Pink Shoes Meet Big Minds and Big Hearts

Dinner with a view.

On Friday, I was lucky enough to fly up to Miriuwung Gajerrong land in Western Australia’s north to participate in the Kimberley Writers Festival. I’ve travelled up that way before, back in 2022, when my family and I visited El Questro Station, the magnificent Emma Gorge, Lake Argyle and the Bungle Bungle Range. It’s a place like no other in the world and the minute the invitation to attend the writers festival landed in my inbox, I’ve been looking forward to going back there.

It was a weekend like no other.

Some highlights include a spot of hiking in completely inappropriate footwear (fluorescent pink slides; more on that below!), listening to Gooniyandi and Gajerrong man Scott Wilson talk about country and language and comics, dining under the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever seen and spending four days hanging out with a group of of the most interesting people I’ve had the pleasure of talking to for some time.

From left to right: festival co-director Cesarina Fitzgerald, Amanda (AJ) Betts, Scott Wilson, Jess Rowe, Michael Trant, Me, Sally Hepworth, festival co-director Emma Day.

The People

One of the most wonderful things about the festival is that it’s just a small group of writers—that’s all of us in the image above. We spend four days intensely busy together, so when the group all gets along, it can be pretty special. And it was.

Saturday was the main day of the festival—we each had our individual sessions and a group “Ask Us Anything” session, which was LOTS of fun. Sally Hepworth entertained everyone with the story of the night she’d slept with both a man and a woman (not in quite the way you’d think!), Amanda Betts told us about going to the Emmy Awards ceremony because of the success of the television adaptation of her book Zac and Mia, Jess Rowe brought colour and smiles and so much passion and wisdom to the stage as she spoke about everything from mental health to being a crap housewife (I can relate!), Michael Trant told us about how he writes his books in a moving tractor(!) and Scott Wilson inspired us all with his story of why he created Indigiverse, a superhero universe where the central characters are his ancestors, rendered in graphic novels that use both the English and Gooniyandi languages.

If you haven’t read books by these amazing people, then I recommend you add them to your list. We are so lucky in Australia to have so much literary talent.

The Place

As I said above, there’s no place quite like the East Kimberley region. You can see some of that spectacular backdrop in the pictures above and below. But the most spectacular place of all is the library, which the incredible librarians have made into a safe space for everyone in the community.

Most of us think of a librarian’s job as reading books, shelving books, recommending books. And the librarians in Kununurra do all those things. But they also have the organisational skills and energy to pull off the best writers festival I’ve ever been to in my life and they run their library with extraordinary compassion.

In a place where it’s sometimes not safe for children to go to their homes, the librarians run an unofficial childcare centre. They open their doors and say, ‘Welcome’; they supervise homework; they let the kids sleep on cushions when they haven’t been able to get any sleep in their own beds.

And then there’s the Miriuwung Gajerrong land itself, where the sun hits the rock in a certain way and a whole new spectrum of orange and blue becomes evident, one it would take a writer far more talented than me to be able to describe. We dined beneath the stars, we explored the Old River, we walked through Miramar National Park, we swam in a waterhole at Legune Station, and we were lucky enough to be taken out to see some rock art, which our guide’s ancestors had created.

The Pink Shoes

As for the pink shoes—well, I’ve travelled up there before and I know the paths are red dust and rock. But I checked my itinerary beforehand and it didn’t seem to me that I’d need anything too serious for my feet and I was trying to pack light. I was so proud of myself for taking just one pair of shoes!

But then we found ourselves in the outback one afternoon and, while I had my hat, water and sunscreen, I only had my pink shoes. So off they went, into the dust. And they did a great job! Sally Hepworth was much like me as the Queen of Inappropriate Footwear and we couldn’t resist taking this photo of our shoes conquering the red rocks of the outback!

It’s Back to Work …

For now, it’s back to work at my desk. But I’ll carry with me the memories of those four days for a long time. It’s a shining example of what can happen when a group of people put their minds and hearts together and create something extraordinary. Big love to every reader I met up there and had the pleasure of speaking to, big love to the Miriuwung Gajerrong land and, most especially, big love to the authors, whose wisdom and inspiration were boundless.