Please join Alan Brough at a celebration at the State Library on Friday 20 March, 4 - 5pm when he announces the the top five books, as voted by Victorian readers in the State Library of Victoria’s Summer Read program 2008-9, and voter’s prizes.

Experimedia
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street, Melbourne

RSVP by Wednesday 17 March 2009

Telephone                   8664 7555
email                          learning@slv.vic.gov.au
book online                summerreadawards.eventbrite.com

Lisa, Lyne and Genevieve :  thank you all so much for responding to me so charmingly.  I do agree with you, Lisa.  Melba’s talent and determination were such that  whatever path her life had taken, she would have been a brilliant success - or so I believe.

A Happy New Year to all my readers.

Ann Blainey

Thanks Ann for your posts sharing both Melba anecdotes and your sailing experiences.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Ann will be appearing at:

• Miller’s Homestead - historic house owned by The City of Knox at the of Cnr Dorrigo Road and Melrose Crt, Boronia on Friday 6 February 2009, from 7.00 pm
 A celtic harp will play in the beautiful garden prior to and following Anne Blainey’s talk.
 For further information phone Ferntree Gully Library 9294 8140 or book online at  http://summerread12.eventbrite.com
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• Wangaratta Library, 21 Docker Street, Wangaratta on Wednesday 11 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
 Students from the Northern Rivers Academy of Music, will accompany Ann Blainey on a  journey through the life and times of Dame Nellie Melba.
 Join in and evening of All Things Melba starting with Melba champagne on arrival.
 For further information phone Wangaratta Library 5721 2366 or book online at  http://summerread18.eventbrite.com
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• Collingwood Library, 11 Stanton Street, Abbotsford on Sunday 15 February 2009, 3.00 – 4.30 pm
 A choral recital will precede Anne Blainey’s talk and Melba Champagne, Peach Melba  and Melba Toast will be served
 For further information phone Collingwood Library on 1300 695 427 or book online at  http://summerread13.eventbrite.com

Vote for I am Melba or SMS MELBA to 13 46 88

We are now sailing south towards what I call Melba land. Having been occupied with writing the life of Melba for the last five years, I still seem to see the world in terms of where she was and what she felt. In a few days’ time, as we sail down the North Queensland coast, we will pass by the sugar city of Mackay.  Though a remote town in Melba’s time, it played a crucial role in Melba’s life. Without it, she may never have become a professional singer, let alone the most famous opera singer of her age.

Melba came to Mackay  as a troubled  twenty- one-year-old. Back in her home town of Melbourne, she had just witnessed the deaths of her beloved mother and baby sister, and she was desperate to throw off her grief. In these circumstances, it was not so surprising that she fell almost instantly in love with the town’s most dashing bachelor: Charlie Armstrong, a baronet’s son who worked as a drover and horse breaker. Ignoring her father’s objections, she married Charlie, gave birth to a child, and attempted to adjust to life as a Mackay housewife.

She soon found that she could not adjust. The heat, the rain, the baby  and Charlie’s temper all wrought havoc with her nerves. The one bright spot was a travelling opera company that played a brief season in Mackay. She quickly realized that she could sing as well as any of its stars. Her one thought now was to become an opera singer, make plenty of money, and settle herself and husband and son in a more tolerable place. She returned to her father’s house in Melbourne and began to study singing seriously.

It’s always fun to play “what if”. What if she had married a less adventurous husband, settled in Melbourne, and adopted the comfortable middle-class life that her married sisters led. Would she have become one of the most famous women of her time, and our most famous Australian to date?  It’s a hard question to answer, but possibly not. It could be argued that Mackay was the catalyst that brought about her fame. Without Mackay, she may never have been “marvellous Melba” or our own Dame Nellie.

My husband Geoffrey and I visited Mackay back in 2004, and I found myself the first biographer of Melba to set foot there. The local newspaper library yielded rich material, not only concerning Melba’s life in the town, but also  her later life as an opera singer. Mackay exulted in her fame, and its local paper carried many useful snippets, gleaned from the international news services, regarding her doings in Europe and America. Though, like Geoffrey,  I believe that one should do one’s own research rather than entrust it to assistants - for doing one’s own research is the first step in assimilating the facts -  I gained a dear friend and most useful helper during my research among the newspapers. This was Berenice Wright, a local historian. We keep in touch by phone and net, and I wish this ship was docking at Flat Top Island near the mouth of the Mackay river, so we could see each other.

I’m writing to you from a ship near Torres Strait. My husband Geoffrey is the ship’s lecturer, and I’m his “accompanying person”. We are sailing through a sea scattered with tiny islands that look like poached eggs - the ring of sand is the egg white and the vegetation in the middle is the yoke. Some are just a speck, others are miles across. It’s a dream-like seascape - like something out of the happier parts of “Ancient Mariner”. I’ve sailed in the Mediterranean, but I’ve never seen anything as magical as this.

We have just visited Thursday Island, locally known as T. I. I love Thursday Island. So far it has resisted touristic progress. Back in the nineteenth century, its fishing trawlers went after beche de mer - those grim looking sea slugs that the Oriental gourmets prize as a delicacy and an aphrodisiac. Later the trawlers fished for pearls and mother of pearl shells; now it’s prawns and  crayfish. The coral shoals make fishing and sailing a hazardous exercise, particularly  at night. One of the worst disasters in Australian maritime history occurred  near T. I. in February 1890, when the mail steamer the “Quetta”, sailing in the dark, struck a coral reef. A hundred and thirty three people drowned. The tall wooden Anglican Cathedral in the centre of town is dedicated to those lost souls.

I’m especially interested in shipwrecks in Torres Strait because someone from long ago -  someone I’ve come to know well - was mortally injured on a coral reef off T. I. It happened on 27 December 1913. The Dutch mail ship the ‘Tasman” hit a reef  at eleven o’clock at night and it was New Year’s Day before anyone could be rescued. For much of that time the unfortunate passengers huddled on deck, exposed to the howling winds and pouring rain of a cyclone. Among those passengers was Lillan Nordica, one of the operatic superstars of the early twentieth century, on her way home from a concert tour of Australia. I came across her when I was writing my biography of the famous Melbourne soprano Nellie Melba. It’s usually said that those towering divas of the golden age of opera hated one another, but she and Melba were firm friends.  Though born on different continents - Nordica was American, Melba of course was Australian- - they had much in common. Both came from down-to-earth immigrant stock, both valued good sense and both spoke their mind.

Nordica was taken to the hospital at T.I.  There she lingered for months in the tropical heat. Exposure and pneumonia had weakened her heart. At the end of March she was placed on a ship for Jakarta, but she barely survived the voyage, dying in Jakarta early in May.  Melba was travelling in her personal train in the far west of America when she heard the news.  She was due to sing that night, but she wept so hard for Nordica that her manager thought he would have to cancel the concert. That her dear friend had died so close to Australia, seems to have made Melba’s sense of loss the worse.

I would love to receive your comments and perhaps questions.  However internet time on the ship is limited. I will be communicating with you again tomorrow, but please forgive me if I don’t reply to your questions and comments until the day after.

Ann Blainey is next Summer Read author blogging from  21 - 24 December.

Ann Blainey has written five biographies. She has served on the council of two Australian opera companies and the Percy Grainger Museum in Melbourne. Her previous book was Fanny and Adelaide: The Lives of the Remarkable Kemble Sisters, one sister was a famous opera singer and the other a famous actress.

Her book I am Melba is one of the books on the Summer Read shortlist.

I am Melba tells the story of Melbourne’s Dame Nellie Melba, Australia’s first international superstar. Melba performed to overflowing concert halls within a few short years of travelling to London and Paris, and became a singing phenomenon and was the subject of much controversy. This biography captures the glamour, energy and excitement of this legendary Melburnian export.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Ann will be appearing at:

• Miller’s Homestead - historic house owned by The City of Knox at the of Cnr Dorrigo Road and Melrose Crt, Boronia on Friday 6 February 2009, from 7.00 pm
   A celtic harp will play in the beautiful garden prior to and following Anne Blainey’s talk.
   For further information phone Ferntree Gully Library 9294 8140 or book online at  http://summerread12.eventbrite.com

• Wangaratta Library, 21 Docker Street, Wangaratta on Wednesday 11 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
   Students from the Northern Rivers Academy of Music, will accompany Ann Blainey on a  journey through the life and times of Dame Nellie Melba.
   Join in and evening of All Things Melba starting with Melba champagne on arrival.
   For further information phone Wangaratta Library 5721 2366 or book online at  http://summerread18.eventbrite.com

• Collingwood Library, 11 Stanton Street, Abbotsford on Sunday 15 February 2009, 3.00 – 4.30 pm
   A choral recital will precede Anne Blainey’s talk and Melba Champagne, Peach Melba  and Melba Toast will be served
   For further information phone Collingwood Library on 1300 695 427 or book online at  http://summerread13.eventbrite.com

What Ann says about summer reading

“My happiest memory of summer reading is lying in the hayloft of my grandparent’s farm poring over old copies of The Australian Women’s Mirror. I was ten years old; and though I did not know it then, I was embarking on my first historical research. The magazines dated from the mid nineteen thirties, and I was fascinated by the unfamiliar world that their pages revealed. Even today, when I recall those summer afternoons, I can smell warm hay – and see The Phantom comic strip, which appeared weekly in those Mirrors. My summer reading is still historical. Last summer I read Ouida’s Moths. I gain the greatest pleasure from nineteenth century fiction.”