Island Rock Girl [working title]

By June Perkins

Synopsis

Island Rock Girl is inspired by my life as a second generation migrant (of Mekeo PNG Indigenous and Anglo Australian background) finding the fairytales and nightmares in everyday life and using them to write, dream and retell the past. It begins in Tasmania with a red typewriter from grand parents who have lived in Geneva, and ends with the tears of the ghosts- past and present in the cane fields of North Queensland. These stories are for all those who search for belonging, encounter loneliness and prejudice in new places, experience the sudden loss of those who die too young, and yet who want to look for the friendship and the positive in every experience and every place.

Book Outline (subject to some selection changes)

Island Rock Girl

Section 1: Walking Childhood

Red Typewriter

Language of Icons

Cargo

Immigrant Mother

The Dress Maker

I want to Fly but My Wings

Rusty Tin

Just a Girl

Fairytale Childhood

From Childhood to Youth

First Poem

Chameleon Dancers

A new community School

Quod verum Meum Est – high school memories

Teachers you don’t forget

Poetry Cup

Writing Like TS Eliot

Reaffirmation party

Roxanne- encouraging the writing life

Knock, knock (brother’s accident, brain damage)

Moon Walking through Coma (Mum’s devotion to brother)

I heard it on the Radio (death of friends)

Section 2: Following the Pebble

The comedian’s day off

University Tourist

Yarrahappani and the Bush Tucker Man

First Foray North

Jazz (learning about Toni Morrison)

A pram in the Academy

Greenstone

Grandfather Carver (is it you who they see- story of Indigenous people seeing figure in my house.)

Meeting an Anthropologist

Dreamtime Tea

Of women in the Attics (repressions of art we put on ourselves)

Finding Fred (researching story of Uncle Fred Murray)

Stilt Walking (Festival of the dreaming)

Ink from Ochre (Indigenous Writers)

River of Everlasting Life (story of Bob Maza)

Writing Women (writing clubs I’ve met)

Storytelling Women (meeting Daphne)

Living Poets Society (memories of poets met and performances)

Ginger cookies (Tuross Head and Nance)

Dreaming Camps (Aunty Anne)

Job Club (Brisbane)

Launches (Linda liked my poem)

The White Glove (visiting Museums – Indigenous history)

A House with No Walls (set in Kiribati)

Breakfasting at the Sheraton (support of a friend after graduating, a grandmother, difficulties and joys of graduation day)

Three counts (tutoring stories-uni )

Animated Dream Walker (friendship with Paulien)

Section 3: Living North

Tully Turtle

Pearlz Dreaming

Archives in the Land

Skin Speaks (living with psorasis)

String Bag

Bird Song, Human Song

Rush Hour

Nightmare Windows

Shell Song

I wish I grew up with Dragons

Journey though the hidden Words (Ben’s story)

Big Brother, Little Brother (Gundoye Camps)

Spiritual Axis (Junko’s visit)

Larry’s Apology

Ripple (poetry project)

I am Camera

Gumboots4peace

On Sorry Day

Drive Carefully (road accidents toll)

At the Soul Food Cafe

Poetry doesn’t sell but….

Facebook (finding friends like Lua, Jenny, KT, Karen, Vanessa again).

Sister Tutor

Remember the good things, a mother’s plea

Mothers rock (women with vision in NQ, Toys Adopting kids, little steps to big steps(Sophie)

Dr Seuss Tree

Discovering the story of Vivienne

Writing the Pacific

All I want to do is write…. And publish

Ghosts in the Cane

***

Every country, town has gems, natural, cultural and in the people themselves. I hope that through this book you will come to know some of the gems that I have come across. I have written it in the form of mediations on themes and provided a time line to help you navigate it chronologically. I have woven in all the different folk tales that I have come across and taken a liking to. They are as much a part of me as the people I have met and the giant curtain fig trees I have stood under.

Island Rock Girl needed to be written when I had fully found respect for my life and all those unique souls I have met along the way. I had to have time to find that the fairytales and nightmares go hand in hand to make a person whole. I am not famous, I am not wealthy in monetary terms, I am not a celebrity. I now live in a small town, which is even smaller than where I grew up. Yet, I have had a unique life of my own, where I have met many Indigenous writers and performers in the search for understanding and finding my own writing identity. I have come across many strong and wise women who use art as a way to serve and heal the community around them. I have had a complex relationship with my parents, and my own cultural history, but I have uncomplicated it by writing and reflecting on it, and then talking with them- and always being honest.

I have not travelled as much as I would love to, but every opportunity to travel to Kiribati, New Zealand and around Australia has enriched my life and led me into the company of people who affect the people around them through small purposeful acts of kindness.

The human experience is full of challenge, times to grieve and heal, times to apologise, times to giggle or chortle, and I feel that I live in a time where it is the day we will find peace. Finding peace within enables me to give that out to others, and it is my goal to reflect that in this memoir.

There are so many conversations I treasure. I have kept so many communications from people over the years- but with the advent of email it’s all in electronic form now. In this book I want to capture some of those conversations and weave them into the work.

We all have had those experiences where doubters or the envious, or low self esteemed make us doubt our dreams. We also have people we meet who are our soul family- they connect with us sometimes more than blood family, they lift us up and encourage us to become the best we can be.

I truly believe as Sark does, that everyone has a story in them and it’s worth sharing it, because then you find so many more connections both forward and back. We can’t change the past, but we can understand it and use it to move on. We can gain wisdom by it. I write this book for all who I have known and will know. I write it for all those ‘Islander’ women growing up Aussie, those kids in small towns with big dreams, for all those women who say I want to write and find it hard to find the time to, for my mother and father and their mothers and fathers to say things change as they must, but don’t fear we find understanding for you later in our lives,

I am a pearlz dreaming, world citizen dreaming, – and this is my version of how I see my ‘fortunate life.’