Coalcliff house

xmas 1980

Poets reading in Sydney, 1979

Julie Rose, Leonie Blair, Pam Brown, Erica Callan, Micky Allan, Loma Bridge, Anna Couani

The Coalcliff Gang

At the moment the list of readers on the opening night poetry event at Wollongong City Gallery Friday April 15 titled The Coalcliff Gang Rides Again is, with any luck:
Ken Bolton, Sal Brereton, Alan Jefferies, Pam Brown, Denis Gallagher, Laurie Duggan, Barbara Atkinson, Anna Couani, Tom Thompson, Adam Aitken, Steve Kelen, Erica Callan.  More to be added of course if hands go up.

The following afternoon Saturday April 16: Legends v Young Guns in association with The South Coast Writers Centre. Leading local Illawarra young poets will read.

A detailed program and poster will go up closer to the event.

and a few more

What was I doing at the time? In 1978 I had entered into a screenwriting partnership with Terry Larsen (who had written the script for Michael Thornhill’s movie The FJ Holden). We worked all through this period until I started teaching in 1983. Screenwriting was a weird experience: working at subsistence level for producers who would jet off for the States or Europe at a moment’s notice. Over the period we made a living, more or less, through the odd film grant or production deal though in the end nothing we worked on together would ever become a movie. Still, it was a useful experience. Without it I might not have been able to structure a long work. In 1979 I started work at the WEA Library with Librarian Barbara Brooks and worked there part-time for eighteen months or so. In between gigs I was funded by the poor person’s Literature Board (a.k.a. Social Security). Then in late 1983 I worked for a semester at what was then the Canberra College of Advanced Education (subsequently the University of Canberra) as a lecturer in Media Studies (I had previously taught Media, in 1976, at Swinburne, home of Australia’s first media theory course). After that position I advanced in the world to be the cleaner at Gleebooks, a position I held until late 1985, broken by a few months when a Victorian government grant sent me off to Gippsland to research The Ash Range.

a few details

Over the Coalcliff years I was mostly living in Sydney, though in late 1983 I spent most of my time in Canberra. In 1978-79 I lived by myself in a small house at 67 Newman Street, Newtown. From December 1979 to March 1981 I was in a share house at 240 Church Street Newtown with, among others, Hayden Keenan (film producer). Then from March to May I was briefly in a small room at 9 Fort Street Petersham - a house that Greg Maguire, Jann Chambers and Morgan Smith (Gleebooks) lived in at the time (John Forbes was an earlier tenant). I returned as a permanent resident after living by myself again in a house at 156 Wardell Road, Dulwich Hill for five or so months. By that time Morgan had moved out of Fort Street and artist Ken Searle was there. Ken and I both moved in to the house Greg and Jann bought around the corner at 83 Palace Street in September 1983. I lived there until October 1985 when I moved back to my home city, Melbourne.

mo-poke

Opposite the house at Coalcliff, way up in the night escarpment, lived a couple of solitary owls.

I'd often hear them in the middle of the night, answering one another.

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