I’m excited to announce my latest non-fiction book DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement will be published on 15 August 2026.
To celebrate this publication of my seventh book, there will be two launches in Brisbane: at Avid Reader Bookshop, West End on that day and then across town at Riverbend Books, Bulimba on 30 August.
In DONE WORKING, I’ve woven together the real-life advice of 101 retirees, world-wide research and my own experience with humour and insight to tease out seven ways of finding contentment in retirement.
The theme was triggered by a comment from a student in a University of the Third Age (U3A) class, who said, ‘I’m retired and busy, but I’m not contented.’
The book will appeal to anyone heading towards retirement as well as those already retired, and help them negotiate their own best way to a contented life.
Clinical Psychologist and Wellbeing Specialist Dr John Barletta said: ‘Dymock speaks a language we can all understand. This book puts you in the driver’s seat to develop a good life, simple as that.’
INVITATION
If you’re in or around Brisbane, you’d be very welcome at one of the launches. Check the bookshops’ websites for details:
Avid Reader, 193 Boundary Street, West End at 2.30pm Saturday 15 August 2026
There is no charge for entry to either event – tickets are free, but please book online to register. No obligation to order a book when you register for the launch.
If you can’t get to one of the launches, you can still order the book through either bookshop if you’d like a copy.
Outside of Brisbane, you or your local bookshop can order a copy through Avid Reader. It will also shortly be available as an e-book.
With best wishes for a contented retirement, wherever you are on life’s journey,
I never met a bookshop I didn’t like. I particularly love the quirky ones, with nooks and crannies, comfy chairs, tables, mirrors, the occasional dog. Those dispensing coffee get double stars.
I”m talking about real bookshops. Not those totally online international hussies that parade their wares like ladies of the night, and are basically committed not to literature but to making money.
Sure, real bookshops are businesses too, and they need to survive financially, but when you walk through their doors you can feel an ambience, inhale a bookish ‘smell’, that no online purveyor can hope to replicate.
This is especially true of independent bookstores, where the owner is often behind the counter. I’m not bagging the franchised chains here (I shop there too, and know they have dedicated staff), just admiring the gritty guts of those bookshop people who choose to do it for a living (or not).
Whenever I travel, I look for independent bookstores and usually buy a book to celebrate my visit, a tiny contribution to fostering their continued success. Every one of them is different, but they share a common feel of compressed creativity, a colourful pandora’s box of treasures waiting to be discovered.
They usually have a dedicated following too. In July 2025, the 103-year-old Hill of Content bookshop in Melbourne’s CBD recruited hundreds of volunteers in a human chain to transfer their stock of 17,000 books to a new location nearby after their building was sold.
Depending on your tastes, there might also be some occasional dross, where the contents don’t live up to the back-cover hype, but it can still be fun looking. Besides, as a writer I admire anyone who’s managed to convince both a publisher and a bookseller that someone might want to read what they’ve sweated over for so long.
For me the appeal of the ‘real’ bookshop over the online one is the chance to pull out a book from the shelf, read the cover blurb, flick through the pages, check the font size, feel the texture of the book between my fingers. Even the weight of a book tells me something. Then I might clasp it as a ‘possible’ while continuing to wander the shelves, hoping I can remember where it came from if I decide to put it back.
In 2020, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, I recorded four interviews for an invited blog for Margaret River Press, Western Australia. It was a tough time for booksellers, and Fiona Stager, co-owner of Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane’s West End, told me in May that year, ‘If we have a good Christmas, we will all make it.’
Avid Reader Bookshop, West End, Brisbane
Five years later Avid Reader is not only still going strong, but Fiona and her partner have taken over Riverbend Books in Bulimba, on the other side of Brisbane.
Riverbend Books was formerly owned by another stalwart of the Brisbane literary scene, Suzy Wilson. She and Fiona are long-time supporters of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, whose programs focus on instilling a love of reading at an early age in some 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remote communities across Australia.
Both stores not only sponsor book launches, but also author talks, ‘crafternoons’, trivia nights, book clubs and various other literary events that take ‘reader engagement’ to a new level. Avid Reader has a spin-off store next door for younger readers: Where the Wild Things Are, a name taken from the outrageously successful children’s book by Maurice Sendak.
Despite my passion for ‘real’ bookshops, as both a writer and reader of books I’m grateful that there are digital options available for authors to publish and readers to access books. According to a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald ‘Weekend Magazine’, more than half of Australians aged between 15 and 34 read e-books and almost one in three Australians listen to audiobooks.[1]
A younger friend of mine recently returned a non-fiction book I’d lent her (not one I’d written), apologising that she was out of practice with hard copy because she was used to ‘reading’ via an online app and a set of headphones.
I’m thankful that we still have in Australia what publishing agent Jane Novak called (in that same SMH article ) ‘a very healthy bookshop ecosystem’ (including second-hand bookstores, a genre in themselves). ‘Plenty of people thought e-books were bad for book sales,’ she said, ‘but they haven’t impacted the sales of hard-cover books in the way we thought.’
Let’s hope the market can continue to support independent bookshops like Avid Reader and Riverbend Books, not only because they provide a hands-on experience for readers, but also because they help sustain the culture of thriving local communities.
[1] Greg Callaghan, ‘The final chapter?’, SMH Weekend Magazine, 5 July, 2025, pp. 9-11.
Drawing on selected images from across the world, in this personal presentation Brisbane-based author D R (Darryl) Dymock compares the spectacular but very different life journeys and tragic endings of two remarkable Australian aviation pioneers: Harry Hawker and Bert Hinkler.
Saturday 18 June2pm -3pm, St Matthews Church Hall,
cnr Sherwood & Oxley Rds Sherwood, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Books for sale on the day
Can’t make it to the talk? You can still order both books through any bookshop, including Avid Reader, Brisbane and Riverbend Books, Brisbane, Queensland. Or download the e-book online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Booktopia, or check out ABE Books in the US.
Exclusive extract from ‘A Great and Restless Spirit’ by D R Dymock:
Unaware of the mid-ocean drama, Muriel continued to mark off the hours Harry had been in the air. As the day went on, she began to prepare to head over to Brooklands, hopeful she would soon be reunited with her husband. There was quiet anticipation among the Sopwith representatives, military officers, and government and aero club officials gathered at Brooklands that Monday afternoon, 19 May, 1919. It promised to be a momentous occasion for the future of cross-Atlantic travel and for British aviation.
Muriel and her brother, RAF Captain Laurence Peaty, had driven over from Hook in the Sunbeam. Word had come through that the American fliers were trapped in the Azores by the weather, so NC-4 had not yet been able to make the final hop. There was still a possibility that Harry and Grieve could claim the transatlantic gong.
Nevertheless there was also an undercurrent of anxiety about the two fliers. No messages had been received; no sightings reported. Based on the reported Sunday departure time from Newfoundland, by Muriel’s 22-hour timeline the Atlantic should touch down at Brooklands at around 4.30pm. Unlike some others, she wasn’t worried by the lack of contact with the plane because she knew Harry and Grieve weren’t counting on the wireless during the flight.
But as the afternoon ticked by, concern started to grow. The Royal Air Force sent planes out from its Aldergrove base in Ireland to probe along the transatlantic route, but the pilots came back with nothing to report.
When Muriel crossed off hour number 22, and there was still no sign of the plane, the tension among the waiting group must have been palpable. They all knew that by then the Sopwith’s fuel tank would be close to empty. When a full 24 hours had passed without any contact, no one had to say what that meant.
Title:A Great and Restless Spirit: The incredible true story of Harry Hawker, Australian test pilot, aircraft designer, car racing driver, speedboat racer, world-beater
High-profile mystery plane crashes have confounded and intrigued the world since flight began – but this dramatic true story was the first.
A Great And Restless Spirit by D R Dymock tells of the disappearance of record-breaking Australian pilot Harry Hawker and his navigator over the Atlantic Ocean in 1919… and of how kings and nations were captivated by the event. The book has just been released.
A transatlantic feat
In May 1919, 30-year-old Harry Hawker and his navigator attempted the first transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland, and in a plane with no radio or radar.
Millions waited for news of their triumph – but the plane never arrived. After six days, and with no sightings or leads, almost everyone gave them up for dead. Banjo Paterson wrote a eulogy for Harry’s passing. King George V sent Harry’s English wife, Muriel Hawker, a telegram of condolence. But Muriel refused to believe her husband was dead.
If things don’t go quite right, never give up hope, Harry had told Muriel before he left. She took him at his word.
‘As there seemed to be two sides to the question whether he was alive or not, and no definite proof of either,’ Muriel said, ‘I decided I’d cling firmly to the belief that he was alive.’
An extraordinary life
Muriel Hawker’s faith in her daredevil husband had reaped rewards before. Harry’s ‘need for speed’ made him a fierce competitor in car and speedboat races around the globe and, when he wasn’t racing, Harry designed and tested WWI planes.
His boss, aviation guru Tommy Sopwith, believed Harry was a genius – but Muriel kept her husband’s feet firmly on the ground. Would this remarkable woman’s hope be rewarded this time, too?
In A Great and Restless Spirit, author D R Dymock tells the incredible true story of Harry Hawker MBE AFC and the woman who refused to give up on him.
About the author: D R (Darryl) Dymock (author site) is the Brisbane-based author of several well-received non-fiction books, including Hustling Hinkler and The Chalkies. This is his second aviation biography. He is a mentor with the Queensland Writers Centre, and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Griffith University.
I’d like to introduce you to Harry Hawker, the subject of my latest book, A Great and Restless Spirit. And below you can find a link to the YouTube video.
ISBN: 978-1-925380-415
Harry Hawker was an Australian-born test pilot, aircraft designer, racing car driver, speedboat racer, and all-round world-beater.
In his day he was a celebrity before there were celebrities.
But he wasn’t looking for fame. All he wanted to do was push the boundaries.
He had a dream of speed that he pursued throughout his whole, regrettably short, life.
I wanted to write about Harry Hawker firstly because of the way he insisted on pushing the boundaries in the air, on the racetrack and on the water. But I’m also fascinated by what made him ‘a great and restless spirit’.
And how did his wife Muriel cope with that insistent restlessness, especially when it became life-threatening?
You can register for the in-store and online book launch at Avid Reader Bookshop, West End, Brisbane, at 6.30pm AEST Friday 25 March here
I hope to meet up with you if you’re in the Brisbane area. Perhaps sign a book 🙂 Otherwise I’d love to hear from you whether you’re elsewhere in Australia or in another country.
Until next time
D R (Darryl) Dymock
D R Dymock: A Great and Restless Spirit: The incredible true story of Harry Hawker Publication date: March 2022
ISBN: 978-1-925380-415
Order through all good bookshops, including Avid Reader, Brisbane: avidreader.com.au
Writers Group Convenor Darryl Dymock introduces writer John Brown, the founding Shed president
We had a great launch of the Oxley Men’s Shed anthology, Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, on Saturday 27 November in Brisbane. Nine men from the Shed contributed to the collection, and the first (modest) print run sold out! 70 to 80 people turned up to hear a brilliant launch by local Councillor Nicole Johnston, listen to music from the band Crossed Fingers, and enjoy a scrumptious morning tea.
Shed President Martin Rankine makes the welcome
This is no ordinary collection of stories. It draws on the varied experiences of nine men who have led very different lives, but whose paths have eventually crossed at Oxley Men’s Shed. In this book these mostly first-time writers have taken the opportunity to share some of their fascinating stories from the past with their families and with the wider community. Many of these are never-before-told tales, entertaining anecdotes that not only illuminate the writers’ earlier lives, but often trigger our own memories too.
In these stories we meet a former fitter and turner who as a boy decided to see what would happen when he packed gunpowder from leftover fireworks into a fruit tin and lit the fuse; a retired meat inspector who had to escape hand over hand down a rope off a high church roof when his ladder collapsed; an ex-plumber who starred in a Bollywood movie and dodged bombs and bullets while driving a tour bus in the Middle East; a former photographer who once had the ultimate hand in a boarding house poker game; and a retired insurance underwriter who relives his late-night dash home to dive under the bedclothes before the resident ghost appeared.
Crossed Fingers Band
Then there’s a Vietnamese veteran driving an Army forklift who literally backed himself into an embarrassing corner with his commanding officer; an ex-teacher who was driving his prized first car through South Brisbane when the back seat caught fire; a former electrician who turned jackaroo to help out his mate on a cattle drive in northern NSW; and a retired agronomist who as a young man led a hiking group down a mountain during a cyclone, with intriguing romantic results.
This is a heady mix of yarns from a group of writers keen to tell their often remarkable stories – sometimes humorous, occasionally hair-raising, but always from the heart.
Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, Armour Books, Brisbane.
How do you create a story involving 300 characters?
I’m not talking about that Hollywood movie where 300 brave Spartans fight to the death against a 100,000-strong Persian attack force*.
This was a writing challenge I entered in late 2020: to write ‘a succinct micro-essay’ on an aspect of Australia life which displayed ‘keen insight and depth of knowledge, rather than sentiment’.
Mrc
The ‘essay’ was limited to 300 characters, including spaces!
Yes, 300 keyboard characters, not 300 words. Or 300 protagonists.
This is the pen-picture of contemporary Australia I entered in the competition:
Feel free to make the count, but I can assure you there are exactly 300 characters including spaces.
The Small Truths competition ran for a month in late 2020, in conjunction with the better known Horne Essay Prize.
The winner of the Horne Prize itself has been announced, but I’ve yet to find any mention of the Small Truths short list or winner. And I’ve given up waiting for my congratulatory email😉. But at least I can share my entry with you here.
I like to think my micro-essay displays ‘keen insight and depth of knowledge’ about modern-day Australia. I know some of the references will mean more to Australians than most other readers across the world, so I’ve provided links to follow up if you want to.
There’s nothing like having a word limit (or a character limit) to test your ability to be succinct.
As most students know only too well from high school onwards😉.
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
* The Persian Army was led by King Xerxes, a name which seems to me to be a good Scrabble word, if it was allowed.
A few weeks back I posted an interview with Fiona Stager, co-owner of Avid Reader bookshop in West End, Brisbane, Australia. You might remember how strongly engaged Avid Reader is with its community, both locally and online. So I thought you might like this recent post from Fiona, from the bookshop website:
“This Saturday 3 October we celebrate Love Your Bookshop Day which was created by the Australian Booksellers Association to celebrate bookshops across the country and highlight what makes local bookshops great. There will be facebook events, online events and giveaways galore.
Here at Avid Reader we have decided this year to rename it Love Our Customers Day! This is a chance for us to thank you for your continued support of our bookshops during this very uncertain time.
We have been overwhelmed with the many acts of kindness shown to us since March. An example is customers John and Jo who acted as our free couriers to 4005 and 4006 postcodes. Many people said it was the highlight of their day to receive a parcel and have a friendly chat with them.
We had orders from across Australia from family and old friends and concerned customers. Authors and publishers have also given us so much support. Along with an understanding and supportive landlord we have survived!
We thank you for everything you have done to support us.
Happy Love Our Customers Day,
Fiona.”
I hope that message makes you feel good as we continue to stutter through extraordinary times.
Darryl Dymock's Writesite 