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Showing posts from October, 2010

Producing a poster for AARE Conference Melbourne

The house is in wedding mode with preparations for the 'little' cousins Pantry Tea (give Kel something you'd like to see in her pantry - possibly Timtams and sprinkles!) so I am attempting to finish all that I can in advance. A poster seemed to be an easier option than a presentation but not so - juggling font sizes, colours and quick bites of info to grab the attention is challenging. Now I know that Courier and Arial are easy to read but so yesterday! Main title about 4 cm, subheadings about 2cm and body about 1 cm.  The audience might be attracted  to the design but if they can't read it, what's the point. This was my first attempt -  readable at A4 but will the writing be too big when it is blown up to A0?  I have 3 more attempts and will upload the final design on 3rd December. I submitted poster and paper in the hope one would be accepted and both were - so now I need to start writing.

Rosalie's Reward, a fairytale in a gold rush town setting

This is  a gem,' said the librarian at the State Library as she hands it to me ... and I am inclined to agree. ‘ Rosalie’s Reward’ begins with a poetic description of Ballaarat that evokes both mood and time. The house that the impoverished mother and child come to live in stands in ‘ gloomy silence’ while the sounds of mining are clear and eerily evocative.   ‘Shrill whistle heard so clearly in the silence that called the miners to midnight toil.’ The resurrected English style cottage garden is the perfect place for a group of fairies that the reader doesn't meet until page six of the story.  There is an energetic discussion by the fairy folk about what is prized more as a reward: beauty or gold. Not surprisingly, in a gold mining town, it is gold. Rosalie’s reward for her kindness to the fairies is being left a fortune by the dying gold miner who owns the cottage. He fortunately arrives at the cottage hours before his death to bestow on Rosalie a golden future in Melbo

Sister Agnes: Fairytales told in the Bush.

A warm sunny day, the Special Collections room has the fans humming and is a room with a view - of the grounds of Uni Melbourne. This room is quiet and serene and has a special aura. The past is revered and the lucky can take a look back. I came to hold a copy of Fairytales told in the Bush to see if Sister Agnes built on Ernst's narrative structure. Suggestions that Sister Agnes was inspired by Ernst are hard to believe. Her settings are not descriptive and most of the stories are those remembered from her childhood. She describes herself as a lover of fairies. They belong to her past and are not invented Australian fairytales. She claims two were told to her by King Barak, one days before he died. She paints Barak , variously called King William, last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe' or 'Beruk (white grub in gum tree) belonging to the Wurundjeri  whose country lay along the Yarra and Plenty Rivers, as a man who will tell a story for the right price, usually a coin. She