Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to Not quite right.
My name's Ed, and I'm Amanda.
And we are at Words on the Waves speaking with Michael Burge, who is a, an author,
a journalist.
Yeah.
And he's here at Words on the Waves moderating 2 panels,
2 very different panels.
And that's a big job, being a moderator.
You've got to read the books, and then you've got to find, I suppose,
some talking points and links between those books to connect with the authors
and the audience.
And so he spoke to us a little bit about that role and also some of the
differences between and his experience riding out in the Bush and where some of
these novels were set in the city of Sydney as well.
So here is our discussion with Michael Burge.
We're here at Words on the Waves with Michael Burch.
Thanks for joining us, Michael.
A pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
So you're here to moderate the City of Sin.
Yes, panel.
Tell us about that panel.
We have Tara Moss, whose most recent book is The Italian
Secret, and Fiona Kelly McGregor, whose most recent book is The Trap.
And so of course, these both these books have significant
settings in the big bad city of Sydney.
And today I'll be sort of fessing up that I'm actually from the Bush.
So it's kind of ironic to be asked to to come along to talk about Sydney and as a
historical crimey setting.
But I have done my time in the city of sin.
So I'm looking forward to chatting with those two authors.
And so as the moderator for the panel, have you had to do a lot of research and
prep for today or are you?
My main prep is just remembering what it was like to live in Sydney,
which I did when I studied and a couple of stints afterwards,
but also reading their work.
I mean, they're incredibly different.
This is a fiction, both of those books, but what they have in common is kind of
the 1940s in Sydney, the post war, sort of during the war in the case of
Fiona's book.
But the 1940s for sure when I think probably one of the most dramatic periods
of change in the city of Sydney since the settlement.
I would say the US troops in the city, changes in laws and liberty and freedoms.
The the brownouts, they call them when they're trying to
save electricity and also stop Sydney being a target.
And Sydney was a target for attack at the time.
So very Seminole.
In the in the history of the city.
And then of course, all the darkness and the war and the risk
factor led to a lot of crime and dark deeds.
So as it does, yes, all over the world.
And So what interests you in particular about the time period and the setting?
The time period, I think because in both Tara's and
Fiona's books, they deal with change in social,
the social fabric.
Now this was particularly dramatic for women.
Well, for all people.
I mean, the risk factor, the the concern, the anxiety of about about war,
a war going on, but it also created a huge amount of
freedoms, particularly for women.
So the idea of the home front, the support jobs,
there was more equal opportunity.
Of course, it was taken away to a large degree later,
but by these books deal with a lot of those freedoms at the time that they were
granted.
And that that really does interest me.
That's what I think all people in Australia have in common,
whether we're from the Bush or from the cities or both.
Absolutely.
And you're an author yourself?
Yes.
Have you written about any of those topics or is this kind of outside of your
own?
Well, there's some crossover in my book and
Fiona Kelly McGregor's The Trap, the titles of my recent book and her most
recent book are quite similar.
Mine's called Dirt Trap and hers is called The Trap.
And both of us deal with historical gay hate crimes and also the entrapment scams
that were perpetrated by the police historically and, you know,
within my lifetime as well.
So that we have that crossover and the sort of the,
the queer history of of Sydney, but there are themes of that through
Tara's book as well.
The change in in attitudes in Tara's book, it's manifest in a broad sort of brush
stroke there, which is about equality for Indigenous
people.
So one of the colleagues of her Billy Walker private investigator is a
character called Shyla, who is an Indigenous woman.
And I found that very interesting.
And Tara doesn't deal with in a in a blatant way.
It's actually within the fabric of the community that she builds around her
Billy Walker heroine, who this is the third book that we've
seen her in.
So this it's this crossover of sort of opportunities for unexpected identities
that I think all of our books have in common.
And so tell us about your other writing as well.
Well, I'm a journalist by trade.
I've been a journalist for many years.
Look, I was fascinated this morning to hear the
session with Nikki Sava and David Ma words on the waves.
I think has got a lovely political edge growing to it,
which I find really refreshing.
And you know, in politics these days, there's a catch phrase,
just let people say what they feel, particularly politicians.
But look, it was a refreshing session about people
just saying what they feel, where they feel we're at as a country.
So yeah, I take a lot of that into my heart.
But also as a rural resident, even though we're still in the regions
here, it was on the waves.
It's a it's a wonderful regional festival.
It's a lot closer to the city than I live.
And so it this idea of having new concepts and new personalities in writing,
new themes, ideas, it's just, it's overflowing with them.
It's fantastic.
And it's only, it's only halfway through the first day.
Yeah.
I mean, well, actually, it's not the first day, is it?
Well, no, I mean, there's a lot of satellite events.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And you know, I think you raise an interesting point
because it's been a bit of a fraught time for festivals,
writers festivals in Australia.
Yeah.
And especially on that theme of politics and people's differing views and how they
are reflected in perhaps a panel.
And I think it must be difficult when you're coordinating a festival,
thinking about some of those things and, and some of the risks,
I suppose that you take on.
What's your feeling on that?
I mean, there's, there's been all this scandal, I suppose,
of authors getting uninvited to events and all this sort of stuff.
Oh, look, it's been around for, it's been on my radar for a lot longer
than this sort of recent wave.
So I can remember, I would say it's pretty much exactly 10
years ago that I think it made the news internationally that Jermaine grew had
been de platformed from a writers festival or a conference in the UK around
issues of gender equality.
And so in that 10 year.
I think we've seen so many new examples of that going on and it look as a writer,
a journalist, a citizen and a thinker and a political,
a fan of the process of politics, it is a very challenging time.
And I think if we can't express ourselves at a writers festival,
then there's probably nowhere we can really express ourselves.
And by we, I, I don't just mean writers, I mean everybody.
There's a great connected, engaged crowd here in every session.
I've been to awards on the waves and I was thinking this morning in this session
with Nikki Sava and David Maher about Nikki's book Earthquake that that says it
all, the title of that book.
And we're here to talk about books as one major aspect.
It's this shake up, you know, things are not the same after an
earthquake.
And so I think it's wonderful to see a festival that hasn't asked for censorship.
In what I might be saying here as a moderator,
I was here in previous years and I didn't get that sense about that either.
But on the same token, I do understand the risk aversion that
there is because these festivals don't just happen off the back of ticket sales.
So there are other considerations for other events and it's a fraud issue to
speak about.
But my main reaction to your thought, what's about your your question about
that is that it's refreshing to be in a place where ideas can be expressed on
occasion.
There's, you know, some comment from the floor.
David Marv did a great job moderating, sort of opened it up to people to start
asking questions about halfway through instead of the sort of traditional yeah.
At the end.
So it did encourage people to, you know, it's a bit like a town hall meeting.
I guess it's reflective of this electorate that we're in if we want to
talk politics.
So it where I come from it that would be a very different experience.
OK.
But just as valid, just as.
Yeah, needed.
And we don't necessarily do that enough in the Bush.
Yeah.
So where are you from?
I'm from the New England region.
I'm actually from a little blink in your miss a town called Deepwater,
which listeners might know where Tenderfield is.
OK.
So we're about half an hour's drive South of Tenderfield,
about an hour from the Queensland border.
So pretty far northern inland NSW.
And so you do your journalism remotely then?
I do, Yeah.
Yes.
Luckily, I'm able to to do that.
When I moved, I'm from the Bush originally,
but when I moved back there almost 10 years ago,
I did sort of think that that was the end of journalism for me.
OK.
I thought maybe I'd be able to get a job at a local paper or something like that.
But the journalism I've done since then is because people have approached me
because they want journalists in the Bush to write about people and processes in
the Bush.
And that's, that was such a wonderful surprise to me
to be asked to do that.
So I freelance mainly.
Yeah.
Oh, that's wonderful.
Do you do any farming?
Do you do, what else?
What do you do out there in the booth?
No, I'm from, I'm from a farming family.
Half my family were farmers and the other half were from the city.
So no, I, but I look like many of my neighbours and
colleagues at the Tennis Club and in the community groups that we have are
graziers and we've been having quite a period of, we call it a dry spell,
not quite a drought.
It seems to touch wood, have broken a little bit.
We've had some good rains.
So you don't have to be a farmer living in the Bush to be connected to the sense
that all people who work in agriculture are feeling.
So it's been a bit of a fraught time.
The last time I remember like this was actually three years ago in October.
We had a bit of a repeat of Black Summer very early in the season.
There were Bush fires right throughout the New England region and the Darling
Downs.
And I came to Sydney for a writers festival and it was a nice escape from
the that feeling that's it's a very anxious feeling living in those
situations.
And that's not unique to the Bush.
Everyone experienced it in Black Summer.
So Michael, you're not here just for this panel,
you're back again tomorrow.
Is that right?
Give us a little sneak peek of your other panel.
Well, tomorrow the panel is called Transported.
The most I think I've ever moderated the most authors in one session.
It was 4.
So tomorrow there's three.
So it's not quite the Super highly risky panel of four authors because I'm an
author too, so I always count myself in the line up.
So we have the panel of four authors, myself included,
but we're talking to Emma Peyin, the author of When Sleeping Women Wake,
Lauren Keegan, who wrote The Woman in the Sealskin,
and Heather Rose is here, of course, talking about her book A Great Act of
Love.
And so they've called this panel Transported.
It's a big word, but it's actually loaded with meaning.
And so I've had quite a journey trying to find a way to narrow that meaning down to
45 to 60 minute discussion.
So I've I've found I think a way to do that.
And it's all about the pre colonial, the colonial and the post colonial world.
So the subjects that those three women have written about do bridge an enormous
period from the late 17th century right through into the Second World War with
Emma's book.
And so it's a, it's a, a unique opportunity, I think,
to really sort of look at the whole colonial experiment before it took place
and the reasons leading up to it while it was happening with Heather's book and the
kind of aftermath in Emma's book.
And the, the precursor, of course, is Lawrence book,
The Woman in the Sealskin.
It's set in the last decade of the 17th century.
It's a big subject that yeah, yeah.
And all around the world, right.
There's we're talking about just reading the description here.
Hong Kong in Japan, yes, as well.
So it's not just the Australian experience.
No exactly.
The Orkneys is the setting for Lawrence book.
And yes, Hong Kong under Japanese occupation for
Emma's and Heather's book is kind of the thread that takes us between those two
places because she comes to Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania, but via many,
many parts on the face of the earth.
That's the golden thread that I'm sort of weaving things together with in that chat.
Well, I wish you well on that.
I think sometimes these panels, it's bringing together different authors
and trying to make them fit, right.
And all the different puzzle pieces fit together.
Yes.
But we're all here celebrating the written word, I suppose.
So we are authors.
When we get together, we find a way that we fit like a kind of
like a jigsaw puzzle because we we have so many things in common,
even if what we're writing about is just so vastly different.
And that's a hallmark of writers festivals for sure.
Absolutely.
Well, we wish you the best of luck in your
upcoming panels.
Hopefully, hopefully it's not too difficult to
wrangle these authors.
Thank you.
Thank you for speaking with us.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Writers Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.