Fame, Of Sorts

Since my article "My $70,000 Beer" was published in The Dust last month (the story of how I came to Meeka), I've had all sorts of people - complete strangers - come up to me in the street and the shops saying how much they liked it and telling me their story of how they came to Meeka. Today's fan was Jerri, the Travelling Catholic Nun (with eerily perfect hair), in the toiletries section of the supermarket. It's great, an unusual way to get to know people!

Gary also has people coming up to him and congratulating him on his tourism & hose skills etc and calling out "Hey, it's that handsome personal tour guide!" (I always refer to him that way in my articles). I never let him see what I've written about him before it goes to print, so he usually finds out from other people who beat him to the newsstand. He pretends to roll his eyes but I catch him reading it over and over with his little secret Gary smile when he thinks I'm not looking.

I'm now doing monthly news pages for both the fire brigade and the aged care hostel. It is way more fun than call sheets. Raylene wanted me to do some feature paragraphs on the residents, so this month I am doing Don, Butterpup and Kiticat. My personal article for this month is my trip to Peak Hill with Gary, into which I managed once again to incorporate the phrase "long dead hand" and also some cheesily turgid phrases such as "their bony hands now clutching only dust".

While doing about three minutes of internet research on Peak Hill, I came across a reference to Daisy Hill, a woman at the turn of the century who was an ethnologist and apparently travelled to Peak Hill as well as many other parts of Australia, living with and documenting aboriginal groups. There seems to be little information about her, it's very tantalising. I'm hoping I can glean enough stuff to do a one-page thing on her for The Dust.

The editor of the Dust loves me because so few people put articles in; most of it is sports news or advertising and photos of the golf club. My only other competition is Jack, 11, whose latest offering was a half page on the school soccer clinic. Although gripping and well-written in its way, Jack's lack of hyperbolic adjectives or laboured, heavy-handed metaphors is a serious handicap and I'm not worried. Yet. We'll see how he goes with the footy season trials; I may need to lift my game, especially if he does the creative writing class at youth group this semester.