I know how I dance with these stories. Every time I tell Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle, or the Gingerbread Man, or The Silent Princess, or The Galah Tree or the Glass Cupboard - I dance the words around the space where the listeners sit. The words fall around them, I pick them up and throw them back, I listen and change them according to the contributions from the audience, I laugh and add some ancient language from an old, old version of the tale, a word like 'pedlar' or 'cobber' or even a place name like Yackandandah. The listeners will add their bits too. Children just call them out as their enthusiasm overflows. They make up words or call their current favourites like 'Higgle piggle', 'Humpybong'. They play with the language and that is the point. Language belongs to us, we created it, we can play with it, change it, innovate. The story space is the place to claim language for your own - and for children to be able to play confidently in their first language is all about identity, family, culture and articulating who I am and where I come from.
Bettina Nissen Storyteller
Monday, September 12, 2011
Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle on the road home...
I know how I dance with these stories. Every time I tell Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle, or the Gingerbread Man, or The Silent Princess, or The Galah Tree or the Glass Cupboard - I dance the words around the space where the listeners sit. The words fall around them, I pick them up and throw them back, I listen and change them according to the contributions from the audience, I laugh and add some ancient language from an old, old version of the tale, a word like 'pedlar' or 'cobber' or even a place name like Yackandandah. The listeners will add their bits too. Children just call them out as their enthusiasm overflows. They make up words or call their current favourites like 'Higgle piggle', 'Humpybong'. They play with the language and that is the point. Language belongs to us, we created it, we can play with it, change it, innovate. The story space is the place to claim language for your own - and for children to be able to play confidently in their first language is all about identity, family, culture and articulating who I am and where I come from.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
The Australian War Memorial - a different sort of journey...
Years later, as his time here was almost done, I found some old black and white photos from his youth. A group of young men in uniform larking around, smoking, smiling at the camera and each other. On closer scrutiny I recognised some of my father's friends - the other dads from the beach and the bar-b-ques, the beer garden and the park on Cracker Night. We talked together about the photo and for the first time in all those years he pointed to other faces and said, "He didn't come back. He didn't come back. Either did he or he." And I started to sink into the grief and the shock, the sadness and the courage of those young bomber pilots that flew off in the night, all those decades ago, and did not know if they would make it back. At the War Memorial it said that of the 10000 young Australians in the bomber squadrons, more than 3500 did not come back. I cannot remember the exact figures but the death toll was staggering.
Those that did come back built a life, determinedly, had large families and did not talk about those years. At least not to us, their children. My father did not go to Anzac Day, though he did play in the Army and Navy Cup at golf, with the other faces from the photo, the ones that did come back to inhabit my childhood neighbourhood, to cheer their footy teams, and their childrens and grandchildrens.
What was that about a journey?
But before I set off from Goulburn I was in Canberra for three days. Sean was not much use to me in Canberra as I did not have exact addresses or even any idea where I was most of the time. Partially this is because of a bad childhood memory of being lost in Canberra on a family holiday while my parents struggled to navigate around the city circles. We would see the monument, or the hotel, but could never quite find our way there. This time I thought I would be fine with Sean to help, but that did not work out. So I left the car at the van park and took buses at first this worked fine. The Fred Williams exhibition was exquisite and I spent hours at the National Gallery. By the time I got to go to the War Memorial I had enough courage to take Toot Toot again and believe it or not, we found it no worries...
Friday, August 26, 2011
Yackandandah via Wodonga and Yarrawonga
I am visiting my pal, Kirsty and her wondrous son Jarrah in Wodonga. This morning they took me to Yackandandah and we wondered the old shops, spent some time in the Museum and the old park. I am always amazed at the war memorials in country towns - long lists of names, sometimes three or four in one family, who perished on the other side of the world.
This also makes me wonder about the aboriginal history of the area - the Murray would have provided a rich feast with lots of bird life and a flood plain for grazing mammals. Hopefully I will discover more over the next few days.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The road to Seaford and Aireys Inlet...
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Story begets story begets story...
Words in Winter...
So, on Friday morning I asked Sean the way to Daylesford. Sean is my Irish GPS guide. Every time he tells me to turn right in 300mts, it makes me laugh and I find myself arguing with him. “Oh Sean, you’ve got no idea at all how to find your way around the Australian bush. Who do you think you are kidding, right you say, right. “
That’s how we usually chat with one another and I must day he is very persistent. So this morning when I asked the way to Daylesford, I had already worked it out on my map. I just thought it was time to give Sean a chance to lead me astray. Well, he certainly did that! He took me across hill and dale, through some of the most hidden roadways. I would never have taken the chance to go that way myself, it was far too obscure. But I have to say, Sean came up trumps. It was a spectacular journey from Shepparton, through Heathcote and the State Forest to Daylesford – and so much shorter, even for the meandering way. At first I was a bit worried about the kangaroos as the path was heavily wooded and Toot Toot is not really used to dodging wildlife. But after a while the road became an avenue of old eucalypts on the edge and pasture beyond. It was hilly but so beautiful.
Until we got to Annie’s place at Daylseford…
And here the stories started…Annie has been a storyteller as long as me, starting back in the eighties in public libraries, then making the leap to freelance work about 88, like me. She has worked all around Victoria, particularly Daylesford and Ballarat where she has lived for 20 years and raised her kids too. Annie has worked in schools and libraries, on local radio and
at galleries. She has developed lots of wonderful stories from historical material and tells the stories that have just sat on library shelves neglected, or have lingered in the minds of folk, waiting for a teller to draw them out and let others hear…So when tellers get together that’s what we do, tumbling over each other with ideas and hare brained schemes that may take some time to find their voice. But they usually do, eventually. Annie is telling at the Daylesford Words in Winter festival. She started last night with her show, “So who was the first gay in the village” about the history of gay culture in Daylesford. I cannot believe I missed this – but just could not make it in time. Never mind, there will be other times, and anyway I am here for the next few days so we are sure to be telling late into the night. Tomorrow, three Melbourne tellers will be here – my great pal, Jackie Kerin, and two of the oldest fairy tellers, Marylou Keaney and Mattheo. One of the strange phenomema of the Australian storytelling scene is that quite a few of us worked a lot in the early days in the Fairy Shops. In Melbourne the first Fairy Shop was Wonder Wings, in Richmond, and it offered steady work for tellers at children’s parties and the Adult Only nights on the weekends. Annie, Mattheo, Mary Lou, Suzanne Sandow and of course, Nell Bell, all told at Wonder Wings in the early nineties. Fairy parties were very popular for kids then – it has dwindled these days. I also told at Brisbane’s first Fairy Shop, on Latrobe Tce, in Paddington, for a while, but this work was really developed by another Brisbane teller Suzanne Harris. Telling at children’s parties is hard work because the kids are so beside themselves with excitement. They are also pretty little, so it is as tough a training ground in working with audiences that you can get. If you don’t tell well for small children they just give you the flick. It is not easy to engage fully with their imaginative life – the teller has to lead for a bit, then be prepared to follow and take them on a truly wondrous journey, bringing them back safe to eat cake and blow out the candles.