Adventure works with words

By KATH GANNAWAY
WHEN John Marsden, bestselling Australian writer and respected authority on literature for young people, was asked to choose four outofprint Australian classics for today’s generation of readers, Ivan Southall’s Seventeen Seconds, was one of them.
The book, a young adult version of his 1960 classic Softly Tread the Brave, is the true story of two Australians who did minedisposal work in Britain during World War II.
Marsden’s choice, something Southall was not aware of, reflects his success as an author but more importantly it recognises his place as a pioneer of legitimate, Australian literature for young adults.
Southall’s work is the subject of a retrospective on his contribution to children’s literature at Upwey on Sunday, 31 July, as part of the Yarra Ranges’ 2005 Festival of Words.
There’s a lot to look back on.
At 84 and living in retirement in the Yarra Valley, Ivan Southall is surrounded by volumes representing his more than 70 years as a writer.
Adult novels, essays and short stories, his Simon Black adventure series and the books he regards as his ‘serious’ writing, real life books for young people, are neatly organised around his study.
Forced to join the workforce at 14 to help support his mother and younger brother after his father died, he says he knew by then that he wanted to write.
“By the time I was 15, when I wrote my first published article, I was committed,” he says. He had four books completed before the age of 20.
He joined the RAAF after nagging his mother for a year to let him sign up, and went on to captain a Sunderland flying boat and receive the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the war Southall wrote war history for two years before returning to Melbourne and moving to Monbulk where he raised his family and wrote many of his books.
At a time when he says anything Australian was considered second rate, his Simon Black adventures, to his delight, he says, were not.
“I set out to write as well as I could and I directed it towards boys in their teens.
“There were virtually no Australian books for boys; everything that came into the country was published in England.”
The Simon Black series – nine books that were enormously popular – came to an unexpected end when Southall got fed up with his own and other authors’ writing that he says underestimated young people’s capacity to appreciate real characters in reallife situations.
“I let my hair down and instead of Simon doing everything in the style of a super hero, I had him doing everything in the style of a super idiot,” he says.
“I had been brought up on impossible adventure and suddenly jacked up on it. I wanted to write about somebody who was real.
“Hills End and my next book, Ash Road, really changed writing for young people in this country and in other countries too. It was real life, which was not being done at that time.”
More believable characters were part of the new genre and he based many of his characters on his own children, who were growing up at the time in Monbulk, and their friends.
He is particularly proud of Ash Road which he regards as his best book.
“It’s been published all over the world; I’m proud of that achievement,” he says, “It really changed literature for young people.”
Ash Road in 1966 was the first of his books to win the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award.
Over the next decade he won four more CBCA awards and the Australian Writers Award in 1974.
He is the only Australian writer to receive the prestigious British Carnegie Award, in 1972, for his book Josh. In 1981 he was made a member of the Order of Australia.
His books have been printed in more than 20 languages and he says he is delighted, when he thinks back to what he grew up on, that they appeal so broadly – the ultimate award.
Rosemary Johnston will present Ivan Southall – A Retrospective at the Burrinja Performance Space, Upwey, at 1.30pm on Sunday.
To book phone 9215 7109.