Our Shadows | Gail Jones #AUSfiction

One gets to a time and place when one HAS to be done thinking about a book and what review to write for it. I have reached this point with Our Shadows by Gail Jones. 

I have done everything I can to put together some coherent, clever thoughts, from attending two zoom author talks with Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane and a week later with Gleebooks in Sydney, to reading other reviews and talking about the book with a friend who abandoned it half way through.

I really enjoyed Jones' previous book, The Death of Noah Glass, although it was not easy. So I felt prepared for Jones' themes of loss and grief wrapped in layers of art and ideas. However, I never really felt fully engaged with her characters or her purpose. Noah Glass got under my skin, but sisters Nell and Frances failed to become fully-fleshed characters in my mind.

About a third of the way through, I decided to engage with the book in a different way to help me get through (it was around this point my friend abandoned ship). I had noticed the number of times the word 'shadow' was being used by Jones, so I decided to list them.

• mud and shadow make him appear older.
• Let us say he is a man perpetually shadowed. He will always be in shadow.
• Frances began to accept that she lived in Nell's shadow
• their shadows were huge on the tunnel wall, they were monsters, not men
• dying in their shadows
• When Paddy saw their shadows walking alongside them, they were conglomerate creatures, lumpish and inhuman
• he felt himself splotched in shadow.
• ill-fated and shadowed.
• his lungs have been checked. No shadows.
• it was the shadow of wings passing over her
• the women trudged back, pulling their long shadows
• He was all shadows
• the story that hung shadowy

In discussion with Krissy Kneen (Avid Reader) and then with Bernadette Brennan (Gleebooks) I learnt that Jones set up the novel with a specific spatial logic whereby the scenes shadowed each other. The modern story of the sisters being followed by a chapter about their grandparent's history in a process described by Jones as the 'layers of life in your childhood that you spend the rest of your life excavating'.

The loss of the girls' parents also highlighted the shadow between generations. This family had an aching, missing step between grandparents and grandchildren, that caused a discontinuity in history and memory. Jones described it as 'looking forwards as memory leads us back'.

She used the mining processes of Kalgoorlie, WA to explore themes of darkness, what lies underground and beneath the surface. Through mining she explored different levels of knowing and interiority (a word she used several times to describe her writing).

Jones is also interested in scale and how a smaller, intimate story fits within the bigger narrative of history. In this story we glimpse the Irish potato famine, the gold rush/early settler life in Australia, the mining industry in WA and an Indigenous perspective. 

The importance and use of language is another device that Jones plays with here. The importance of naming things and naming them correctly, the act of translation and language making and what it means when we lose language through cultural appropriation or dementia. When the absence of language becomes like a shadowy presence, leaving a space or void waiting to be filled, yet full of expectation, anticipation, memory and loss. It's something that feels very close, within reach, yet impossibly far away, unable to be grasped. Which is probably a pretty good description of my reading experience!

I learnt that Australian POW's (& British, Dutch, US, Czech & Norwegian) were in Nagasaki (or nearby at least in Omuta) at the Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp (and other camps) when Nagasaki was bombed at the end of WWII. How had I never heard about this before? Most of the British, Dutch and Australian POW's were also survivors of the Burma railway.

I was moved by Fred's description of the pipeline and the country around Kalgoorlie:

He was surprised to realise how much he loved this landscape - the gimlets and casuarinas, the sweeping hawks and the streaking crows, the high shine of the cloudless, metallic sky. he loved the stiff grasses and the saltbush and the tiny tough flowers. The wind moving through them, and the scent of the red earth, baking. Alongside, the white pipeline stretched all the way from Perth. He loved it too. Water in the desert. And the story of how the pipeline was built.

Image source

And, for the first time I heard about the Lake Ballard statues, 'Inside Australia', by Antony Gormley. I first came across Gormley's work when it was referenced by Heather Rose in The Museum of Modern Love. So I was prepared for the eerie, startling nature of his statues, I just had no idea we had some in Australia.

They climbed a neat hill that reminded Frances of the cover of  The Little Prince, a hemisphere, like half a planet, in the middle of nowhere. From the top they stood in the salty wind and looked afar. Before them, beneath the white glaze of the sunlight, lay asterisk on asterisk of fanning trails, the footprinted patterns of earlier visitors who had tracked between the statues.

Image: Merlyn Cantwell

I'm not sure I can say that I enjoyed this novel, although I didn't dislike it either. Maybe the use of so many absences and shadows was a device to leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled on purpose.

It is now a month since I read Our Shadows, and very little has stayed with me about the story. I enjoyed researching things like the POW's in Nagasaki and looking at all the images available on Instagram for Gormley's statues, but I did not engage at an emotional level with the characters. I love a good intellectual exercise, but sometimes the storytelling can get overwhelmed in the process. Judging by the experience of the two readers I have to hand right now, I fear that is what has happened here. 

 Epigraph: 

Strange how things in the offing, once they're sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what's come upon is manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.

Seamus Heaney
(Squarings xlviii)

Opening Line (in an untitled prologue): 

• So who is this girl, dreaming awake, of an entombed miner?

Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey

Writing regularly blog posts seems to be something quite beyond right now. But thanks to Karen @Booker Talk I've be revisiting some of my older posts to find fresh inspiration. This post about the rather silent author, Randolph Stow, was originally published on the 29th August 2015.

I've been thinking about Gabrielle Carey a lot, over the past 24 hrs, after learning that she has a new book coming out in October with University of Queensland Press about Elizabeth von Armin called Only Happiness Here. 

Her website explains that von Armin has been one of her literary passions for quite some time, and like me, Carey is amazed that this Australian born writer (along with her cousin, Katherine Mansfield) is so little known and appreciated here. 

New Zealander's have done a much better job of being loud and proud about Mansfield. Admittedly, von Armin only lived in Australia for the first three years of her life (whereas Mansfield grew up in NZ before moving permanently to Europe). But given our tendency to claim famous folk with far less tenuous links than that, it's curious that we have been so silent on our relationship with von Armin.

I want to know more about the friendship and authorial support that existed between von Armin and Mansfield and how they influenced each other. And I'm keen to find out why Carey is so fascinated by von Armin. Weaving together the biography of an author with her own personal reflections was one of the things I really enjoyed about her Randolph Stow book. 

It has stayed with me for five years now. 

Given how many books pass through my hands each year, for one to stick in my memory so clearly, says something about the strength of the story within, as well as it's ability to get under my skin.

So I give you a slightly revised and updated look at my 2015 post for Moving Among Strangers.

Today I had the pleasure of attending the Honouring Randolph Stow event at the NSW Library.

The Honouring series is the brainchild of my friend Julia Tsalis, the Program Manager at the NSW Writers Centre. 

On their website she says:

Sometimes we forget about the great when revelling in the new. In its annual Honouring Australian Writers series, the NSW Writers’ Centre pays tribute to writers who have made an important contribution to our literary culture.  

In 2015 we turn to the West Australian writer Randolph Stow. Perhaps best known for The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea and To The Islands, which won the Miles Franklin Award, Australian Literary Society Gold Medal and the Melbourne Book Fair Award in 1958. He was also awarded the ALS Gold Medal for his poetry in 1957 and won the Patrick White Award in 1979.  

A writer fond of silence, known for the metaphysical and existential qualities of his writing but also a master at evoking the Australian landscape, Randolph Stow embodied contradictions. Geordie Williamson, says of him in The Burning Library, ‘In him, as in no other non-indigenous writer in our literature, landscape and mindscape are one.’  

Honouring: Randolph Stow brings together Gabrielle Carey, author of Moving Among Strangers a memoir about her family’s connection to Stow, Suzanne Falkiner whose biography will be released in 2016, Richard Tipping a poet and producer of a documentary on Stow, and West Australian author Alice Nelson (The Last Sky) whose career has been inspired by him.

In preparation for the event, I read Gabrielle Carey's Moving Among Strangers: Randolph Stow and My Family.

Carey's award winning book is a curious, but very pleasing mix of family memoir and grief journal as well as a homage to little known Australian author and poet, Randolph 'Mick' Stow.

I say little known, because when I told family, friends and colleagues (yes, even colleagues!) where I was going today. Only a couple of them had heard of Stow.

My relationship with Stow is not much better. I've only read one of his books and that was his children's story about Midnite, the not-so-bright bushranger and his talking cat. The talking cat put me off too much to ever really enjoy it properly though!

But, like Carey, I do seem to have this fascination for Australia's long lost, forgotten authors.

I'm curious about why we, as a nation, do not seem to celebrate, embrace or cherish our award winning, highly acclaimed authors.

Their childhood homes do not become museums.

No "so and so was born here" plaques pop up on suburban streets and rarely do they have university or school wings named after them. They're lucky to have a street named in their honour!

Carey echoes my concerns in her book when she reminds us that:

Other countries seem to be able to preserve significant writers' houses - why are there so few in Australia?

However, after the Honouring Randolph Stow event today, I wonder if part of this lack of recognition starts with the authors themselves.

All four panelists spoke of Stow's famous silence.

Suzanne called it his "authorial invisibility". 

Richard told us how Stow had said, "writers are writers because they're not talkers." 

And Alice quoted poet Louise Gluck's "eloquent deliberate silence" to describe Stow's personality.

Meanwhile Carey's tender memoir is an endless parade of Stow's reticence and quietness which she sums up towards the end by saying,

Stow's silence doesn't appear to have been an unfriendly one. His temperament and philosophical bent both point towards a faith in silence and deep doubt about language.

 

This is not someone searching for the limelight or to have his name forever blazoned across the skies. His story writing and poetry were personal, they were part of his search for home. Home, for Stow, was not one house or place either.

Maybe we don't need to make a fuss about his childhood home or where he went to school, except of course, there is no denying, that it is these things, these places of our childhoods that shape us is so many ways, consciously and unconsciously.

Stow himself also said (in reference to Joseph Conrad) that "I think one does need to know a great deal - well, a certain amount, anyway, about an author's life...and not only what he chooses to have known."
(my highlight).

So, what have I learnt about Stow in the past week?

He could speak and read about five languages, he was fascinated by the Batavia wreck (so much so that he taught himself to read Old Dutch so he could research the source materials), he loved to read Conrad and Joyce and he 'wrote' his books in his head whilst walking and only physically wrote them down once he had it complete in his head. Sadly, he had two such books in his head when he died. 

Stow also had an incredibly mellifluous voice (not unlike Princes Charles but with an Australian undertone) that we heard thanks to the resurrecting of Richard Tipping's interview with Stow from the 1988 film A Country of Islands. More than preserving old homes and the placing of plaques, we need to ensure that archival films and interviews like this are conserved for future reference. The 8 minute excerpt we heard today was one of the highlights of a stimulating afternoon.

I look forward to reading one of Stow's adult novels (now republished by Text Publishing) or seeing one on the big screen soon. I also highly recommend Carey's memoir for those who love their family memoirs and author biographies entwined in a happy embrace.

• The 2020 Honouring Event will be for Katherine Susannah Prichard on the 22nd August.
• Carey also has a biography about Ivan Southall called Falling Out of Love With Ivan Southall that sounds intriguing.

In Midland Where the Trains Go By | Dorothy Hewett #AWW

In Midland still the trains go by.
The black smoke thunders on the sky.
Still in the grass the lovers lie.
And cheek on cheek and sigh on sigh
They dream and weep as you and I,

In Midland where the trains go by. 

Across the bridge, across the town. 

The workers hurry up and down. 

The pub still stands, the publican 

Is still a gross, corrupted man. 

And bottles clinking in the park 

Make symphonies of summer dark. 

Across the bridge the stars go down, 

Our two ghosts meet across the town. 

Who dared so much must surely creep 

Between young lovers lips, asleep. 

Who dared so much much surely live 

In train-smoke off the Midland bridge. 

In Midland, in the railway yards, 

They shuffle time like packs of cards 

And kings and queens and jacks go down. 

But we come up in Midland town. 

O factory girls in cotton slips 

And men with grease across your lips. 

Let kings and queens and jacks go down 

But we'll still kiss in Midland town. 

An oath, a whisper and a laugh. 

Will make our better epitaph. 

We'll share a noggin in the park 

And whistle songs against the dark. 

There is no death that we can die 

In Midland, where the trains go by.

In Midland Where the Trains Go By | 1959 | Dorothy Hewett

Dorothy Hewett was born in Perth, in 1923 and grew up on a farm in the wheatbelt area until being sent to Perth to finish her schooling. She joined the Communist Party in 1946 and was active in their volunteering work. She moved to Sydney, with her second husband and young family, where she worked in a spinning mill and wrote under a pseudonym for the Communist Party paper.

When this marriage also ended she moved back to Perth in 1958 to take up a teaching post at the University of Western Australia.

In 1960, she married Merv Lilley and two daughters, Kate and Rose.

Hewett left the Communist Party after the 1968 uprising in Prague. She was an atheist all her life. She often challenged the social, sexual, religious and political norms of her time.

She died in 2002 in the Blue Mountains of NSW.

John Kinsella said in her obituary in the SMH, 26 August 2002;

Hewett's writing is about freedom and equality, linked with a deep respect for the vagaries of the individual.

I chose this Poem For a Thursday in preparation for Bill's Gen III Australian Women Writer's week from the 12th - 18th January.

Taboo by Kim Scott

I'm not sure I will be able to adequately sum up my thoughts and impressions about Taboo by Kim Scott, but I'll give it a shot.

Scott has been shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award; he has already won it twice. In 2000 for Benang: From the Heart and again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance.

Benang is on my TBR pile, but I have yet to read either. My understanding is that they are both historical fiction in nature, with an Indigenous perspective of our shared history. Taboo is contemporary fiction, with not only an Indigenous perspective of our shared history but also with an eye towards our possible shared future. I found it to be an extraordinary feat of compassion, revelation and hope. 

After stumbling through the first 50 pages or so, lost and unsure how to proceed, I found a kind of rhythm and sense to the disjointed passages. The jumps and starts started to feel symbolic and purposeful. I then began to see the poetry in the chaos. 

Scott described this style in the Afterword as, 

a trippy, stumbling sort of genre-hop that I think features a trace of Fairy Tale, a touch of Gothic, a sufficiency of the ubiquitous Social Realism and perhaps a tease of Creation Story.

The story at the heart of Taboo is the memory of an 18th century massacre and the work that a small country town in W.A. does to heal this wound. From this brutal past, with all its miscommunication, misinterpretation & denial as well as the stark realities of modern life for many Aboriginal Australians, Scott encourages us to find connection and shared meaning.

And country.

Like, Scott, I believe that the hope for our future lies in our shared sense of country. It is thanks to our Aboriginal heritage that many Anglo-Australians have changed the way they/we/me use the word 'country' to describe our sense of belonging and attachment to this place we call home. It's an important shift in thinking and feeling that gives all of us a common sense of belonging, well-being and pride. 

The power of words and the importance of language is another central idea explored by Scott in Taboo,

Story like this really about coming together, healing and making ourselves strong with language.

He reminds us that many place names as well as the names for native plants and animals have been derived from their Aboriginal names. Aboriginal history is all around us; in country and in words.

We'll take the language back, the stories that belong here and tell us who to be, what we can do.

Mangart - Jam tree - Acacia acuminata

'Words hold everything together.'

One of the trees endemic to the Noongar region of W.A., that Scott's characters regularly referred to, was a jam tree. The stone curlew was important too. I didn't know either by sight, so I did a quick search to help me with imagining the environment accurately. 

Bush stone curlew

As you might expect from a story about a massacre, spirits, ghosts, presences and apparitions haunt as well as welcome our characters - the Aboriginal characters as well as the Anglo ones - to place and time. They are,

'something both new and old, something recreated and invigorated.' 

Scott doesn't shy away from the complexities inherent in modern Australian life. His characters were not stereotypes or caricatures. They were flawed, idealistic, weak, contrary human beings trying to be the best they could.

Or as Scott says in his Afterword, 'a little band of survivors following a retreating tide of history, and returning with language and story...provides the connection with a story of place deeper than colonisation, and for transformation and healing.'

Bill @The Australian Legend has written an informative post about the Cocanarup massacres that are central to this story.

If you'd like to learn more about Noongar language and culture visit their website here.

Scott has also been engaged in the Stories Project that produces illustrated picture books in Noongar language.

The Garma Festival is currently on in Gove, Northern Territory. An awareness and appreciation for our Indigenous past is slowing, oh so slowly, gaining momentum, although our politicians response to the Uluru Statement from last year is sadly lagging behind the thinking of many other Australians.

Book 14 of #20BooksofSummer (winter)
24℃ in Sydney
21℃ in Northern Ireland

The Shepherd's Hut By Tim Winton

The Shepherd's Hut is Tim Winton's much anticipated latest novel. I am a fan, but with reservations. I loved Cloudstreet and Dirt Music but hated The Riders (it has the dubious honour of being one of my very first DNF books). Breath was good but a bit blokey and Eyrie was okay, but a bit blokey. I adore his children's picture book illustrated by Karen Louise called The Deep. And his essays in The Boy Behind the Curtain were truly luminous.

So I entered The Shepherd's Hut cautiously.

The first 20 or so pages were a struggle for me. I know that there are awful dad's out there, I know what they can do. I used to be a teacher, I've assisted some of those families in negotiating the quagmire of domestic violence over the years. But I don't feel the need to read about such sad, brutal things.

So I struggled with the first part of the story where we experienced Jaxie's dysfunctional relationship with his father. I thought, I can't do this.

Later that night, I tried again.

Without spoiling anything for anyone, Jaxie was on the run and suddenly we had a full-on road trip/survival story underway. Unusually for Winton, there wasn't a beach in sight, as Jaxie headed inland to the scrubby, salty desert areas of WA.

Some readers might find Jaxie's vernacular hard going. It annoyed me at the start, but I think I'm at an age when teenager-speak is annoying in whatever form it takes! But once Jaxie hit the road, the voice became more considered and thoughtful, and was perhaps meant to reflect the influence that Fintan had on him. If you disliked Huck Finn or Lincoln in the Bardo because of the local dialect, then steer clear of this one too. The swearing may also put off some readers.

Fintan was the ageing priest that Jaxie stumbled upon in the bush. We don't know why he's living a life of exile, but there were obviously some issues around the priesthood and the Catholic Church that Winton was exploring here. I'm still not sure what they were.

The same goes for Winton's well-known concern about toxic masculinity. He discusses it in detail, but what is the solution?

Because it's also #ReadIreland month over at Cathy's blog, I thought I would highlight the Irish character in Winton's story. Fintan, the priest is described by Jaxie like this,

I never did know what to make of Fintan MacGillis....He was Irish, he told me that straight up. But I never found out what it was he done to get himself put there by the lake, what kind of person he was before....He was one of them geezers been out on his own so long he talks to himself all day....You had to sort through all these bent up words to figure which was bullshit and which was true. What I mean is he made a lot of noise but sometimes he didn't say much. With that accent of his and the way he said things fancy and musical, it was like camouflage and you knew deep down he'd been doing this all his life, hiding in clear sight.

The Shepherd's Hut is not an easy read, but, in the end I found it to be a worthwhile encounter.
It's not quite a coming of age story because the becoming part was still to happen and it's not quite a road trip story as Jaxie's journey was nowhere near done. It was more like a vignette, a moment in time, a snapshot in time.

I'm not sure I learnt anything new or gained any insights into domestic violence, the lost and lonely or survival, but I can see an action-packed, fast-paced, gritty movie on the horizon!

Eyrie by Tim Winton
Dirt Music by Tim Winton
The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton
The Deep by Tim Winton

Facts:

• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

My #AusReadingMonth Possibilities

As many of you know, my TBR pile is out of control. A bigly number of those books are by Australian authors (I feel safe using bigly now that 1. we know that Trump actually said big league and 2. that bigly is a real work, although archaic and rarely used.)

I thought I'd list some of them, focusing on the state, territory or town that each is predominantly set in, to help our overseas #AusReadingMonth participants.

Since I haven't read any of these books yet, I'm using their blurbs and goodreads reviews to help me work out where they're set. If anyone would like to correct me, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Aunts Up the Cross by Robin Dalton (memoir) - Kings Cross, Sydney, NSW
The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough (historical fiction) - The Blue Mountains, NSW
The Dyehouse by Mena Calthorpe (fiction/classic) - Sydney, NSW
Mirror Sydney by Vanessa Berry (non-fiction) - NSW
The Timeless Land by Elenor Dark (fiction/classic) - NSW
Watershed by Fabienne Bayet-Charlton (fiction) - NSW, I think.
True North by Brenda Niall (biography) - NSW (& elsewhere)

Home by Larissa Behrendt (fiction) - NSW

1788 by Watkin Tench (history/memoir) - NSW

Everyman's Rules of Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany (fiction) - VIC
The Pea-Pickers by Eve Langley (fiction/classic) - VIC
Sisters by Ada Cambridge (fiction/classic) - VIC
The Danger Game by Kalinda Ashton (fiction) - Melbourne, VIC
The First Book of Samuel by Ursula Dubosarsky (historical fiction)- Melbourne, VIC
Conditions of Faith by Alex Miller (fiction/memoir) - Melbourne, VIC predominantly

A Child's Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper (historical fiction) - TAS

The Commandant by Jessica Anderson (historical fiction/classic) - QLD
It's Raining in Mango by Thea Astley (fiction) - QLD
The Slow Natives by Thea Astley (fiction) - QLD
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan (fiction) - QLD
Omega Park by Amy Barker (fiction) - QLD
Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller (fiction) - QLD

A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentill (historical fiction/crime)- ACT predominantly

Shallows by Tim Winton (fiction) - WA
Benang by Kim Scott (memoir/fiction) - WA
Coonardoo by Katharine Susannah Prichard (fiction) - WA

My Place by Sally Morgan (memoir) - WA

Island Home by Tim Winton (memoir/essays) - FREE - it covers various areas of Australia, although being Winton it will probably be predominantly WA based.

Maurice Guest by Henry Handle Richardson (fiction/classic) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.

My Love Must Wait by Ernestine Hill (historical fiction/classic) - FREE - a fictional story about Matthew Flinders
Cabin Fever by Elizabeth Jolley (fiction) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (fiction) - FREE - futuristic novel set in Australia

The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser (historical fiction) - FREE - an Australian writer with an overseas setting.
Dancing with Strangers by Inga Clendinnen (history) - FREE - all of Australia.
The Bush by Don Watson (non-fiction) - FREE - all of Australia.

As you can see, I actually need a year-long AusReading event to come close to reading all these books! Can you recommend any of these books? Which one should I tackle first?

My Top Ten all-time favourite Australian books.

Jandamarra by Mark Greenwood and Terry Denton

Jandamarra is based on a true story from the Bunuba people of the Kimberley region in far north W.A. This area encompasses Fitzroy Crossing, the Napier Ranges, King Leopold Ranges and the Lennard River.

Jandamarra was born in the 1870's but his legend lives on in local folk tales. The white folk saw him as an outlaw, whilst the Indigenous people view him as a courageous hero protecting their sacred lands.

Greenwood & Denton sought permission from the Bunuba people to bring his story to greater prominence.

We learn about his childhood; his nickname Pigeon, his first job looking after the white fella's sheep, learning how to ride & shoot.

We see the growing animosity between the white settlers and the native population who see their sacred sites being fenced in & over run by cattle.

Before we know it, Jandamarra is being arrested & jailed for stealing sheep. Whist in jail, he befriends the local police officer, Richardson. When he is released, he becomes a wanderer. He doesn't feel that he belongs anywhere anymore. He has broken tribal laws and white laws. Eventually, he gets work with Richardson as a police tracker.

He helps Richardson arrest his uncle and cousins until his conscience gets the better of him. He kills Richardson and sets free his family. They all go on the run. Jandamarra becomes a fugitive from justice and engages in a three year guerrilla style war against the white settlers.

His daring and cunning and ability to disappear led everyone to believe he had acquired magical powers. Magical powers that came from a secret billabong near Tunnel Cave. It took another Aboriginal tracker with special powers and from another tribe, to track him down and kill him near Tunnel Cave.

The story highlights the tragedy of early white settlement in Australia on the local people.

Greenwood leaves us with these powerful words from the Bunuba people,

Burrudi yatharra thirrili ngarra

We are still here and strong. 

Jandamarra has been shortlisted for this year's CBCA Eve Pownall award  for information book.