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The Birds

Sophie Cunningham August 17

This weekend the Aireys Inlet Wordfest was held, and I had to get out more dance moves. Though the timing was tricky, sandwiched, as it was, between Byron Bay Festival and Melbourne Writers' Festival, it was another example of the small is beautiful approach to festivals.

There was an opening party on the Friday night, which I missed. I drove down on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, to be greeted by nice accommodation and the fattest cockies I've ever seen. Every time I entered the apartment they all flew onto the rails and stared at me, in expectation. When I failed to feed them as promptly as they wanted, they started to rap on the windows with their beaks.

I headed down to the Aireys Community Hall and listened to Nick Gadd speak and read, then Sonia Orchard. They were both terrific.

I read from my novel, Bird. A couple of people slapped me on the back in a comforting way after my reading and said 'it's a tough gig, isn't it?' making me somewhat paranoid about my performance. I'd thought it was fine until the back slapping. Whatever the truth of the matter, I sold a lot of copies of my book and was struck, once again, about how much more effective these small festivals are at selling books, and by how many of the audience had read the authors appearing over the weekend, in preparation for hearing them. It's really terrific to have such an engaged audience.

The keynote speakers were Denise Scott and Shane Maloney. They were both fantastic. I bought Denise's latest (indeed first) book, All That Happened at Number 26 and devoured it over the weekend. Highly recommended - especially for Melbourne readers who will find much that is familiar, made amusing. Scott's a great comic, and manages to be self deprecating and funny without it being cringeworthy (I confess I'm uncomfortable with female comics whose whole schtick is on what fuck ups they are). After that we all trooped off and had a drink and meal at the Aireys Inlet hotel. Good company. Shocking food.

After quite alot of sleeping, then waking to eight crested thugs staring down at me, I went looking for whales. They were everywhere, everyone had seen them, the calves were cute etc etc. Suffice to say that in the rain and bluster I failed to see anything. I dropped by the hall again to hear Patrick O'Neil and Brendan McAloon speak. Then I headed to Cimarron B & B and second-hand bookshop. It's run by friends and they were having an open day to coincide with the festival. I bought a very beautiful first edition of Eskimo Prints. Therein were lots of prints of birds.

 

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