Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:18 Hello and welcome to the Fremantle press podcast in 2022. My name is Brooke Denelle and I'm the author of the glass house, which won the 2021 Forgety literary award and will be published by Fremantle press in November. This year, today we're recording. And while you're in , this is a place of Boulevard. It many stories. And I'd like to acknowledge our first storytellers along with Nunga elders past present and future. My guest today is the author of locus summer David Allen fatale. David is a writer living between Bush and seeing north of Perth, Western Australia. He's worked for many years as a journalist in WWI with the ABC and internationally with BBC world written over five years while traveling the globe locus summer was shortlisted for the Australian Vogel literary award in 2017 and was developed through a fellowship at Varuna, the national writer's house since publication mid last year, Lopez summer has been chosen as one of Jillian O'Shaughnessy summer rates and named one of the books we loved in 2021 by Tony Jordan, David Allen, Vitaly. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to be with you, Brooke. Describe for listeners what locus summer is about
Speaker 2 00:01:30 At first glance. I think loca summer is a homecoming story. It's about redemption, but there's a lot of twists and turns along the way. It's essentially the story of the final harvest of the Brockman family's property in the Midwest town of Septimus. The father is afflicted with dementia. The older brother, the natural air to the property, I suppose, uh, has died in a mining accident several years ago. And the youngest son Rowan our protagonist gets called up one day by his mum. He's working as a journalist in the city. He wants nothing to do with the farm. He's essentially a strange himself from those relationships since his brother died. And she says, look, this is it. I'm selling the farm. Your father can't go on anymore. We need to face reality, come home for the final harvest. This is your last chance. So like I say, on the face of it, it's a homecoming story, but not really. This is, this is a book about redemption identity masculinity in crisis, uh, our relationship to the land and the environment, everything it, and it's all condensed into this one property and these three hectic weeks where they have to bring in a crop and in a way settle a lot of debts that are both personal and emotional. So it's, it's a quite an intense book from start to finish.
Speaker 1 00:02:54 There are so many things there that we're going to get to, but the first thing I want to ask you is what are the origins of loca summit? So when did it spark from, how did it evolve to be this beautiful novel?
Speaker 2 00:03:06 Well, I was a journalist for a long time and I worked, my first posting was with JWN golden west news in Geraldton. So I was about 21 at the time. And I'm, I'm a city kid. I've never really been out of the city apart from, um, well, I'd done some travel, but you know, I'd never lived outside. And so I had this quiet, uh, confronting experience of living in Geraldton and reporting on the Midwest for about a year. And I really got to know the Midwest, uh, and Gascoyne regions quite well. And I just fell in love with the landscape and the people and the romance of farming. I mean, that, that sort of, you know, Badger Patterson kind of, uh, ideal of it. But then when I worked in Kalgoorlie for the ABC, I may make good friends with a, a, a journalist there who his family had a property over in new south Wales.
Speaker 2 00:03:53 And because I'd always been interested in farming one day, he said, look, would you like to come for the harvest? And I said, of course, so I booked three weeks off work, flew over to Sydney with him. And then we went out to his place. Uh, and I worked at as, just as a general hand on the harvest, you know, by the end I was, you know, I got to drive the harvester for a couple of couple of runs, which was pretty good. And it was just this transcendent experience. It was something that I think, um, every 24 year old candidates to do, you know, it's not necessarily about being strong, it's about feeling strong and that I could, I could handle something that was outside this white collar world that I was inhabiting with journalism and journalism is all about observing, but here I was doing and kind of about the same time my grandfather developed dementia.
Speaker 2 00:04:40 And as, as that progressed, that was very, very hard. A lot of the things that I was seeing in there and these two worlds kind of combined after he died, I was working as a journalist over in, uh, in London. And I just knew I needed to write something that had always been there in the back of my mind. That journalism was a way of me gathering experiences enough to qualify, I suppose, as a writer, a lot of the writers I've, I've really admired, have gone a similar path at least. And I was deliciously bored in a seminar one day, a travel seminar. And I just started writing about a place where, um, Meridian lines of sun and soil combined to make the most perfect week growing conditions on the planet. And then I thought, well, who would be unhappy there? And then from there, everything spun. So some of those original lines that I jotted in that notebook while I was really bored, have actually survived into the manuscript. There's only one or two of them, but I'm quite happy that the original seeds, a stir within the book
Speaker 1 00:05:46 Who do golden nuggets in there and find them.
Speaker 1 00:05:51 So one of the main themes of the novel you talked about, there's lots of things going on, obviously. Um, and so one of the main things is that of belonging. So there's this belonging to the land, there's belonging to the community, this community of Septimus that comes together a lot. And then, um, and, and supports each other. There are even through the harvest, there's also belonging in your family. So for example, we've got Rowan's mother she's lived on this property in Septimus for 30 years, but she says she still doesn't feel like a local. And as you say, Rowan, after the death of his brother, he's exiled himself to the coast, he's away from his family. He's in the city. Were you conscious of those kinds of ideas when writing the novel, as you said, like the idea came from who could ever be unhappy in this, in this perfect weight growing place. Was that something that really followed you through writing?
Speaker 2 00:06:41 That's the edge, that's the sharpness I'm writing about somebody who was happy there and these things were all happening to them. And it was well as me. You could do that, but for me, that didn't appeal because a lot of ways I've always felt like an outsider. Uh, being a journo makes you an outsider. And that appeals to me, I grew up, uh, a red-headed pale skin boy in the Northern suburbs, when an Italian last name, I didn't quite fit the mold. So I always, I like the notion at least of, of being an outsider. And from a story perspective, I think it's easy, not easier, but it's, um, there's more opportunity for you as a writer, if your character is a slight fish out of water. I think one of the greatest examples of that is the Aubrey maturer and series. It's the master and commander books where it's all set on a tall ship in the 18th century.
Speaker 2 00:07:32 But you know, if you don't know the front of the ship from the back, how are you going to navigate the world? But Patrick O'Brian, the writer created a surgeon who comes aboard the ship. And so through his ignorant eyes, complexity can be explained. But in saying that Rohan, my protagonist is of that world. He is in a way, deeply interested in the mechanics of the, of the harvest he glories in, in describing it. It's just, he's not over he's from it, but not of it. And I liked the interplay of that. I liked that sharp edge of who am I and what am I doing here? I love this, but I don't, you know, he calibrates his whole life to his dislike of a place that he loves. And that's very confusing, but so's life. And I think that's what I was searching for.
Speaker 2 00:08:19 I was searching for a way to access the, the complexity of people were not simple. I think when you, when you sit down to create a character, you know, you can create as much of a profile of them as you, like, you know, this is their favorite food and all that kind of stuff. But if you forget that people are, we're just weird, we don't make sense. And if there's no, uh, chaos to the order that you're trying to bring, then I think it just doesn't pop. And earlier versions of Rowan were quite logical and sensible. And it was only when I shook the jar a bit and embraced that, that like, say that outsider thing. But I think it worked
Speaker 1 00:08:57 Because he is quite emotional and it's clear from his childhood. He was always wanting to be the Raider. Whereas the brother who's passed away. He was into everything. You know, he, he had planned his whole life around eventually taking over the farm. And Rowan was always, that was never in his, in his cards. Um, when you went out and did this harvest as a journalist, as a city boy, how did that inform you kind of building Rowan? How did that work out for you
Speaker 2 00:09:27 Aside from giving me, I suppose the technical knowledge, because I was pretty aware of that. You know, you're proud to say that a lot of country writers have said, yep. That's how it is. Although a lot of people will say, why didn't they fire up that old harvester from the beginning? They're the most reliable ones like, because story, uh, but the main thing I would say is that doing the harvest gave me an appreciation for, in a way how dedicated people were. Um, there's a, there's a part in the book where some shapes are stuck in a dam. I really happened on that harvest. Um, it's not exactly how it happened, but I'd I'd. I tried to dig them out. I really did. I spent a pen now just trying to dig these poor shape out of, uh, out of a waterhole. And I remember going up to the man who was the shepherd of, of the property and saying to him, look, they shape a stuck there.
Speaker 2 00:10:20 And I thought that he'd be quite dismissive, a stupid bloody animals or whatever, you know, because people are, I suppose, hardened to that kind of thing. But he was upset because that was, that was his job. And he had to do that very difficult, but ultimately necessary thing of putting them down. So that was his responsibility. So that really clued me into this sort of thing. It's not just about that. This is hard work it's that there is a duty and a responsibility to it, and it's nothing to do with, with, uh, gender or position or anything like that. It's just, we're all in this together and we have to do this. And so I, I was glad I did that harvest because it moved me just beyond the simple mechanics of it. It, it sort of clued me into maybe the emotional undercurrents of belonging to this. And I think that's where Rowan goes a bit wrong there. We're waiting for him to step up and just, just do your job just to take responsibility. But because he views that so much as his identity, that it will destroy his identity. He's resisting that.
Speaker 1 00:11:19 Yeah. Every time he's, he's kind of on the verge of stepping up, he almost self sabotages, you know, he does something to kind of almost prove to himself that, yeah, I'm not, I'm not meant to be here, things like that. Um, as interested when you said about this, the shepherd and you thought, oh, if I tell him about these sheep, he'll be dismissive, but actually he did really care about them. And that's possibly our listeners who are less city folk than us will be going well, of course, you know, he cares about them. Um, but I, I really like in the, it's got such this typical Australian qualities in lots of ways, you know, it's weight, farm, it's harvest time. They're going to the pub, you know, there are sheep getting stuck in stuff they're driving across salt flats. It's very Australian, lots of ways. Um, and yet it's got these real much darker undercurrent, lots of nuance, the characters behaving in ways we don't necessarily expect them to behave, but especially in relation to the land, what do you feel like the novel is saying about the environment and the responsibility that those farming families feel towards the environment?
Speaker 2 00:12:30 I was just, uh, it was a Boulevard body, the new museum. And I've got a wonderful exhibit about the creation of the wheat belt from space. It's this basically denuded at a half sickle shape run of, of, of white farms that, you know, it goes from basically from Calberry all the way down to all the way down to Esperance and, you know, th that kind of area, and, you know, there's very, very little remnant vegetation left, and then I've got in the museum, they had, um, you know, old footage of people towing these enormous balls behind, you know, metal balls behind tractors and just clearing this. And on the one hand, it's like complete environmental destruction and it's heartbreaking and you look at it and go, wow. Like think of all of the, the vegetation that was lost, all the animals and, and the solidity that came from that is so yeah, seen from space, it's this, this incredible bout of environmental destruction.
Speaker 2 00:13:22 But on the other hand, it's the bedrock of, I suppose, set low economy of what Western Australia's regular economy that it, at least in the early days, and, and still continuing it's, uh, many people's identity. It's, it's their, where they live. It's, it's part of, part of this world that, that exists now. And so there's this, I dunno, just this, um, like I said before, this, this, this hinge point there, and that's why the salinity is really important, uh, in the book, because the environment's very important to me. And I wanted to include that because it's not just given carte blanche, you know, that this is how it is. It's no, it came at a massive cost, but at the same time, west Australia and farmers are country leading in their renewal and management of land, you know, um, whenever to south Australia. And I was, I was shocked, you know, there's no windbreak trees.
Speaker 2 00:14:15 It's just a huge flensing of dust that comes off the Gulf there. Whereas farmers in WWI, from my time as a journo, I watched them planting, you know, remnant vegetation back and, and pulling the, you know, getting the water table to go down and managing their land and using, you know, consulting indigenous groups and bringing that knowledge back. And so the book itself, I, I really wanted to present a realistic version of the country that people would go, that's how it is. That's the truth of it, that it is complex, that it is improving, that there were bad things. And there were good things I never wanted to stray into any sort of stereotypical territory that was really challenging to do, uh, because it's a rural story. It's a homecoming story. You've got the farm gate, the wild dogs. You've got the mom, you've got the dad, you've got all these, all these things.
Speaker 2 00:15:03 You can basically make it like on our selection, but know that the duty that you have is to present the truth. And I think maybe that harks back to my origins as a, as a journalist in that I was always really frustrated that you could never tell the truth in just one story. You always had to build up a number of stories, and then that would present a whole thing. But because of the nature of news, people only have one story at a time, and it's very hard for people to build the entire picture, but with a book, you know, I had what, 42 odd chapters to present a mosaic of experiences that I feel reflect the complexity and the re uh, of that situation. Because like I say, life life's complex and life's weird and multi-layered and nuanced. And if I've captured that in any way, then, then I'm happy
Speaker 1 00:15:56 Because this farm has been in the Brockman family for generations. There is this kind of expectation up until the older brother Albert dies that the oldest son will take it on. But this father who is suffering from dementia in over the course of the novel, he's kind of obviously in love with his farm, but also he says maybe he shouldn't have been a farmer. Um, and then both he and his wife towards the end, what they want to do is to give the farm back to the environment as much as possible. They want it to be. Rewelded that kind of thing. They're very concerned about the traditional owners of the land in this case, the M and G people. Um, and what's been done to them over the course of having settlers farming on the land. And all of these aspects of the novel are so timely, but yet it's, it's set in 1986. So it's over 35 years old. What drew you to that time period in particular?
Speaker 2 00:16:52 Well, I was born in 83, so I kinda, I kinda remember this era to me, that era is very interesting because one of my private obsessions is the America's cup, which has mentioned in this story, particularly the Frio edition. I remember being on a boat watching some of that, but to me, it's this hinge point in Wwise history. It's this hinge point in Wwise at least modern day settler history. And that will often after golf with Lemonis and the dismissal and seven don't want to mansplain this too much, but it was the 79, you know, the a hundred year anniversary of WWI that everyone had the shit tee t-shirts, people were becoming much more aware of history and our place in it, and what we wanted our identity to be at least the collective identity to be that appealed to me. You know, it was a time of great change.
Speaker 2 00:17:38 You know, billions of dollars are being spent to gussy Fremantle up for the America's cup races because all of a sudden the eye of the world was going to be honest, things were changing. We were ripping down heritage buildings. We were building skyscrapers. You know, that's when the rendezvous, we went on to Scarborough beach, I've heard it pronounced renders fast, which is always very strongly. But, uh, so it, that appealed to me as a, as a period of, of where I could present change because Rowan is having to grow up and you want the time period to evoke that. So to me, the way I structured the book in that chatting Rowan's journey like mathematically, I know Graham Greene did this with a lot of his characters that he went Rowan goes from, I would say, minus 10 at the start to zero at the end. So it's a homecoming story, but it's not a, it's a redemption story, but it doesn't show you that redemption. It shows you the possibility of that redemption and the journey that it takes to get to zero and to begin with a blank slate, at least partly a blank slide. There's an opportunity in the air. So with all that change in the air, in that period, that really appealed, I think that just gave a good atmosphere to that.
Speaker 1 00:18:49 And so, is there anything else about the novel you pro we've been doing lots of interviews. I know you've been at writers festivals. Is there anything that no one's asked you about yet that you just really want to take the chance?
Speaker 2 00:19:00 Oh, yes. It's been exhausting and that phone never stopped ringing. Now, one thing that I was actually quite, um, that was very challenging to write in the story was men at work. And it's a bit of a fraught topic these days, I suppose, but I, I didn't want to just have, will the work crew just be a bunch of, you know, bloody this and bloody that Aussie guys, swearing blue motor and cussing each other out and doing the work. I think that was the easy way it said I had to strip away. Okay. Well, how to, how to men interact with each other when it's positive, how to men interact with each other when it's negative, how to, how do you earn respect? How do you gain respect? How do you show disrespect within, within the circle? And it all comes down to work and work as such a, in a stereotypical way, a bedrock of, of identity. So that was very interesting territory to try to work in. So I'll let people be the judge of how that hello.
Speaker 1 00:19:57 Well, if I can be the judge, that's the character in the book called Stoller. Who's been working on the farm for 20 years. And, um, I really liked the going back to the aspect of belonging, again, that he doesn't want to own the land. He just wants to belong to the land. He says, and he he's feelings about the land and the work and respect for each other and how you behave on the harvest is really complex. And he's a really interesting guy who clearly has very deep feelings about the land and about what should be done. And, yeah, so just in terms of him, you, I think you've really captured it. So as you know, I was really fortunate to win the foggerty literary award for 18 to 35 year old west Australian writers. And so
Speaker 2 00:20:41 I'm still
Speaker 1 00:20:41 Stuck, uh, um, and yeah, not everyone gets that chance. Like it was it's amazing chance. You've had quite a similar experience. So locus summer was shortlisted for the Vogel, which is that's another really prestigious award for unpublished manuscripts for young writers. Um, but we, I think we both remember those anxious times where we were wondering, you know, are we ever going to get a novel published? And so for writers who are just at the beginning of their careers, who are listening to this, what's one thing that you really wish you had known when you were starting out
Speaker 2 00:21:14 Not to fixate so much on publication, because I really do. And the Vogel had a lot to do with that in the sense that, uh, I was shortlisted that came completely out of the blue. I was 35, it's an under 35 award. And there were five of us picked and we were all 35. So we called ourselves the last chances. And it was a great experience. You know, I, I got my photo taken in the paper, the worst for Google. It's the photo of me ever taken it's, it's incredible. And then extract of locus, some, uh, was published in the Australian. I flew over to Sydney for the, you know, the gala, uh, award ceremony, but I didn't, you know, I didn't win and everybody else got picked up by a publisher, but me and I walked away with three books and five boxes of cereal because it's, the vocals is like, you know, there are several company, but this is the thing.
Speaker 2 00:22:09 This sounds very intuitive. It doesn't, it, you know, I should've got a, this and I should've got that. And then I I'd sort of spun me into a very odd place where I was like, well, what's wrong with this book? You know, why isn't it good enough? And then it hit me like a bullet that it wasn't good enough that I needed to do more work. And from a period of fixating so much on, you know, why is may and why wasn't this book getting picked up? I just remembered I had to do the work. And then I got a phone call saying you've been selected for a fellowship at Verona, the national writer's house. And I was like, right. So I went there for two weeks and I worked with Tony Jordan, Gabriel, Kerry, and Judith Russell, who were just heavy hitters who schooled me.
Speaker 2 00:22:48 And I had two weeks of walking around the blue mountains and retooling this, this work, and then went off on the caravan trip for two years, writing look a summer whenever I could, and just doing the work, forgetting about being published. And that is really hard to do. I think when you've been so close with the Vogel, I sort of thought, is this just all for nothing? Should I just stop and write something else? Or do I believe in the story enough to keep going? And Lori stayed my writing mentor and someone who I worked with, um, in the editorial process very deeply on in the manuscript stage just said to me, look, you just got to go a bit crazy, man. You just got to embrace it. You just got to go all the way out and not worry about the result in the sense that it gets published.
Speaker 2 00:23:37 Just do the work and make it the best that you can because looking back if I'd won, I think it would have been a really bad book. I hadn't been on the journey. I hadn't done that. So if there's anything I could say, it sounds easy from someone who's been part, I don't worry about being published, but it's free yourself from that worry free yourself from that pressure when I'm going through it now with book two, I'm just sort of like, it is what it is, let it be what it is. And don't worry too much about the ultimate thing, because being published is a very separate thing to the creative process. I think you're probably finding that it's an entirely different world and enjoy the, enjoy the creative bit for, you know, as much as you can and keep it separate from the other part.
Speaker 1 00:24:26 And I, I liked that and you know, it wasn't good enough and that you kept working on it. And now you've got this book that you, you know, you're so proud of and in the alternate reality where you won, you know, and baby,
Speaker 2 00:24:39 Maybe, I mean, I wouldn't, I would have had three months to change to turn that manuscript into something that would have been published. And I just don't think it would have stacked up. And I thank my lucky stars that I did the two years I got the two years. It all makes sense when you look back, when you've forgotten the pain of it.
Speaker 1 00:25:00 And so do you think that, um, your career, as you said, you've been in journalist, you've been a freelance writer. How has that contributed to being a novelist?
Speaker 2 00:25:10 That's a good question. I don't think it made me a creative writer. Journalism is very much about gathering and dissemination of facts in an orderly way. That's been one of the main themes of, of locus summer. How can Rowan the journalist open himself up to life, the artistry of life. And that's maybe a little bit of my story because I'd always wanted to be a writer, but I joined the army for riders basically, you know, where they teach you, they teach you to kill with the ABC. So, um, it teaches you to write to a deadline. It teaches you to be very organized and your habits, but at the same time as well, I think it's more, um, it's about experiences. It's about opening yourself up to experiences. I was basically paid by the ABC for five years to have adventures. And I did all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:25:59 Uh, same with the BBC. Same without zero. I did. I just did wonderful things and met so many people and filled notebooks with sketches of people and ticket stubs. And, you know, I'm like a bowerbird I collect all kinds of stuff, but I have some quotes to read, which I think support this. So I'm reading leaping into waterfalls, the enigma, Matic, Gillian mirrors by Bernadette and Brennan. And it's fabulous. It's all about Julianne Mears and her artistic life. And there's two quotes. This is very good. So she's, she's transcribed this from may Sutton's journal of a solitude. My unbelief is that one regard to oneself, if one is a serious writer as an instrument for experiencing life, all of it flows through this instrument and it's distilled through it into works of art. I love that because it makes me think, well, I always had it in the back of my head.
Speaker 2 00:26:52 You know, I'm just collecting stuff. I mean, literally the early literary heroes, Graham crane, and Hemingway and Ford Maddox Ford Gaza, Gaza that turned the century to the riders. They, they viewed it like that. And we're all products of our, of our experience and our imagination. And it's how, how brave are you in digging into that? And so, you know, they'll say, write what you know, well, I'm not a country boy, but I know enough in order to do that. And so when I finally had the courage to listen to the voice inside my head, I knew I had the skillset from journalism to at least do the basics, but the rest breaking out of that, that journo show to actually be a, be artistic. That was hard. It's still hard. Um, it's hard to call myself a writer, but, um, I'm embracing that more and more.
Speaker 1 00:27:42 Yeah. And I think people would say as someone with a novel, they would say, you're a writer.
Speaker 2 00:27:50 Oh yeah. I'll tell you after three, you know, it's like being an ice, you know, you've got to have like five novels.
Speaker 1 00:28:00 Well, Dave, thank you for being here today. It's been absolutely amazing to talk to you and learn a little bit more about how this wonderful book came to be. Um, you've really had some glowing well-earned reviews. So Tony Jordan said that few novels have such quiet authority in insight and westerly called it rich complex heart-wrenching novel. And the Australian women's weekly has said that it was powerfully poignant and beautifully crafted. And I think all of those comments encapsulate as best as possible, just how wonderful this book is. You've really done a beautiful job. I just, I really love the book about to say that I really, really, really do
Speaker 2 00:28:37 Looking forward to yours,
Speaker 1 00:28:41 But so where can people buy locus on
Speaker 2 00:28:44 We're all good books are sold. You can order it directly from Fremantle press as well for the website, but also support your local bookstore. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:28:52 Yeah, definitely. That was David Allen. Portale talking to us about his novel locus summer. So if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the Fremantle press podcast on your favorite app. I'm Brooklyn Nell foggerty award winner and the author of the glass house. And I look forward to joining you next time as we talk to yet another fantastic storyteller from the west
