in New Zealand,
Island and shortlisted for the audiobook of the year at
the Capitol Crime Fingerprint Awards. There are two more books
in the series the Hannah Westerman series, Return to Blood
and Carved in Blood. We don't have those in the

(15:13):
library collection as yet. Many of the reviews I'm looking
at call it a riveting thriller, um, powerful story featuring
an impressive heroine and antagonist. In the Kirkus Review, they
call it a striking debut and a significant addition to
indigenous literature. Making his fiction debut, Maori screenwriter and director
Michael Bennett establishes himself as as an excellent storyteller as well.

(15:38):
Executed as Murder Story is, the book's immersion in tribal
culture and history makes the greatest impact, lending complexity and
sweep to the narrative. Bennett's use of indigenous terms and
names adds to the novel's resonance. One can only hope
this is the beginning of a series, which it is.
That's really good. Um, so that's Kirkus review of Better

(15:59):
the Blood by Michael Bennett, which was released in January 2023.
Now to another New Zealand author. This is Catherine Chidgey.
Her novel The Transformation in the hands of master winemaker
Lucien Goulet. The third, A Hairpiece is a Transformation living
alone in the Tampa Bay hotel in 1898. He hires

(16:22):
15 year old Cuban Rafael Mendez to recover hair clippings.
An unlikely trio forms between Raphael Goulet and Marian Unger,
a young widow with white blonde hair whom Rafael loves
and for whom Goulet wants to design the grandest transformation
of all. Let's hear a sample of The Transformation by

(16:43):
Catherine Chidgey. It's narrated by Bernard Boland.

S6 (16:48):
February 1898. With its tangle of Moorish minarets, cupolas and arches,
its Byzantine domes and its 13 crescent moons, the Tampa
Bay hotel was a fairy tale castle anchored at the
water's edge. It was open only a few months a year,
and during the immense summers it stood empty. Its glittering

(17:11):
roofs blinding even the crows from December through April. However,
it was full of the best sorts of people bankers
and industrialists, stockbrokers and shipping merchants, attorneys and architects, and
a number of celebrities. They came from the big northern
cities and from Europe. These guests. Each man accompanied by

(17:34):
a sleek wife, any children they brought with them, were
like the hotel maids, silent until asked to speak. Wealthy
invalids came to women of delicate constitution and sensitive nerves.
Feeble second sons, consumptives rheumatics all ordered south by physicians

(17:56):
weary of the illnesses of the rich, whether phantom or genuine.
Florida was a place where wonders could happen, where there
was no winter worth mentioning, and where the soil was
so fertile that dry sticks took root and flowered like
Aaron's staff. Heart cases did well there. Once inside the

(18:19):
gates of the Tampa Bay hotel, there was no need
to leave. No reason to venture into the dirty, dangerous
parts of town where the Negroes and Latins lived. It
was a city unto itself, with a drugstore, a schoolhouse,
a barber shop, a newsstand, a beauty salon, and a
telegraph office. There were spa facilities, an exposition hall, a casino,

(18:44):
a bowling alley, tennis and croquet courts, kennels and stables.
Every room had a telephone, hot and cold running water,
and electric lighting designed by Edison himself.

S2 (18:57):
And that was the transformation by Catherine Chidgey. Catherine is
spelled c a t h e r I e c
t h e r I n e g g is
c I'd g e y c d g e y.
And that book goes for 12 hours and 15 minutes.

(19:18):
Catherine Chidgey was born in 1970, in New Zealand. She
has published eight novels. She grew up in Auckland and
now lives in Hamilton. We have her debut novel, In
a Fishbone Church, which was published in 1998 and was
praised widely in New Zealand and overseas. As I said,
we have that in the collection and writer Nick Hornby

(19:40):
said Catherine Chidgey is a wonderful new talent and in
a Fishbone Church marks the beginning of what promises to
be a glorious literary career. And Louis de Bernieres called
the novel warm, subtle and evocative. You will be thinking
about it long after you've finished reading it. And this
first novel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was long

(20:01):
listed for the Orange Prize for fiction in the UK.
The transformation was published in 2004 2005, in The Guardian
newspaper of April 2005. Justine Jordan reviews the novel. Gigi
is a gifted writer, and in this her third novel,
her confident, commanding prose and vivid atmospherics hold the attention,

(20:22):
and she draws comparisons between the character in this book
the wig maker Julie, and the main character in Patrick
Suskind's novel perfume, which featured a genius of scent and
the morbid and monstrous compulsions that that leads to. So
this is very similar, but it's about hair. It's also

(20:43):
worth mentioning that it's set in a really interesting part
of history. Julie has sought refuge from the murky background
of France at the end of the 1800s for the
New World. Tampa, Florida A land of sunshine and oranges
menaced by swamps and extreme weather, where, inwardly sneering and seething,
he flatters the scalps of his wealthy clientele. He can,

(21:05):
he declares, in tones of obsequious menace, work miracles with
a Hank of hair, glue and a net. I can
take years off your life. So just a little bit
about the transformation by Catherine Chidgey. The next book is
by the recently deceased author Peter Lovesey. So a bit
of sad news if you're a fan of his, but

(21:28):
we're going to play a sample of a 1991 book,
and the title is The Last Detective. Detective Superintendent Peter
Diamond is the last detective, a genuine gumshoe committed to
door stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So
when the naked body of a woman is found floating
in the weeds in a lake near bath, with no

(21:49):
one willing to identify her, no marks and no murder weapon,
his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit. Struggling with
a jigsaw puzzle of truant choirboys, teddy bears, a black
Mercedes and Jane Austen memorabilia. Diamond persists even after the
powers that be have decided there's enough evidence to make
a conviction. Let's hear a sample of The Last Detective

(22:12):
by Peter Lovesey. This is part one in the Peter
Diamond series. It's narrated by Simon Prebble.

S7 (22:21):
The Murder Squad worked from a mobile incident room from
Sunday morning onwards. It was a large caravan parked on
a stretch of turf, as close as possible to the
reeds where the body had been found. Each time Peter
Diamond crossed the floor, it sounded like beer kegs being unloaded.
The sound was heard until well into the evening as

(22:41):
he directed the first crucial stages of the inquiry. Five
telephones were steadily in use, and a team of filing
clerks transferred every message and every piece of information, first
onto action sheets and then onto cards. The standard four
tier carousel for up to 20,000 cards, stood ominously in
the center of the room. Diamond felt comfortable with index cards,

(23:05):
even if some of his younger staff muttered things about
the superiority of computers. If there was no quick resolution
to the inquiry, he'd be forced to install the despised
Vdus and God help the Moaners when the things broke down.
The search for the dead woman's clothes was first concentrated
on the sections of shoreline, with easiest access from the

(23:27):
three roads that enclosed the lake. A bizarre collection of
mislaid garments began to be assembled. Tokens of the variety
of human activities around the lake. The items were painstakingly
labelled sealed in plastic bags noted on the map and
entered on the action sheets. Without much confidence that any
were linked with the case, divers were brought in to

(23:49):
search the stretch of water where the body had been
found floating. It was not impossible that the clothes or
other evidence had been dumped there. This was an exercise
that had to be gone through. Although most people, including diamond,
reckoned that the body had drifted there from further along
the shore or even across the lake. At the same time,

(24:11):
house to house inquiries were made in the villages and
at each dwelling, with a view of the lake, seeking
witnesses to any unusual activity beside the water after dark
in the previous month.

S2 (24:21):
And that was the last detective by Peter Lovesey. Peter
is petty. That's petty. Lovesey is l o v e
e y l e e y. That book goes for
11.5 hours. There are a few different series that Peter
Lovesey wrote with main detective characters. There is Sergeant Cribb,

(24:47):
the Cribb series, a Victorian era police detective based in London.
Peter Diamond, a modern day police detective in bath. And also, Curiously,
Bertie and the Tin Man, which is the first in
his Detective Memoirs of King Edward the Seventh, set in 1886.
So you know, that's where King Edward or Bertie, as

(25:09):
he's called, solves some secrets. I think there's a few
in that series, and he was also one of the
world's leading track and field statisticians, statisticians. He won numerous
gold and silver daggers from the British Crime Writers Association,
and his novels and stories for mainly into the category
of entertaining puzzlers, as in the Golden Age tradition of

(25:30):
mystery writing the Peter Diamond novels. They started in 1991
with The Last Detective and finished in 2024 with Against
the Grain, and there was a lovely obituary in The
Guardian written by his friend and fellow crime writer. And
that was from the 8th of May, 2025. Martin Edwards

(25:51):
credits him with being one of the forerunners of the
modern historical detective mystery with the invention of Sergeant Cribb,
and says in this obituary that he feels that Ellis Peters,
creator of Brother Cadfael, followed that lead and started to
write his own detective historical detective series, and books from

(26:11):
every historical period imaginable began to crowd the bookshelves, he says.
Thank you for joining us on here this today. I'm
Francis Kelland, and just a reminder, there's some really significant

(26:32):
and important events happening in May. On May the 15th
there is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. This happens every year. Um,
the purpose of this Accessibility Awareness Day is to discuss
and highlight digital access and inclusion and its impact on
the more than 1 billion people with disabilities around the world.

(26:54):
So if you want to do a bit of research
and see what events are happening through Vision Australia. You
can go to Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025 on online
and see what's around. It can be quite inspiring seeing
what things are being developed and what people in the
community are talking about, the current issues, the things that

(27:15):
are being said. And then on May the 17th, there
is the International Day Against LGBT Q plus discrimination. So
just a really great day for inclusion and to be
aware and to maybe join some events that are happening
on the day. There's also National Volunteer Week, which is
happening this month, May the 19th to the 25th, highlighting

(27:38):
the important role of volunteers and our community. And it
might be a good idea to see if you haven't
volunteered and you think you've got the time and you
would like to, you can often find something that really
suits your interest out in the volunteering world, in organisations
or not for profits. And then moving on into late May,
we have National Reconciliation Week. That's May the 20th 7th

(28:02):
to June the 3rd. Learning about our shared histories, cultures
and achievements, and exploring how each of us can contribute
to achieving reconciliation in Australia and moving into June, a
very important month for us here at Vision Australia Radio.
It's the Vision Australia appeal. It's the annual end of
financial year fundraising campaign. All donations of $2 or more

(28:26):
will receive a tax receipt. So it's a lovely way
of making sure that community voices are still heard on
Vision Australia Radio. If you'd like to join the library,
the number is 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or you can email
library at Vision Australia. That's Library Australia. Org. Have a

(28:50):
lovely week and we'll be back next week with more
here this.