growing up writing

Times sure have changed. A research trip to hunt down archival material used to take me weeks of self-indulgent white-gloved hiding out in the dungeons of one or other of the State Libraries dotted around our vast coastline, turning page after fragile page of old journals, records and obscure newspaper accounts of little remembered historical happenings of interest only to the social history researcher intent on tracking down tidbits to add colour and vibrancy to their latest exotic fiction set in times long past. Stories packed in dusty boxes in the dungeons of libraries, bestowed to crusty keepers of the long forgotten tomes waiting to be repackaged to new audiences only if the writer did the legwork required to find, record and transform such tomes under the bespectacled gaze of the tome keeper – take off white cotton glove to wipe an eye teared over in joy or sorrow at life’s cruel ironies recorded in what is now considered an illegible scrawl but was once the fountain-tipped cursive of educated scribes of our yesteryears? Only if you’re really brave…

Enter Trove – no need to leave the comfort of my study for all but the most intricate detailed research (like obscure newspapers that funding has forgotten and remain only on micro-film in the aforementioned State Library dungeons, caretakered by modern day bespectacled keepers of historical records who also, luckily in my case, have the forethought to view the modern digital record keeping methods with a touch of skepticism).

I was chasing 1890s copies of The Wild River Times, tracking down social tidbits on Carrington, an old timber town of the Atherton Tablelands. The new digitalised system at the Library was unhelpful but my crusty bespectacled librarian came to my rescue. She had a PDF of all the old newspapers available on microfilm ‘just in case’. Lucky me!! I now get to spend the next few weeks in the dungeons of the State Library trawling through micro-filmed copies of 1890s Wild River Times in search of tidbits to bring the world of my Timber Cutter’s Daughter in Carrington, Atherton Tablelands, to life.

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