Prize Winning Books
Sunday, 13 April 2025The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards – that’s the state of Victoria in Australia, capital city Melbourne – is ‘the single most valuable literary award in the country’. The winner takes away A$100,000 as the big prize, plus another A$25,000 because they first have to take out their category prize (fiction, drama, poetry, whatever) before they go on for the big one. It’s put on by Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre so naturally I turned up on Wednesday 19 March to see who would win. Of course the Victorian Premier did not turn up, but it’s kind of traditional that the state premier – male of female – shows their disdain for literature by not appearing!
◄ This year the big one, to general surprise, went to an illustrated children’s book – Three Dresses by first time author Wanda Gibson from the Indigenous settlement at Hope Vale, right up in the far north of Australia on Cape York. She wasn’t there – although she appeared by Zoom – but her grandson (40s or 50s, charming rotund gentleman) charmingly picked up the awards for her, both of them. And the book is also charming, three dresses ‘one to wash, one to wear, and one as a spare.’ Which is pretty much my travel-light shirt plan whenever I’m going away for a short trip.
I took away a copy of the book – well I’ve got a grandchild who should enjoy it – and it brought a tear to my eye, a wonderful little tale, illustrated by Ms Gibson’s equally wonderful naive-art paintings, about what was clearly the two week holiday of a lifetime, days on the beach, a long walk to get there and get back, and three dresses to very proudly wear.
◄ But then, a few days later, I was pedalling my bike through Melbourne’s fashionable shopping Mecca, Chapel St in South Yarra, and there was one of the three dresses on sale in the window of Mister Zimi at 555A Chapel St. I was so amazed I stopped and photographed it.
Of course when I got home it clearly wasn’t the same dress, but hey, it channels it, doesn’t it?
◄ Robert Skinner with his story collection I’d Rather Not took out the inaugural John Clarke Humour Book Award and another A$25,000 (plus A$2000 as the ‘People’s Choice,’ his friends must all have voted). I have absolutely no idea what the cover has to do with the book, but I really enjoyed several of his tales, particularly I Fought the Law where Robert becomes entangled with Robodebt, an appalling government scheme to extort money from people who did not owe the money to the government. It would be amazingly funny, as Robert illustrates, if a lot of people didn’t waste huge amounts of time on it and a number of people were driven to suicide by the government’s cruel tactics.
I also liked some of his travel tales, particularly The Stopover where he has 12 hours between flights at Singapore’s Changi Airport (why didn’t he go on the free Singapore tourist office city tour?) and he still manages to miss his flight. But my favourite was definitely The Dying Art of Hitchhiking which you can read in a very slightly different version in The Monthly. When Robert hitches a ride, on his way from Melbourne to Sydney, things go very decisively wrong.
Hey, I still hitch rides (or give rides to hitch-hikers) surprisingly frequently. Twice in New Zealand in 2023. Once in England in 2024 with uber-hitchhiker Simon Calder when we needed to get from the train station at Cholsey to Wallingford to walk a stretch of the Thames Path. And in 2019 on Erub Island in Australia’s Torres Strait I not only hitched a ride but my driver suggested I borrow his car and handed me the keys!
