Interviews With 10 Australian Authors, Ch 1: Yasou! from Nadia Wheatley

Tom Tilley, holding the book Five Times Dizzy, speaks to author Nadia Wheatley.

TOM TILLEY:

G'day, Nadia. It's so good to meet you, because I've enjoyed reading this so much. It's such a fun, but also a touching story. Where did the story come from?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, yasou, Tom. I'm saying that because we're speaking some Greek this morning. As to the idea of where the story came from, all my stories really come out of place. So, there's two places in this story — there's the place of Newtown, a Sydney suburb, but it could be an imaginary Sydney suburb, and the place of Greece. And so it was those two places coming together in my life, back in the 1970s. After I left university, I lived in the suburb of Newtown, which, in those days, was really different from how it is now. There were Anglo-Aussie battlers living there, and there were a lot of Greek Australians living there, people who'd arrived maybe in the '50s or more recently in the '70s. So, a couple of years living in that place, having Greek neighbours, having Greek friends in the local corner shop. But one thing that disturbed me in my street — there was this old lady, an old yaya, an old grandmother, dressed all in black from top to toe, and the family went out to work in the daytime, and she sat on the concrete patio in the front of the house, and she just sat perfectly still, with nothing to do, no-one to talk to. And I should've just spoken to her in English, but I was too shy to do that, so I never really communicated with her. After a couple of years of living there in Newtown, I went to live in Greece. So, I went not for a holiday, but actually to live there for a couple of years and to teach myself to be a writer there. And as soon as I got there, I found myself making friendships with yayas, with old ladies, with ladies dressed in black from top to toe, and the contrast between them and that old lady in Newtown really struck me, because the Greek grandmothers were just full of life. They'd be up on the hillside with knives, cutting gra… cutting special type of grass, spinach-type herbs.

TOM TILLEY:

And being with other grandmas?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

And being together. Enormous amount of ribald discussion and chatting and gossiping would be going on all the time. And quite bossy with me — if I put the washing on the line, they'd be over the fence, telling me I was doing it the wrong way. So, I met that sort of… the spirit of Greek women, which is like an ancient, powerful spirit, going back to the times of the Earth Mother. So, I had in my mind two places — Newtown and Greece — and the particular bit of Greece was the island of Crete, where, for some time — for about a year or so — I lived in the town of Chania in northern Crete. And one evening, in a taverna in Crete, as I was sitting, eating my dinner, I found myself thinking, 'If I was the granddaughter of that old lady back in Newtown, what would I do to kind of break her out of that apathy, or that state of homesickness she was in? Oh, maybe I could get her a job. But what sort of a job would that grandmother do? She'd have to have a Greek job. Ah, maybe I could get her a goat. But if I was a little kid…'

TOM TILLEY:

Hang on, where did that idea come from?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

I don't know! Well, goats are around in Greece, you know. Even in an urban town like Chania, there'd be goats tethered sort of quite close to where we were living, and you'd see the grandmothers up on the hillside, leading goats out for pasture. So, in my mind, living in Crete, or Greece, a goat and a grandmother just went together. So, I thought, 'Yeah, I could get a goat for that old lady in Newtown, if I was her granddaughter.' Ah, next problem. If I lived in Newtown, where, in those days, so many of the front yards were concrete — it was before the modern environmental movement of lots of trees and grass — how could I graze a goat, you know? How could you find enough food? And then I thought, 'Ah, if you put lots of little things together, you get a big thing.' So, if you put lots of little front yards together, you'd have a grazing ground. So, that's the core idea…

TOM TILLEY:

And all this came to you, sitting in a Greek taverna?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

It came, I'd say, in two minutes.

TOM TILLEY:

Wow.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

I don't usually get these lightbulb ideas — people imagine writers or artists having lightbulb ideas, I don't know about other ones, but I don't usually get them, I've only had two in my career — but this was one of them. So, the next morning, I went into my room — a very big room in a falling-down old mansion, no glass in the windows, just a table and a chair in this room — and I started, initially in longhand, and then on an old typewriter, typing out the story. And I wrote three pages a day, every day, until I had the final version.

TOM TILLEY:

How many days did it take?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Took me about three months. And then it took five years to get published.

TOM TILLEY:

Why did it take so long to get published? 'Cause it's such a strong story. It's tight, it moves very quickly, it has such an amazing climactic end point — like, it's a great story. Why didn't people want to publish it?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

I think there were two… two or three reasons. Firstly, I was a new author. I was an unknown author.

TOM TILLEY:

It was your first book.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

It was my first book. And so, getting your first book published, like getting your first job, can be difficult. The second thing was that it isn't, at that time, exactly the same book as you can read today. So, it was exactly the same story, exactly the same characters, but it wasn't as fast, it wasn't as fast-paced. Because it was my first book, I didn't write it as well as I could've — it needed editing, in other words — but the main reason was political. By the time I was sending the book around — it was the late 1970s — five or six years earlier, the Whitlam government had introduced the multicultural policy that we have now, but it takes, I reckon, a decade, for a government policy to filter down and become internalised by people.

TOM TILLEY:

So, Australians weren't ready to talk about multiculturalism yet?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

No. Officially, there was multiculturalism. But people weren't engaging with it, including people in publishing companies. And people in publishing companies tend to be nice, well-meaning, small-L liberal folk, but they were coming up with reasons such as, 'There's too many Greeks in the book' or 'There's not enough Greeks in Australia to warrant publishing it.'

TOM TILLEY:

But it wasn't about that, was it?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

No, it wasn't a book for Greeks. I felt, as an Anglo-Australian author, it would be presumptuous for me to write a book from inside the Greek community or a book for the Greek community. It was a book for Anglo-Australians like myself, like the kids, like the Wilson family in the story, I hoped would read it and learn something about Greek-Australian culture and Greek-Greek culture by reading it.

TOM TILLEY:

OK, we'll talk lots more about immigration, 'cause there's some interesting messages about that in the book, but one of the reasons you said it took a while to get published — because the writing wasn't tight to begin with. It certainly is a tight book now. How did you get there eventually? Tell us about your writing style.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, when the book got knocked back by every publisher in Australia, I didn't give up being a writer. I was writing lots of other things, including short stories for adults, I was having the odd thing published, but basically, it was a long time with looking for other things to do. And I started working with a friend from university, a guy called Terry Larsen, on developing the Five Times Dizzy story, initially, into a film script. So, working on it as a film script, I learnt to do dialogue better and I learnt to be faster. It didn't ever end up as a film, but after I rewrote the book in a speedier fashion, and it finally got published in 1982, some years after that, it became a television series on the very infant Special Broadcasting Service.

TOM TILLEY:

So, take us through the finer points, because the language seems so efficient, you're able to get so much description, symbolism and plot development, all seemingly at once. How do you do that in a few words?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

At that time, I had a problem, as a writer, of being too verbose, of writing too many words about things, and going into long, descriptive narratives. And at the beginning of my big rewrite, I got bits of quarto paper, which are shorter than normal bits of paper, I cut them into four, and I would roll these tiny bits of paper into the roller of my old typewriter, so that every five minutes or so, I was having to stop my writing, take that bit of paper out and put in another bit of paper. So, for 20 or so pages of the book, I used this technique to break up my method. Once I had learnt to break my method, I was able to do that for that book. And, of course, different books and different pieces of writing require different things. So, I would be in trouble now if I couldn't write extended things, but for this book, I wanted it to be fast. The title, Five Times Dizzy, suggests something paced very, very fast. And the title refers to a Cretan dance, the five-times-dizzy dance, which goes so fast that the musicians have trouble keeping up.

TOM TILLEY:

Now, the story revolves around Mareka's family shop in Newtown, which instantly conjures up so much imagery. Why did you choose to set the story there?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, when I lived in my street in Newtown, back in the '70s, there were corner shops at each end of the street — at each corner — and in fact, there was a corner shop just around the corner in the next street. So, in those days, people didn't tend to shop at supermarkets like they do today, and so the corner shop would be where you went for your milk, your cat food, your newspaper, but also to catch up on some gossip and meet your neighbours. So, as a writer, it was good for me to have the family living in a place where all the characters could come in and meet each other, in the same way, sometimes in a television sitcom, you'll have a cafe or something featured to allow you to get the characters coming in. But the first reason was, really, real life. In real life, in my street, a Greek-Australian family ran the corner shop, and I was always popping in there and meeting my neighbours there.

TOM TILLEY:

OK, yeah, it sets an amazing bit of scenery, and you instantly start thinking about who else is in the street, and you describe the neighbours and the Wilsons, and Mr Willoughby, who's an interesting character. He's definitely grumpy and arguably racist. Why did you put him in the story?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, he has the corner shop opposite, so you've got two lines of opposition. And I do do maps to work out my plots — I said my ideas come from place — so you've got, if you like, two areas of conflict up at one end of the street. You've got Mareka's home shop and you've got Mr Willoughby's newsagent opposite, across the road. So, you've got this interaction between two older people in the story, between grumpy Mr Willoughby, the redneck Anglo-Aussie battler, and you've got Yaya, who's just come from Greece — she sits out on a chair on the corner, but is so freaked by the traffic and the neighbourhood that soon she retreats inside the house. So, you've got opposition there. And then you've got opposition between Mareka, our main child character, and the Wilsons, who live down at the other end of the street. So, I've got, like, two lines of conflict or opposition going up and down the street. When I'm talking about this book with young people, I explain that in life, it's really good if you only have friends and you only have nice things happening, but that's a bit boring in a story. So, in a story, we need elements of conflict, and then, ideally, we can resolve that conflict. So, the conflict between Mr Willoughby and the kids, and Mr Willoughby and Yaya, actually gets resolved through the agent of the goat, when the goat comes into the street.

TOM TILLEY:

And what an amazing way to bring a community together? The goat is this incredible… almost like an interface for human beings to meet together and get on. Did you realise that it would be such a powerful, almost like meeting place for humans?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

When the idea came, it just seemed logical that Yaya had to have a goat, because that's what a Greek grandmother would need to make her feel at home in Australia, in the street. But I came to realise that the goat would be the agent of change for everyone. So, it's when Mareka's enemies, the Wilsons, discover that she's getting a goat, or she wants to get a goat, that they want to be in on the goat action, and so that leads to them coming together with Mareka to organise the street fete that gets the money to get the goat. And then it was the goat which was to get Yaya out into the street, walking around, grazing the goat, meeting her neighbours, that actually brings the neighbours together and gets them interacting with each other. So, yes, the goat is the deus ex machina, it's the thing that comes from outside to make the plot come together and move the plot on.

TOM TILLEY:

One of my favourite moments is when Patricia Wilson decides not to dob on Mareka. She's basically got her on her knees, her dad's hounding her for answers, and Patricia comes up with this story that basically gets her out of trouble. Previously, they've had a pretty troubled friendship. Is that their key moment of bonding?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Yes, indeed, it is. So, Mareka's been going around knocking on doors, organising the goat roster. Patricia's been following and stickybeaking — Mareka hasn't been telling her what's going on. But when the information about this starts to come out in the shop, and Baba — Mareka's father — naturally gets worried about what's his daughter doing knocking on doors, she says it's a school survey, it's Patricia who comes to the aid, and says, 'Yes, it is.' And that is that thing of not dobbing — part of children's culture. Even if you don't like someone, it's kind of the kids against the parents, you're gonna stick up for another kid and stop that kid from getting into trouble.

TOM TILLEY:

Yeah, it's like they sign a joint conspiracy against the parents in that moment, and that act brings them together.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

It does, indeed, but then there's another action also significant in the coming together of Patricia and Mareka, and it's when Patricia and Mareka join as girls, almost as an alliance against Rowley, and that's really what cements the decision that they will work together, organising the street fete.

TOM TILLEY:

The story's also partly about rebirth, and it starts with that really dramatic scene where Mareka thinks her grandma is dead, and it ends with this beautiful spring fete and Yaya walking around Newtown, all over the suburb, with a goat. What were you trying to say about rebirth?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

When I wrote the book, I thought I was just working at that simple level of Mareka doing something to help her grandmother feel more comfortable and happy in Australia. It was some time later, actually, when I was working on the film script for the book, that I realised it was powerfully autobiographical and that I had drawn on something very deep in my own story. And I'm happy to talk about that because when I was a little girl, my mother was sick, and then when I was 9, she died. For some time after that, I literally believed that if I did the right magic, I would be able to bring her back to life again. And obviously, I never succeeded in doing that, and with time, I accustomed myself to the fact that she was, in fact, truly dead. But the idea of rebirth, of course, is something that happens around us all the time. With spring, things come back to life again. People are held alive in memory. There is rebirth going on around us. And so, I came to realise that it was those ideas that had worked their way into the story, where there's… something as well as Yaya in the story has died, and that's the haunted house. In the street, there's a house that's all boarded up with corrugated iron over its windows and Mareka says it looks like they're sunglasses staring at you.

TOM TILLEY:

Mmm.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

So, the house has died too. And the children, in coming together for the fete, bring the house back to life, and the house becomes their cubby centre, their clubhouse. So, at the end of the story, we've got Yaya full of life, with her goat, and on the morning of the walk that we see in the epilogue, they go past the haunted house, which, in springtime, is covered with wisteria and jasmine, and has come back to life, so that in the book, this transformation or this miraculous thing has happened, and we see both the house and Yaya coming back to life.

TOM TILLEY:

And so many of the other characters as well have their own personal epiphany or moment of change. Mr Willoughby…

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Mr Willoughby.

TOM TILLEY:

..the father, the Wilsons, to an extent — it's kind of all through all of the characters' stories.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Yes, well, it's about a community coming together, and so, it's about that transformation that does happen when community comes together.

TOM TILLEY:

And the power of a goat.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

And the power of a goat.

TOM TILLEY:

One of the many beautiful things in the book is this special relationship between a grandchild and their grandparent. Why is that relationship so different from the relationship we have with our immediate parents?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, of course, we often find that in real life, don't we, that skipping a generation creates a special bond. And, of course, grandparents are often able to spend more time with the kids, and they're able to give them a special sort of time. And also, it's that grandparent generation that's traditionally the storyteller. So, again, we're going back to very old and powerful things. So often, in old fables and old stories, we have the connection between the old character and the young character. Certainly, the elderly character can sometimes be scary — the old woman can be a witch as well as being the good old woman — and indeed, in this story, the Wilsons, at the beginning, believe that Yaya is a witch, or Rowley refers to her as 'the old witch'. And in this story, Yaya does literally seem to have forms of magic that are traditionally associated with old Greek women — the magic, the power of the evil eye, but also that ancient power that goes back to the Earth Mother. So, I'm bringing in those elements — a very old kind of pagan magic comes into it, and those are the elements that Yaya brings to the street.

TOM TILLEY:

Now, we talked a little bit before about immigration and this story was written in the '70s, when Greek immigrants were seen as vastly different from mainstream Australian culture. We're in 2015 now, we're looking at a very different country, a very different cultural makeup, where we're welcoming lots of people from all kinds of countries that are genuinely different. I mean, Greeks were Europeans as well. How do you think Australia's changed from that time in the '70s to now, and the kinds of people we're welcoming here?

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Well, of course the change that we see now is really the success of those policies of multiculturalism that were introduced in the 1970s. So, in the 1970s, we had the two significant non-Anglo communities of Greek Australians and Italian Australians, as well, of course, as the first Australians — the Aboriginal Australians. So, those were really the three significant non-Anglo communities. When I wrote Five Times Dizzy, we were just beginning to get people coming from Vietnam, but they hadn't moved into the inner-city areas, where the story is set. Now, as well as having people from dozens, if not hundreds, of different cultures coming in, the fabulous thing is that we have people from those cultures writing their own stories. It would probably be presumptuous for me now to be writing a book such as Five Times Dizzy, because there are heaps of Greek-Australian writers, you know, from Christos Tsiolkas onwards, who are writing Greek-Australian stories. But, at that time, there weren't. And so, it was a different Australia, and also a very different writing and literary culture, so much so that the book was hailed when finally, after that five-year battle to get it published, when finally it was sent to a particular publishing house, and they sent it to an outside reader, she wrote, 'Here, at last, is the Australian multicultural children's book we've all been waiting for.' Well, of course, they hadn't been waiting for it.

TOM TILLEY:

You'd been waiting for them to publish it!

NADIA WHEATLEY:

I'd been waiting for them to come around to the party. But to me, that transformation — to see that transformation — is one of the most joyous things, allowing still for pockets of redneck racism that we see from time to time. But to see that transformation in general — there's been a great improvement in Australia, from the Australia of my childhood to the Australia the children are growing up in today.

TOM TILLEY:

Nadia, it's been amazing to speak to you, and really fun to read your book as well. Thanks for taking the time to speak to us.

NADIA WHEATLEY:

Efharisto. Thank you.

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