I was pleased to be at Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane’s West End on 1st March for the launch of a public art installation by local artist Vernon Ah Kee.
Fiona Prager, joint owner of Avid Reader*, is one of the drivers of the project, which has been a team effort managed by Chrysalis Projects.
The image above shows me with Vernon and Fiona in front of three of the 42 panels that will be wrapped around West End buildings in May. It’s a great community effort in which I’m a tiny cog.
The mural work will celebrate Brisbane authors, forming a mosaic of wordplay that has been overlaid featuring First Nations authors in Vernon’s own handwriting.
At the event, Vernon announced the title of the installation: Charcoal Story. He suggested the name reflected the earliest form of writing implement and may well be the last one we use when the world finally comes to an end. He also referred to the mention of charcoal in Sally Morgan’s book, My Place.
Sally wrote about her childhood in Western Australia: ‘When I couldn’t find any paper or pencils, I would fish small pieces of charcoal from the fire, and tear strips off the paperbark tree in our yard and draw on that.’
This is another view of some of the panels, with Fiona Prager and Carmel Haugh, one of the Chrysalis team. (Photo: Jonathon Oldham)
The project started at the beginning of the Covid troubles, and the original concept has blossomed, with a few hiccoughs along the way, but also essential input from architects, engineers and other professionals.
To be honest, I can’t quite envisage what the final display will look like. I’m looking forward to the final ‘unveiling’ when the panels are installed across the upper storey of Avid Reader in May this year.
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
*Avid Reader bookshop was the venue for the launch of two of my books: The Chalkies (2016) and A Great and Restless Spirit (2022).
Darryl Dymock's Writesite 
Hello Darryl,
I am delighted to see from your website that you are still firing on all cylinders. I gave up full-time teaching three years ago, aged seventy two, but still do some casual days.
I wonder if you remember me. Decades ago, I was the foundation Director of the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education. And it is about this that I am contacting you now.
Recently, I was visiting my old friend David Malouf on the Gold Coast, and we were chewing the fat about our memories of the ‘80s. He suggested I should write about the change from the Department of Adult Education to the Centre for Continuing Education. I have been writing a memoir and I thought he was suggesting I should include this, but no, he wanted a stand-alone piece about what happened and the effects.
So, I did a bit of research and discovered to my surprise that there was very little about this period. Then I remembered than in the early Two Thousands, I think it was, you came up to the Blue Mountains to interview me about this time. I contacted Chris Downes to ask what happened to your work and he said he thought the book had never been published because of objections from Sydney University. So much for academic freedom!
I am wondering if you would allow me to read your manuscript. Obviously, if I used any of your work, I would acknowledge it.
I am hoping you may be able to help me with this as the period was one that determined much about what would happen to the idea of continuing education in universities.
All the very best,
Derek
Hi Derek Well there’s a voice from the past. That manuscript was about 20 years ago, and I’m not sure I can track it down. I will have a look for it but make no promises. You are right that the uni declined to publish it. However I did negotiate to publish two articles which I had to submit for approval in advance. However these are about the early days, which I think is not what you’re after.
The two articles were published in the Australian Journal of Adult Learning, four years apart!:
‘A reservoir of learning’: the beginnings of continuing education at the University of Sydney
Darryl Dymock, volume 49, Number 2, July 2009. [This is 1886-WWI]
Meeting diverse expectations: Department of Tutorial Classes, Sydney University, 1919 to 1963
Darryl Dymock and Ann Kelly, volume 53, Number 1, April 2013.
I might be able to locate copies of those two articles if you can’t track them down. You can email me at Griffith Uni.
best regards
Darryl
Hi Darryl,
Yes I have read those articles and, yes, it is the later period that interests me.
I hope you may be able to locate the manuscript.
All the very best.
Derek
Sorry Derek Iâve checked through my âWriting filesâ and thereâs no sign of that earlier document. I had to google to find those two articles youâve already seen, because I donât have a copy of them on my system either. They all probably disappeared in an earlier declutter. Sorry.
Regards Darryl