The Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction

Sands of Time

28/11/2022

By Kit Fennessy

To catch it in the telling, and make it stand up.
Aye, that’s the trick of it.

I walked out on a painted scene
The sky the pale blue of early morning
White clouds applied in a flat way,
Two dimensional.
They wouldn’t convince a set designer
But for all that, they were real.

The cry of corellas,
A flock wheeling in the sky.
Gallahs on power lines waking up in the new dawn.

An old lady walked a greyhound,
Returning from her journey,
Me just embarking on mine.
‘There’s a note of spring in the air,’ she said when we nodded.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself…’ I replied, then felt guilty.
‘I love it,’ I added, by way of apology.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

On the beach road I paused,
The sun low, a glaring eye in orange
Staring straight down a strip of black tar.
The gallahs on the line across the road,
Against a fibro home set piece,
Like something out of a Jeffrey Smart painting, Antennas black against the dawn.
The flock wheeled
A truck in the distance bearing toward me
As a shimmer passed through the light.
The waking world.

Cape Paterson author and publisher Kit Fennessy has won third prize in the short section of the Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with Sands of Time, a witty slice of memoir that seamlessly weaves together metaphysics, geology, history and Jimmy Hendrix.
Kit has self-published a number of books, short stories and novels, which are available through ArtSpace (Wonthaggi) and the library, and released a
new thriller titled ‘Cornerstone’ in October.

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One morning, on the way to school

28/11/2022

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By Jim Connelly

The day begins with the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of burning kindling. Mum is up and calling us. It’s cold inside and dark outside, but the fire brings physical and spiritual comfort. Porridge, toast and fried egg. Always egg. Schoolbag packed; lunch stowed. Good old Mum! The others have already left. If I run I might catch them, but they’ll be running too. Along the track, through the bush, and down the Garfield Hill. The sun will soon be up, but the street lights burn brightly. Across the railway line, walking now. I join the gaggle of kids outside Simmy’s shop. Three of them have ridden their bikes from Tynong. Someone says, ‘Charlie’s gonna be late. It’s nearly half past seven.”

Jim Connelly, a retired teacher and church minister living in Warragul, has won second prize in the short section of the 2022 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with One Morning, on the Way to School, a rollicking snapshot of the daily school bus ride from Garfield to Warragul in the 1940s.
Jim started creative writing in 2014 and has self-published 13 books since then, including Around and About in Gippsland.

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She and I (and truth and fiction)

28/11/2022

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By Grace Elizabeth Elkins

It is nearly 7am on Phillip Island and the fog sits low. Clouds coat the trees, the pie shop on the corner, the road. Cars pierce through the haze, unfazed. They do not slow, they know the roads; each pothole and undulation from the bridge to Wonthaggi (or wherever it is they are headed).

I drive with them into

white space.

Driving across the bridge, I cannot see the tide coming in beneath us. I cannot see it, but I know its rhythm, the ocean is infinitely unpredictable, and yet so certain. Obscured from view, it is frightening to think anything could be beneath us. Obscured from view, it is thrilling to imagine anything could be beneath us.

Blankness gives space to create.

Grace Elizabeth Elkins, a Cape Woolamai writer and teacher, has won the short section of the 2022 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with She and I (and truth and fiction).
The judges commented: "Using fog on the Phillip Island bridge as a metaphor for writing memoir and the discussion of the blurred lines between what is found and what is imagined, the writer shares excerpts from her autofictional memoir to show that 'fictionalisation creates the freedom to tell complex and uncertain truths' in this cleverly conceived and executed piece.
Grace is finishing a masters in writing at Deakin University and has had short fiction published in literary journals in Australia and the US.

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The Prom

26/11/2022

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By Lucinda Bain

In truth, the kind of life I lead with a houseful of young children can easily become monotonous. But at least once a year our domestic routine is interrupted by packing lists, camp gear and late night batch cooking and we find ourselves - my husband, three daughters and I – facing into the wind on the crisp shores of Norman Bay, our long shadows reaching into the earth, the oceanic air washing us clean of suburban tedium. After a long drive, countless are-we-there-yets, and with laundry baskets full of woollen jumpers, books, ground coffee, pasta, small canisters of soap and myriad other effects, we are at the Prom. It’s hard to imagine this place is always here, existing in parallel to our daily reality.

When my mother was 12, in the late 1960s, her family started holidaying at the Prom, Yiruk Wamoon. Black and white photographs in sticky old albums reveal three weather beaten children – Mum and her two siblings – on walking tracks all over the Prom, often sulking, particularly as the children in the photos become teenagers. With paper bags full of homemade scroggin (don’t forget the chopped apricots, Mum likes to remind me) and only occasionally wearing hats, they would hike with my grandfather while my grandmother tidied and swept their canvas tent and, no doubt, sat down with a book and a cup of billy tea or perhaps a sneaky white from the flagon. Upon hearing our familial stories I used to wonder why my grandmother often chose to stay back at the campsite and miss the beauty of a hike. Now as a mother myself, opting to stay back to get dinner ready or tidy the tent, I know the reasons intimately.

Eltham writer Lucinda Bain has won the 2022 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with The Prom, her personal interrogation of the writer’s place in nature in the midst of a climate emergency.
The judges said of The Prom: “Lyrical writing, tying past, present and future: the acknowledgement of the past, the fear and beauty of the present, the ever-diminishing hope for the future. It feels slightly bleak, yet ends on a hopeful, simple (yet profound) fact …
“Fantastic interrogation of the complexities of living under a constant and imminent existential threat in the context of privileged albeit sometimes mundane modern living.”

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Prom inspires prize-winning work

26/11/2022

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Lucinda Bain at her special place

By Catherine Watson

LUCINDA Bain has won the 2022 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with The Prom, a personal interrogation of the writer’s place in nature in the midst of a climate emergency.

Lucinda, who wins $5000 for her essay, showed the value of perseverance after a third equal placing in the 2020 prize and an unsuccessful entry last year.

The judges said of The Prom: “Lyrical writing, tying past, present and future: the acknowledgement of the past, the fear and beauty of the present, the ever-diminishing hope for the future. It feels slightly bleak, yet ends on a hopeful, simple (yet profound) fact …

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Rescue at the Bridge

23/2/2022

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By Roman Kulkewycz

The much welcome Autumn rain began to fall on Friday night and during the night there were intermittent heavy downpours. However this was not unusual for this rich dairying district of East Gippsland.

Most years this region experiences such heavy rainfall with occasional flooding involved. Unbeknown to all, this year was going to be very different.

The following morning rain began to fall steadily without causing any undue concern to the local farmers. But it was a different story high up in the mountains in the catchment areas where by Friday night the total rainfall had exceeded 400mm which in the old Imperial measurement is over fifteen inches; all within a 24 hour period.

In the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction, Garfield writer Roman Kulkewycz was commended for Rescue at the Bridge, his vivid account of a bad flood and a brave rescue.
Roman was born in Germany in 1947 of Ukrainian parents who were taken from their homeland as forced labourers during WWII. The family migrated to Australia in 1950. Roman spent his working life as a laboratory technician and later as a nurse, but always loved writing and has been a regular contributor to local newspapers all his adult life.

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Saved by Martha, Two sticks of Wood and a Woolly Sheep

9/2/2022

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By Leonie Margetts

It came out of desperate times and desperate times mean desperate things. A case of kill something or be killed. That is how it came to be when I found myself drumming my fingers continuously into the arm of the chair in the loungeroom to the point that I was so annoying and distracting that my daughter Justine threatened to break something over my head if I didn’t cease. We were all on edge, everyone in the house. Nothing was normal and would never be again. My daughter, my girls’ sister, had died and nothing at all was right in our world. Everything was all kinds of wrong and I had no recognition that I was drumming my fingers; that tears were pouring down my cheeks then off my face; and that my being in that state was really just too hard to deal with when my girls were trying to deal with their own emotions.

Leongatha writer Leonie Margetts was highly commended for Saved by Martha, Two sticks of Wood and a Woolly Sheep, her memoir of a devastating
grief and the surprising way she survived it.
In a cover letter, Leonie noted: “I have wanted to write since I was a child but didn’t feel brave enough to do so until my daughter Peta died. Together we wrote her cancer journey, Being Peta, which I completed for her after her death. It was my promise to her. Because of her I am getting brave to have a go at the age of 62.”

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Wallace Avenue Community Park, Inverloch

26/1/2022

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By Judy Vradenburg

Koolasuchus cleelandi – A large prehistoric amphibian named in honour of its discoverers Lesley Kool and Mike Cleeland. A fierce predator with sturdy legs, a thick tail, and a flattish spade-shaped head, it lived in fast flowing rivers and grew to the size of a modern salt-water crocodile. Its jaws were discovered near San Remo in 1990 and a partial skull, pectoral girdle, ribs and vertebrae were found in rocks along the Bass Coast dated at 125 million years. Koolasuchus is the youngest known temnospondyl in the world. [*1]

On Saturday 6th June 1987, Jim Kennan, State Minister for Planning and Environment, looked around the crowd at Apex Park on Williams Street in Inverloch. He had never seen so many people interested in a piece of ground. With 39% of Inverloch residents aged over 60, there was high demand and huge public support for the development of elderly persons accommodation, and the Inverloch Apex Club had suggested Apex Park as a site for the complex.

Inverloch writer Judy Vradenburg won third prize in the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with Wallace Avenue Community Park, Inverloch, an insider’s account of the realities of community activism.
The judges commented: “It ties together community, politics, history, future planning and volunteers and is a fascinating story of dedicated community action. The author is part of this story, nervous, unsure, yet honest, open and forging ahead. It is a story which engages and informs and with a happy ending which makes this a rare gem in the annals of local activism."

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The Snow Girls

15/12/2021

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By Graeme Wheeler

The start of the May 1964 school vacation was a busy time for Margaret Howard and June Weston. While June’s car, a little Volkswagen was being thoroughly checked the two young women packed their travelling clothes, and by the end of the first week they were ready to leave. They had planned a car tour, a three-legged route that would take them through Gippsland, north across the Dividing Range to the plains of Wangaratta, then homeward to Melbourne along the Hume Highway, not a long journey but one that would encompass much interesting country.

Saturday, May 23 dawned fine, and with a small carton of refreshments, farewells said, they left the suburbs on the first stage of their trip. Both were teachers in their early twenties; they relaxed as they spun along, glad to be on the move at last, confident that their methodical checking had left nothing to chance. The Highway took them through the lush dairy lands of Drouin and Warragul, a sealed ribbon that traversed the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges that paralleled it a few kilometres to the south.

Light of heart they skimmed along passing the smoky towers of Yallourn’s power stations and through the sickly cloud of Maryvale’s paper mills, emerging from the industrial pollution to the clean, fresh air of Rosedale.

Foster writer Graeme Wheeler has won second prize in the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with The Snow Girls, an account of the search for two young women missing in the Gippsland high country in the 1960s.

Graeme first wrote the story soon after the events described and was prompted to revisit it when he learned of the Bass Coast Prize. Now aged 93, he said he spent many happy hours revising the story and recalling the events. "At my age, there isn't much future, so your attention turns to the past."

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Covid diary with a difference impresses judges

2/12/2021

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es Quilford with Nahla, who often joined him on his daily winter swims.

By Catherine Watson

CAPE Paterson writer Rees Quilford has won the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with an evocative essay documenting his experience of returning to live in Bass Coast, the place of his birth and childhood.

Adrift in shallow waters outlines his attempt to reacquaint himself with the place through a daily routine of swimming, walking and photography at Cape Paterson’s Bay Beach through the first Covid winter.

A PhD candidate with the non/fiction Lab of the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Rees wins $5000 for his essay.

He said the prize was a valuable and financially significant prompt to inspire local creativity, reflection and storytelling.

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