After my surprise second-place in the now-legendary Daikaiju limerick contest, I barely dreamed the day could get any better.

Then Amanda handed me this welcome home present, and my life was complete!



I know some readers and reviewers think that phrase maddening, but I find it as inoffensive and invisible as "but", "the" and "and". For me, it's become part of the punctuation. The strong, silent part, of course.

So, anyway, I'm home now. Email appears to be working again, kinda. I'll have something to say about Writers of the Future (which was a blast) once I get my head together...

The wonderful Amanda has a new book out.

In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier hit the shelves last week.

What's it about? The misadventures of my evil great-great-uncle, for one.

"This subtle but shocking work penetrates to Australia's heart of darkness, illuminating a culture of terror in which a white man's murderous violence was the law of the land, acknowledged at one moment only to be forgotten at another in the writing of the nation's history." (Bain Attwood)

It's a corker, in a sober and thought-provoking way. If you're interested in this area of history, you'll love it.

Holidays are impossible to sum up, but I'd like to give it a whirl because we had a particularly good trip and the attempt will help me remember it.*

I've tried to capture some important facets of the trip in words. No more than a sentence or two, both lowlights and highlights (considerably more of the latter, I'm pleased to say), and in no particular order:

( I may think of some more in the next day or two, as my brain gradually de-fries. )

* Since I consistently failed to bring my camera with me, anywhere, I have very few snaps to jog my failing memory. Also, tearsxintherain told me I had to blog about it, and I always do what she says. :-)

Well, the wedding went off without a hitch, so I don't have to worry about jinxing it now. :-)



Behind Amanda's smile is another one just as big.

(The rest of Cat Sparks' photos are here. I'll put more up at Flickr as they roll in.)

I won't say much at the moment, except to pin down three memorable music moments for posterity.

The first: walking in to Queen's wedding march from the soundtrack to Flash Gordon. The second: Amanda and I performing an impromptu bridal waltz to Van Halen's "Why Can't This Be Love?" The third: interpretive dancing to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" at the end of the night.

Some might consider this an abuse of our matrimonial privilege, but we insist it was all absolutely necessary. :-)

The 2006 Aurealis Awards have been announced and the news is good for some, not so good for others, but excellent for everyone involved. Hurrah!

As always, there were some raised eyebrows. Judging the Horror category kept life interesting the last few months (as the tied result might testify). No friendships were harmed in obtaining that result, I swear, and I won't tell which side of the divide I fell.

In the science fiction section, I was very pleased to walk away with the Best Short Story gong--a surprise to me, given such a strong line-up--which was collected on my behalf by the most excellent Stephanie Smith of HarperCollins.

Sadly, despite having agreed to co-host with Kim Wilkins, I was forced to pull out at the last minute (attending solely as an animated head on the big screen), so I missed out on all the excitement and merriment afterwards. If the party was anything like last year's, there'll be some sore heads today. I look forward to the photos...

( P.S. )

The wonderful Amanda Nettelbeck and colleague Rob Foster are just about to release their latest book, Writing William Willshire: Race, Nationalism and Frontier Violence in Late Colonial Australia, due out any day now from Wakefield Press. It's an account of one of Australia's most notorious colonial figures, one of only two white policemen arrested for murder of indigenous people.

Research for a related paper saw Amanda and I recently heading to and from picturesque Port Lincoln on the South Australian coast. The trip was long but entertaining, around 1500km in 48 hours. On the way back, I took the chance to visit my grandmother in Cowell, where she still lives in her own house at 94 years of age. Cowell is the first major town north of Pt Lincoln, a couple of hours' drive away. I spent a lot of time there as a young lad and remember it with great fondness and pride. The Stone Mage & the Sea is set near there. My grandfather, Harry Schiller, had a farm not far away (Mount Ghearty, now run by my uncle and cousin) where he discovered one of the world's largest deposits of nephrite jade. It's also a fine fishing area, if you go for that sort of thing; Franklin Harbour oysters are to die for.

Anyway, Cowell's other claim to fame (or infamy, perhaps) is that William Willshire was posted there for a couple of years after his arrest and trial in Alice Springs. He married a local girl called Nell Howell before moving to Adelaide.

During conversation with my grandmother, it emerged that Nell Howell was her aunt--making Willshire my great-great-uncle.

Argh!

I hope I don't offend any of WW's descendants by saying that I'm glad my relation to him is by marriage only. What a person does is more important than the genetic material tooling away in their cells, of course, but while I'm keen to be involved in my partner's work, that could be taking things a little too far...

PS. I learned today that Willshire's lawyer when he was tried for murder in Alice Springs was none other than Sir John Downer, ancestor of another infamous South Australian, Alexander Downer. Of course.