Everyone Has A Book In Them… Perhaps

Richard Evans, President Whitsundays Writers Festival

When people say they might one day write their story, they often add, “But nothing much happened to me.” Albert Facey would have disagreed.

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Facey’s A Fortunate Life is one of Australia’s best-loved memoirs, yet its author was no celebrity, politician, or sporting hero. He was a labourer, soldier, husband, and father who endured hardship, loss, and the horrors of Gallipoli. His remarkable book records an ordinary man’s extraordinary experiences, told with honesty and dignity. Despite everything, he considered himself fortunate.

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Facey reminds us that memoir is not a trophy cabinet of achievements. It is an act of remembering and paying attention. The details of everyday life: the work, family jokes, hardships, kindnesses, and small triumphs can reveal as much about a person as the major events that shaped them.

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Sally Morgan’s My Place offers another lesson. Her search into her Aboriginal heritage and her family’s past reveals generations of concealment, displacement, and survival. Her story shows that memoir can begin with a question about your own family, perhaps something never discussed around the kitchen table. Sometimes history has lived through you, even if you never realised it.

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Alice Pung’s Unpolished Gem provides a different perspective. With warmth and humour, she recounts growing up in a Cambodian-Chinese family in Footscray, navigating the expectations of her parents and the freedoms of suburban Australia. School, food, language, and family relationships become the material for a story that is both deeply personal and widely relatable.

What might these writers teach us? Not that every life must produce a bestseller, but that every life contains experiences worth exploring.

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So, before deciding your story is too ordinary, visit your local library. Browse the memoir shelves and discover how people from all walks of life have turned their experiences into books. You may find someone whose circumstances resemble your own, or a story that inspires you to look at your life differently.

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Then start small. Write one page about your first job, a childhood home, a memorable journey, a family celebration, or someone whose voice you can still hear. Forget writing your entire life story. Begin with one scene, honestly remembered, and vividly told.

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You don’t need to be famous to have a story worth sharing. You simply need to begin.

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Celebrating local creativity

Whitsundays Writers Festival
Richard Evans
Festival Director and President
hello@whitsundayswriters.com

Save the date for the 2027 Whitsundays Writers Festival, 10-12 September.

Creative Connections Whitsunday
Glenda Brown
President
info@creativeconnectionwhitsunday.com

Creative Connections Whitsundays supports local artists through exhibitions, workshops, and manages the Community Gallery in Proserpine.

Get in touch

If you would like to submit a poem, creative writing piece, profile suggestion, event news please contact hello@whitsundayswriters.com

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From Clay To Letterbox: Meet Whitsundays Artist Haley Vogel

Glenda Brown, President Creative Connections Whitsunday

Artist, former high school teacher, business owner and mum of three Haley Vogel has a way of turning creativity into something people can hold in their hands. Her work is inspired by the natural world around her in the Whitsundays, and these days it’s most likely to arrive in a child’s letterbox.

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Artistic Background

Creativity has been part of Haley’s life for as long as she can remember. She studied a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Teaching, specialising in high school visual arts, with a minor in communications and graphic design.

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She then spent four years teaching Marine science, media arts, visual arts, and a range of other subjects at high schools in Brisbane before returning home to the Whitsundays.

Today, Haley runs her creative businesses from home while raising and homeschooling her three young children, keeping art and imagination at the centre of a very full life.

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Bush Buddies Mail Club

Haley’s main creative focus is Bush Buddies Mail Club, a monthly snail mail subscription that brings a little 90’s nostalgia to children’s letterboxes. Each month, kids receive letters from an Australian animal character, along with stickers, collectibles, and surprise goodies.

Bush Buddies draws on everything Haley loves: illustration, graphic design, storytelling, and education, all wrapped up in a celebration of Australia’s unique wildlife. It’s a project that brings together her teaching background and her love of the natural world, and it gives children the simple joy of getting something special in the mail.

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A Ceramics Chapter

Before Bush Buddies took centre stage, clay was a big part of Haley’s creative practice. Her hand-built ceramics (with the occasional wheel-thrown piece) were inspired by the ocean and islands of the Whitsundays.

Her philosophy is simple: pottery shouldn't just be useful; it should also be a beautiful addition to the home.

Each handcrafted piece reflects the appeal of ceramics, where form, texture and function come together to create something individual.

While life with three little ones means clay is on hold for now, Haley hasn’t ruled out returning to it one day, hopefully soon.

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Find Haley’s Pottery at the Gallery

Creative Connections Whitsunday’s is delighted to have a selection of Haley’s handcrafted ceramics available at the Community Gallery in Proserpine. Each piece is a one-of-a-kind reminder of the Whitsundays coastline that inspired it, and a lovely way to take home a little local handmade.

Haley also stocks Bush Buddies Past Adventures at the Community Art Gallery, so little ones (and big ones) can pick up earlier editions of the club in person.

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If you’d like each new adventure delivered straight to your letterbox, you can subscribe to Bush Buddies Mail Club on Haley’s website: www.waratahstudio.com

Supporting local artists like Haley means supporting the creativity, skills and small businesses that make our Whitsundays arts community so vibrant!

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Wild & Wonderful: Animals of the Whitsundays

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Creative Connections Whitsunday’s latest art display at Bendigo Community Bank celebrates the wonderful variety of animals and birdlife that inspire our local artists.

Featuring a collection of artworks by Creative Connections Whitsunday artists Tony Ayling, Suzanne Baker, Debbie Stephens and Suzi Hancock, the display captures the beauty, colour. and character of the creatures we know and love.

Drop into Bendigo Community Bank between 29 October and 10 December to enjoy the artworks and support our talented local artists.

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What: Community Creative Space  

When: Monday to Friday, 9:30am–4:00pm (closed 1:00pm–2:00pm for lunch)

Where: Bendigo Community Bank branch, Whitsunday Plaza, Cannonvale  

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