Tess Brady, academic, author, editor and TV presenter, spoke to The Advocate about moving to Clunes and helping it to evolve from rural decline into a prospering International Booktown.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Personal history
Ms Brady grew up in Adelaide before living and studying overseas.
When she returned to Australia, she was writing 3D sound productions and so decided to move back to Adelaide as they had the big FM studios. She then went on to teach at numerous universities around Australia, teaching both education and writing.
In 2011, Ms Brady was named by The Age Melbourne Magazine as one of Melbourne’s 100 most influential, inspirational, provocative and creative people. In 2016, she was awarded the Clunes Female Citizen of the Year and in 2017, she won the Regional Achievement & Community Awards: Life Activities Clubs Victoria and Henry Carus & Associates Senior Achievement Award.
I can have a million dreams but I couldn’t have achieved any of what I have so far without the help of others.
- Tess Brady
Moving to Clunes
A decade ago, Ms Brady was at a meeting at what was then Ballarat University (now Federation University), when she realised she had more free time on her hands than she had anticipated.
“One of the things you do when you’re teaching writing is you teach place. I didn’t have a feel for this area so I thought I’d take a big loop back to the office. I set off thinking I was going to Daylesford. I drove into Clunes, stopped the car and spent time here. There were no cafes; it was completely dead. I stood in the middle of the road and took photos. Wild westerns came in my head.
“I suddenly realised something important in my life was going to happen and knew I needed to live here. So I went back to Melbourne, resigned and bought a house in Clunes within two weeks.
“It was very full-on and powerful. What the thing was, I now realise, was having to work with people I hadn’t before. My whole life I have been working with people in the university sector, with publishers, writers, artists; that’s a world of very like-minded people. In the end we all drink the same kind of coffee and go to the same places.
“Moving here, I had to understand, talk and work with people very differently than I did back home. That taught me something absolutely essential-there is more than one way of seeing the world. There are different knowledges and if you start to put those knowledges together, you have a powerful source,” she said.
That taught me something absolutely essential-there is more than one way of seeing the world. There are different knowledges and if you start to put those knowledges together, you have a powerful source.
- Tess Brady
Even though the town was in rural decline, what was immediately evident was the power of the community and its spirit.
“The other thing Clunes has taught me is the power of community. When I arrived in 2003, there were 700 residents, but 30 or so clubs. It was overwhelmingly powerful how the people on the land and the tree changers worked together to keep the spirit high during the devastation of drought.”
Creative Clunes
Ms Brady recalled how Creative Clunes was established with inspiration from Daylesford’s Words in Winter festival.
“I rang up David Hall and said I’d like to do something similar, but in Clunes. I then got together with Graeme Johnstone from Clunes Town Association and we put on a couple of Words in Winter festivals in Clunes.”
After two or three events, a meeting was held to discuss ways in which artists in the community could get something back.
“It was then we began to look at the possibility of bringing people to a venue for an event. We wanted a place with many empty buildings and cheap rent; that was Clunes. So we started to work on an idea of something that fitted with the town, as you can’t just put something on to a town and hope it works.”
Eventually, after a lot of hard work, it was decided that discovery is what Clunes is about; discovery of books, education, gold, genealogy.
At the time Clunes library, even though it was only open a couple of days each week, had more members than residents.
A new booktown
Once the theme was established, Ms Brady started to research how books could be incorporated as a selling point for the town, and so with other community members, the idea of a booktown was explored.
Ms Brady visited Hay-On-Wye, a booktown on the English-Welsh border, while visiting her sister.
The idea of Clunes being a booktown was not initially backed by potential funding bodies, but it was agreed the group would be given an $11,000 budget for a test run.
After calling more than 100 book traders and trying to sell the idea of the first 16 takers being given free accommodation and no attendance fee, the group was surprised at how the idea snowballed.
Not only did the book traders embrace the idea, but the community backed it too and helped to clean out Clunes’ historic buildings which had been sealed up for years.
“The first Booktown Festival was a terrible day. It was raining, the drought broke and the 1000 people we were hoping for turned into 6000 people. We ran out of absolutely everything - electricity, money and food. But we proved the idea could work.”
Clunes in 2018
Clunes is now an accredited member of the International Organisation of Booktowns. It has worked on projects with fellow booktowns across the globe, including Featherstone in New Zealand and Seoul in Korea.
“I am very happy about how things are going in Clunes. The 2006 to 2017 statistics show 64 per cent growth.
“A large number of people coming are early retirees, tree changers and middle range career artists who are arriving with professional skills and taking on leadership roles. I can have a million dreams but I couldn’t have achieved any of what I have so far without the help of others.”
Booktown Festival takes place on May 5-6 in Clunes, with the township expecting more than 18,000 people to flock to the historic town to attend the festivities.