Friday, 28 May 2021
State Library
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari gamarruwa,  Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura.

Pauline Fitzgerald and the State Library, thank you for hosting this event.

To be here today, in a place of books, where literature, research and learning wrap around each other, almost silently and so beautifully, is to experience a sacred place, the built environment of the modern world which sits on the sacred land of the Gadigal people.  I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

Aboriginal Australians come from a culture of story telling which commences in the Dreamtime. The stories are told, not from reading books, but by being told by one generation to the next and to the one after that: living history and knowledge, passed down through language and art and song cycles.  With its legends and fables, its capture of creation and its preservation of knowledge, Noel Pearson described these Aboriginal stories as Australia’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’, and the song cycles of central Australia as 'Australia’s Book of Genesis”[1]

If story telling is so intrinsic to such an ancient and sustained peoples, why do we need books? 

The best answer, indeed I think the only answer, is that just as with the storytelling of the clans in the many nations of this land, books are where we find knowledge of the culture in which we live and the universe which surrounds us.

In the story telling, we find the things that sustain our minds and our hearts, expand our knowledge, excite our curiosity, the stories that give us respite from a complex world and the stories that make us laugh. 

It was, therefore, an honour to be asked to write the Foreword to a new Australian classic, an anthology of short stories, plays and poems: Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds,  an initiative of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) NSW Eastern Suburbs sub-branch.

An Anthology doesn’t just spring into existence.  After that first kernel of an idea, comes the thinking, the planning, the logistics, the assessments, the time and the grit, with a little bit of dreaming and quite a bit of hope into the mix.  What was so rewarding for the Eastern Suburbs sub-branch was the response to the 100 or so letters sent out to authors and illustrators last December, inviting contributions to this Anthology. 

As Liz Bowring told me, within a month, submissions came flying in: stories, poems, plays and illustrations from leading and emerging writers and illustrators - all from NSW and all Children’s Book Council of Australia NSW branch members. 

In a mere 6 months, this new Australian classic children’s literature.  ‘Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds’ has come into being:  100% NSW-created, written, illustrated, designed, published and produced by volunteers.  Its dedication on the front cover reflects what the Children’s Book Council of Australia NSW and the Eastern Suburbs Sub-Branch is all about:

“Gurungra Buk Yura Buruwiyin Gunya”:

You are:

“Children’s book people

from the east wind home place.”

Thank you to the Children’s Book Council of Australia NSW Eastern Suburbs sub-branch for this inspired anthology of exceptional writing and to the Children’s Book Council of Australia NSW branch for its support.

Thank you to the authors, illustrators and designers who have so willingly and freely contributed, to this ‘wonderful anthology of the imagination’[2] for young readers from places where the ‘east, west, north and south winds’ blow.  

Before formally launching the book, and because when I read I love to hear the words in my head, as if being read to, I am going to ask Dennis to read to all of us a story about discovery.

[Dennis reads: Discovery by Jill Carter -Hansen (page 104)]

It is my great pleasure to launch Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds … and to invite 9-year-old Evie to read a poem, illustrated by her mother Max Hamilton and written by Victoria Mackinley, entitled “The Sound of the Sea”.

[1] Noel Pearson, “A Rightful Place: Race, Recognition and a More Complete Commonwealth":  Quarterly Essay 55, 2014. 

[2] Ursula Dubasarsky, Australian Children’s Laureate 2020-21 - Message in Foreword