BRISBANE’S MEN ON THE HILL – am grateful for day two!

Some may think it’s strange to be grateful for feeling exhausted after one day of working with the ‘Men on the Hill’ from St Laurence’s in Brisbane. However, my gratitude is born out of their enthusiasm and non-stop creative minds which meant that I had no choice but to be focussed non-stop for six hours straight. And I loved it. I mean, is there a better way to get through the day than to be completely involved in your work, while surrounded by passionate emerging writers? I think not.

So, when day two rolled around it was with a sense of excitement that I greeted my writing team and their kind-spirited mentor Ms Katherine Alpert, Director of the SLC Centre for Gifted and Talented Education. Our second day of working on our short novel as part of the National Year of Reading included a research visit the Queensland Museum.

The exhibits we were most interested in were From Little Things Big Things Grow  and Dandiiri Maiwar, covering both political activism and the history and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Queensland. We also toured the exhibition on the QLD Floods (Bouncing back from Disaster because we recognise it will impossible for us to write a contemporary novel set in Bris-Vegas without some mention of the most recent natural disaster.

Following a debrief in the Suncorp amphitheatre at South Bank (see pic above) we boarded a City Cat to experience firsthand the smells, sights, sounds etc of a trip on the river. I urged the team to look at fellow-passengers as potential characters, the targets or the perpetrators of crimes we are yet to uncover and write about. We are lucky that the rain – which had appeared and disappeared a number of times over that morning – held off while we ‘researched the river’.

 You’ll see from pics above and below that the team take their writing very seriously, even managing to do it standing up if need be!

After our writing ride up to St Lucia and back we headed back to school to consolidate our notes and start planning the next stage of researching. I have my team to their devices with instructions and a list of ideas they will run with until we meet again on April 30. Then, the fun really starts as our storyline will begin to unfold.