Mortlock Wing (1884), State Library of South Australia

In the decade from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, South Australia, under premier Don Dunstan, was Australia’s most progressive state. I won’t list all the achievements – you can read them in the Wikipedia article linked on his name – but there were big social justice ones including the recognition of Aboriginal land rights, decriminalisation of homosexuality, and abolition of the death penalty. Dunstan was also known for supporting the arts … and South Australia became a mecca for anyone interested in the arts. Things have changed now, as they always do, but the Dunstan legacy remains in the Adelaide Festival Centre, probably Australia’s first real multi-purpose arts centre.

The state also hosts an internationally recognised arts festival, the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and Australia’s oldest writers’ festival, the Adelaide Writers Week, which has run for over 40 years. And yet, most Australians would probably be hard-pressed to name writers from the state. In fact, probably the best known writer now living in the state is J. M. Coetzee! A great writer, but in my state-focused posts I like to look at writers’ formative years …

And so who? Well, I’ll name a few but I must admit I couldn’t think of many myself:

• Barbara Hanrahan (1939-1991) whose The scent of eucalyptus I reviewed some months ago. That book – autobiographical fiction – is an idiosyncratic (but universal too) evocation of an early-mid twentieth century Adelaide childhood. She was also an artist of note. But, she is no longer alive.
• Peter Goldsworthy (b. 1951) whose Three dog night I read, and enjoyed,  before I started blogging. He is also a poet, librettist and screenwriter. His daughter, Anna Goldsworthy, has written a well-reviewed memoir, Piano lessons (which is on my virtual TBR).
• Colin Thiele (1920-2006) who wrote primarily for children – for the late primary-early secondary years. He is most famous for his novel Storm Boy which was made into a highly successful movie by another of Don Dunstan’s initiatives, the South Australian Film Corporation. I don’t usually include children’s writers in my lists but his writing is so evocative of South Australian landscapes that it seemed wrong to omit him.

Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia

South Australia, like each state, has a distinctive geography, which ranges from its golden Mediterranean-like south to its arid north, with lakes, mountains and pockets of lush green in between. I’ll end with an excerpt from a Peter Goldsworthy poem titled “Yorke Peninsula, Easter”:

Returning to childhood.
To fields of sweat and dust,
scraps of eucalypt,
wheezing crows.

To the backyard of summer,
the brown brown grass of home.
(excerpted from The Australian Poetry Library)

Several well-known Australian authors currently live in South Australia – including Brian Castro and children’s writers, Mem Fox and Gillian Rubinstein – but I’d love to hear of any other (reasonably) contemporary South Australian writers.