Listen up…

Interviews tomorrow with three different radio stations: listen in after 4pm to Radio Northern Beaches (Sydney); after 4:45pm to ABC Broken Hill; or after 5:45 (WA time) to ABC Drive WA. Am also speaking on Thursday morning with Wendy Harmer (yes, Wendy Harmer!!!!) - listen in after 9:00am to the ABC Sydney morning show. And on Friday it's one more interview, with ABC Bendigo (Central Victoria). Listen in after 10:30. If you're really keen, you can also listen online to last week's interviews: 2ser Sydney Breakfast Show. Fast forward to 1.04.10 [...]

2018-04-08T18:57:53+00:00 April 8th, 2018|Author Interviews, Elizabeth Macarthur|2 Comments
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And so it begins…

Publication Day is Monday 2 April, although I'm not sure what it actually means, because nothing actually happens on the day. Some bookshops already have Elizabeth Macarthur on their shelves, others will no doubt get it in over the next few weeks. The launch party, a private function for friends and family, will be held a week or so later. My lovely publicist has lined up lots of talks and radio interviews for me but none are scheduled for Monday. Well, one was, with Wendy Harmer on the ABC Sydney [...]

2018-03-31T16:36:57+00:00 March 31st, 2018|Elizabeth Macarthur|8 Comments
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Elizabeth Macarthur’s Grave

I took the opportunity, late last year, to visit Elizabeth Macarthur’s grave. The Macarthur family graveyard is on a quiet hill, about a mile away from and opposite the family home at Camden Park House (about 70kms south west of the Sydney CBD). Elizabeth’s son William, passionate about botany, planted the site with exotic palms, which no doubt quickly grew tall enough to be seen from the house, but most of the site is now sheltered by native trees. In all my years of researching, I never did find a [...]

2018-04-12T17:12:03+00:00 January 23rd, 2018|Colonial History, Elizabeth Macarthur|6 Comments
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My Writing Day

Her name is Winter. She's a Scottish Deerhound. Yes, she's very tall. Saves bending over to give her pats - she's already at just the right height. One day a week. That's all I have for my own writing. And when I say 'day' I don't mean a whole day, I mean a school day, between about 9:30 and 3:00pm. Also minus the school holidays. And minus time spent hanging out the washing, catching up on my day job, making cups of tea and procrastinating by playing Tetris. [...]

2018-03-23T01:36:22+00:00 May 26th, 2017|Elizabeth Macarthur, Life, Work in Progress, Writing|16 Comments
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Done! For now at least…

With apologies to those who already know, via Facebook and Twitter - I sent the draft manuscript to my editor at Text Publishing late last week. Very happy. Subsequently spent a relaxing weekend in the garden, and celebrating Mother's Day with my gorgeous kids. No deadlines, no pressure - bliss. Next steps? The editor edits the manuscript, sends it back covered in comments and I go back to working on it. And in the meantime I keep following up and trying to source all the images I need. And yes, [...]

2018-03-24T01:15:23+00:00 May 15th, 2017|Elizabeth Macarthur, Work in Progress, Writing|12 Comments
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How to finish a manuscript

Young Woman Writing a Letter (detail), from a poster for Encre Marquet by Eugene Grasset, 1892. Image courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Well, by not spending time writing blog posts, obviously. The manuscript must go to the publisher (for editing) in about week, so the last little while has been just a teensy bit frantic. I kind of finished working on the text a few weeks ago, and since then I have: drawn up a Macarthur family tree (thank you PowerPoint), included a list of [...]

2018-03-25T01:09:13+00:00 May 8th, 2017|Elizabeth Macarthur, Work in Progress, Writing|14 Comments
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Elizabeth Macarthur died today

Elizabeth Macarthur in old age. Source: http://blogs.hht.net.au/cook/happy-birthday-elizabeth-macarthur/ Not actually today, obviously. Elizabeth Macarthur the woman died almost 167 years ago, on 9 February 1850. She was eighty-three years old. But today I wrote the paragraph in which Elizabeth dies, the final paragraph of the book really, and I felt strangely sad. It’s been my job to make her come to life on the page and I’ve been working to do so for more years than I care to admit. Yet there she was, having a stroke and quietly [...]

2018-03-24T01:53:57+00:00 January 29th, 2017|Elizabeth Macarthur, Work in Progress|16 Comments
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Elizabeth Macarthur’s Quilt at the National Gallery of Victoria

The gallery had sold out of the glossy, colour catalogue for Making the Australian Quilt: 1800–1950 by the time I saw the exhibition last week. But I had a terrific chat with the young woman serving at the museum shop while I placed an order to have the catalogue mailed out (at a discounted rate, no less). "Isn't it interesting," she said, "how contemporary some of those quilt designs are. It's amazing to think they predated modernism by decades.  But not acknowledged, of course." She gave me a gorgeous, wry [...]

2018-03-25T13:12:21+00:00 August 30th, 2016|Colonial History, Elizabeth Macarthur|7 Comments
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Mrs Macquarie and the tragic accident

Headstone of Grace and Richard Veale, Elizabeth Macarthur's sister and father. St Bridget's churchyard, Bridgerule. Source: Adventures in Biography One of the problems of being a researcher of women's history is all the dead children. Over and over again the archives yield stories of families broken by illness, accident and disease - so many stories that they are in danger of seeming commonplace. But of course the death of each child was, to his or her own family, an occasion of enormous tragedy. Elizabeth Macarthur lost [...]

2018-03-24T23:46:58+00:00 August 20th, 2016|Colonial History, Elizabeth Macarthur|12 Comments
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