Sessions Scheduling Almost Complete
If you would like to present a session, please advise President Jeff Close by email closeandmoller@gmail.com. Sorry – we have no budget this year for sessions
2025 Speakers
(Listed alphabetically)
John Elliott
Photographer, Writer and Australian Tourism AdvocateA champion of the Outback and regional Australia, John Elliott has worked since 1980 as a photographer, broadcaster and marketing professional.
Career highlights include: leading Winton’s successful tourism, events and film industry development; managing North American marketing for the Crocodile Dundee film; 1000 Mile Stare, a solo photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery; Churchill Fellowship recipient; and publishing 14 photography and social documentary focused books.
A consummate storyteller known for his social documentary photography, John has been photographing the people and places of regional Australia for fifty years.
Festival Appearances:
Steve Hawe
Writer, wearer of Many HatsSteve Hawe wore many hats in the outback before chilling in Warwick, southern Qld. His wife, Denise, trains sheepdogs and dreams of owning Babe. Kate, youngest nestling of five, paints and trawls op-shops.
Steve picks guitar and sings (to everyone’s horror), reinvents the wheel in his workshop, and tests the bounds of believability with subs to lit mags and writing prizes. With some success.
His latest obsession smoulders inside a zany speculative climate-change WIP. At 67, he’s not fossilized (enough) to be unaware of AI, (won’t divulge his novel’s name) or that he should hang onto those hats.
Photo of Steve Hawe © Bush Journal
Festival Appearances:
Greg North
Poet, performerAustralian bush poetry male performance champion 2008, 2009, 2010.
A resident of the Blue Mountains NSW, Gregory North is a writer and performer of bush poetry and yarns. He’s a man of many hats, voices and characters who loves to perform and share traditional Australian entertainment in his quirky, humorous, modern style.
Turned on to poetry in 2003, he has won a string of performance poetry awards culminating in the Australian bush poetry championship in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He’s also been awarded for his written poetry and has travelled the country reciting his own and others’ rhyming verse to audiences from handfuls to thousands.
From May till September he’s resident in Winton, Queensland, where he performs poetry and heritage shows at the North Gregory Hotel (yes, Gregory North at the North Gregory Hotel!).
His three shows performed from May to September at the North Gregory Hotel (yes, Gregory North at the North Gregory Hotel!) are a mixture of history and poetry and include shows The Life & Rhymes of Banjo Paterson (with companion book), The Mysteries of Waltzing Matilda and Winton in the year of Waltzing Matilda (based on his book of the same name).
Festival Appearances:
Caroline Overington
Multi award-winning journalist, and author of fiction and non-fictionCaroline Overington is an Australian author and journalist who has worked for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Weekend Australian Magazine.
One of Australia’s most successful writers and journalists, she has twice won the Walkley Award for Investigative Journalism; the Sir Keith Murdoch award for Journalistic Excellence; Australia’s richest prize for business writing, the Blake Dawson Prize; and the Davitt Award for crime writing.
She has written sixteen books – fiction and nonfiction. She investigates and hosts true crime documentaries for the Seven Network; she produced and presented the Missing William Tyrrell podcast; she’s a judge of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and The Australian Fiction Prize; and she has reached No.1 on the Audible charts with her crime thrillers.
Festival Appearances:
Prof Kim Wilkins
Author, Lecturer, ResearcherKim Wilkins is a recognised expert on storytelling, popular literature, and the publishing industry. She is a Professor of Writing and Deputy Associate Dean of HASS Research at University of Queensland.
Kim is the author of more than 30 full-length works of fiction across genres and for a range of different ages. Her work is released under her own name and as Kimberley Freeman (fantasy and historical fiction), and has been translated into more than 20 languages globally.
Her scholarly research centres on creative communities, such as writing groups and fan cultures.
Festival Appearances:
Previous years speakers
- John Elliott
- Steve Hawe
- Greg North
- Caroline Overington
- Prof Kim Wilkins
- Vicki Bennett
- Aleesah Darlison
- Jack Drake
- Grace Elliott | Fae le Friz
- Dr Judy Gregory
- Sarah Guthrie
- Tom Guthrie
- Sandra Hogan
- David Hoy
- Dan Kelly
- Peter & Jane Knowles
- W. Benjamin Lindner
- Ian Mathieson
- Nikki Mottram
- Claire Saxby
- Jill Staunton
- Ian Waples
Vicki Bennett
Author ArtistVicki Bennett is an author, artist and corporate trainer. She has written 27 books, including: The Effective Leader, I’ve Found the Keys Now Where’s the Car? I’ve Read the Rules, Now How Do I Play the Game? Signposts for Life and Life Smart. She has also written, directed and co-produced a documentary, Never Forget Australia.
Her recent books are Two Pennies and Dreams Can Come True (Boolarong Press). Dreams Can Come True is designed as a workbook for parents, grandparents and teachers to assist early primary school children in developing a growth mindset through expanding children’s skills of visualisation and setting goals.
Two Pennies is a story about a little boy called George, who after World War I, decides to work hard and raise two pennies to help rebuild a school in Villers-Bretonneux, France. This town had been flattened by war and the school destroyed. This is a powerful and poignant story about a little boy who, with courage, hope and perseverance, helped to build this school across the oceans.
Vicki has been awarded the prestigious Woman of Substance Award by The Girl Guides Association. This honour was for her voluntary work with Guides and Leaders.
Festival Appearances:
Aleesah Darlison
AuthorAleesah Darlison is an internationally published, award-winning Australian author of over 65 books for children. She is known for her books that champion the cause of animals and the environment and for her stories that empower children.
Aleesah has won or been shortlisted for many awards including the Book Excellence Awards, the Environment Award for Children’s Literature, the CBCA Awards, and the Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards. In 2021, she was awarded an Australia Day honour from the Sunshine Coast Council.
When Aleesah isn’t writing or dreaming up ideas for new stories, she can usually be found speaking at schools, libraries, and literary festivals promoting literacy and inspiring children to read.
Festival Appearances:
Jack Drake
(1950-2024)Poet Author
Jack Drake was introduced to the bush poetry of Banjo Patterson at age ten, in 1960. Words and verse became a part of his life. But he did not only read about the bush, he lived it.
School had few attractions for a lad who could think of little but horses, cattle, dogs and the outdoor life, and neither Jack nor the Education System were unduly concerned when they parted ways at the earliest legal age.
He was always blessed or cursed, with the ‘gift of the gab’, and from an early age announced shows, rodeos and MC’d country dances. He wrote poetry from his teenage years but would rather forget some of his early efforts. He is quite happy to admit it was only later in life that his work had any substance.
National recognition came in 2001 when he won the Australian Bush Poet of the Year Quest run by Asthma NSW and the Women’s Weekly magazine. By 2001 there was enough performance work, book and CD sales to allow Jack and Stella to concentrate on bush poetry.
Jack’s three CDs of works, The Cattle Dog’s Revenge, Dinkum Poetry and Bronco Harry’s Last Ride have all gained nominations for the Australian Bush Laureate Awards.
After self-publishing four books, he was picked up by Central Queensland University Press. His first professionally published book of ballads and yarns, The Cattle Dog’s Revenge was released in July 2003 and has been reprinted several times. This book won a second National Award in 2004, earning a Golden Gumleaf Trophy from the Australian Bush Laureate Awards for the Best Book of Original Verse 2004 at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Festival Appearances:
Grace Elliott | Fae le Friz
Author ResearcherBorn in Winton and raised on a local property 160km out of town, Fae le Friz daylights as one of the rural posties and moonlights as a Fantasy and an Australiana author. A lifetime daydreamer and lover of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, Fae started her writing career with short original stories in 2009, which remain unpublished. This was then followed by writing and posting One Piece and Fairy Tail fanfiction online in 2012, later progressing to the Harry Potter and Game of Thrones fanfictions she is now best known for.
In 2021, whilst working as the Education Co-Ordinator for the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, Fae wrote the children’s first resource book, “The Wonderful World of Australian Fossils”, which was the winner of the International Children’s Nonfiction Book Award in 2022. After a career change in mid-2022, Fae decided to finally pursue her life-long dream of being an author. Indecisive over the three Fantasy ideas she had, Fae asked her younger sister to help be the deciding vote on which one to work on first.
“None of them, I don’t like Fantasy. Write something relatable to me (a contract fencer-musterer at Aramac), and I’ll read it.” Having never written Australiana before and full of sibling-fueled spite, Fae decided that the story would have to be centered around dalmatians, given how much her sister didn’t like her two dalmatians, Havoc and Tempest. Fae then dusted off an idea she had wanted to use for a new Game of Thrones fanfiction wherein the Stark family were drovers in outback Australia. Instead of discovering Direwolves and going to war, the Stark children discovered Thylacines (Tasmanian Tigers), and tried to bring the megafauna back from extinction. Fae fiddled around with this initial concept until her debut novel, “A Spot of Bother”, was born.
“A Spot of Bother” is an Australiana Young Adult novel about a Muttaburra bush kid off at a north Queensland boarding school. After completing some property work for a friend’s family, he is promised the pick of the litter only to later discover that his future working stock dog is actually a dalmatian. Committed to the bit, Richard “Dickie” Dyre decides that Bother the dalmatian will be the start of his working stock dog team, and that they will beat his older siblings at a dog trial. He just has to train his dally on school grounds, in secret, without getting caught first. (Fae’s sister still has yet to read “A Spot of Bother”)
Fae’s current work in progress is an Epic Fantasy series called “Steps Between the Aether”, with book one tentatively titled “The Wishfae”. Taking umbrage with the overused “dead mum trope” in modern media, Fae wanted to play around with the idea of a parent being able to come back after death. Sabella Oftdair is a human mother-of-two who dies in one country, pleads her case before the various gods of the world, and comes back to life as one of the fae in another, far flung continent. Beholden now to the Dragonchild Chesa, Sabella has to keep the little girl alive whilst navigating a war in kingdoms not her own, learning new languages and new abilities, without causing insult to any of the many cultures of Whyja country. Far across the Tarfor Sea, her two young sons are also being swept up in a civil war – will Sabella be able to return to them before it’s too late?
Festival Appearances:
Book Launch
Dr Judy Gregory
Author Editor GhostwriterDr Judy Gregory is a Brisbane-based writer, ghostwriter, editor, researcher and self-confessed word nerd.
In 2020, Judy wrote and published Newbies in the Café, a book about people who have opened a café following a career doing something else. The book tells the stories of 11 café dreamers (including Judy herself) and reveals some of the factors behind café success or failure.
Judy works as a ‘pen for hire’. She has written several memoirs and business books as a ghostwriter, and helped many organisations to produce public documents.
Judy regularly presents writing seminars, workshops and writing retreats. She teaches professional writing at The University of Queensland.
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
Sarah Guthrie
AuthorThe Guthries’ son Ford (aged 17) who died suddenly in January 2016. His mother Sarah traces his life, along with hers. The experience of writing this story was more powerful than the author imagined. Gathering the pieces of the story from memory, diaries, scrapbooks, letters and the many many emails and texts received after Ford died.
Sarah has set out to create a book with warmth, honesty and purpose. A book for some readers to relate through their own grief, for others a book that reminds them of Ford and the memories they shared.
In her daily life, she considers herself to be fortunate to have a busy and at times over-full diary; this is both good and exhausting. Sarah has kept me going, spurred on. She has found that she seeks more meaning from experiences, not just the feeling of having to do something because I should, or because someone else wants me to, but because I want to. This sense of meaning makes things seem purposeful and worthwhile for her.
This is the story of the Guthries’ son Ford (aged 17), who died suddenly in January 2016. It traces his life and that of the author, his mother Sarah. A series of vignettes, it captures the small and detailed pieces of their family life together on their farm at the foot of the Grampians in Victoria.
The illustrations and cover were designed by the authors’ daughter Pollyanna who is a graphic designer; she’s created a close link between the written and the visual.
Over five years the author’s story grew, encouraged by many, but one friend shared the tears as the storyline came to life; she laced the vingettes together, to give better clarity and meaning. There were times the author felt she would never reach the finish line. Another friend edited the work, adding suggestions and finesse where needed. Finally, the hurdle of deciding on the title; so much deliberating, but always within reach was Picking up the Pieces. The title draws its name from the author at the sheepyards collecting over 28 years pieces of old china, and keeping them, planning one day to create something with them. Every time it rains, more pieces come to the surface from the story of past life. A cottage once stood near those sheepyards and these china pieces are all that remains.
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
Tom Guthrie
AuthorTom Guthrie’s Australian history epic The Longest Drive has attracted wide acclaim. Released in July 2014 at the 150-year celebrations of the Guthrie family’s property Rich Avon, receiving positive reviews in magazines and newspapers, culminating in Tom being a guest on Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour on the Victorian ABC alongside Thomas Keneally and co-host Beverley O’Connor.
Tom said: “It was a fantastic opportunity to highlight the contribution made by rural people throughout Australia’s history, a contribution which has shaped the country we enjoy today.”
The Longest Drive tells the story of Thomas Guthrie who arrived in Tasmania as a fourteen year old in 1847. He settled at Rich Avon near Donald in north-western Victoria in 1864 and in 1882 he purchased a million acres on the Barkly tableland in the Northern Territory when it was opened up for settlement. He named it Avon Downs after his home property. The stocking of that property with sheep led to the longest sheep droving journey in Australian history when in 1882 nearly 11,000 sheep set off on foot from Donald to Avon Downs. After 16 months and 3500 kilometres of following rivers and battling drought, crisscrossing the continent from south to north, the droving team reached its destination. Longreach’s Stockman’s Hall of Fame called it ‘the longest ever droving trip with sheep’.
Martin Flanagan wrote in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (1/11/2014): “It’s a big book. A Murray River red-gum of a book. The book, of 650 pages, depicts a Scottish-Australian dream that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of the Australian pastoral industry.”
Festival Appearances:
Book Launch
Sandra Hogan
AuthorSandra Hogan’s true life spy story With My Little Eye has become an Australian best-seller since its release in 2022. It tells how ASIO unintentionally recruited three children as part of its Cold War espionage efforts. The children were part of the Doherty family and their parents both worked for ASIO in Sydney and then in Brisbane. The Dohertys made the highly unusual decision to involve their children in many aspects of spying work.
Based on ten years of research and interviews with family members, With My Little Eye gives a unique, child’s eye perspective on the world of Australian Cold War espionage.
Author Sandra Hogan is a Queensland writer, journalist and editor. She is working on a new book –also about family secrets.
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
David Hoy
AuthorWith the benefit of military skills gained from the Australian Army Cadets before they were disembodied from the national defence system, David has been a soldier for most of his life, having progressed to the regular army in January of 1975. As an infantry scout through to section commander, marksman, parachutist, and as a senior non-commissioned officer in the Intelligence Corps, he gained an appreciation of unit and military history from veterans of WWII through to the present day and a working knowledge in combat intelligence, counter intelligence and strategic intelligence.
In his more than four decades in army boots he has been deployed overseas and affected by the myriad of army reorganisations and political effects on Australia’s national security capability with a hands-on perspective.
David’s background allows for an honest appreciation of the varied researched and publicly available publications related to Australia’s security standing, and the primary influences upon it. A genuine concern over what appears to be a trend of politically and ideologically inspired misinterpretation of history, either intentional or not, gave rise to the compilation of a manuscript for publication.
Festival Appearances:
Dan Kelly
Publisher AuthorDan is the General Manager of Boolarong Press.
Boolarong has been publishing great Queensland and Australian stories for over 40 years. It has published over 1,300 titles and has currently over 400 books in print.
Boolarong is a sister company to Watson Ferguson & Company which has been printing books since 1868.
Dan has been runnning both businesses for 15 years and has himself been responsible for commissioning books such as Aboriginal Campsites of Greater Brisbane. The Brisbane River Guide, Outback Miners and the republishing of many of Boolarong’s favourite books.
Festival Appearances:
Peter & Jane Knowles
AuthorPeter and Jane Knowles owned a sheep property south of Winton. Our daughter, Imogen, was born in a big hospital in Brisbane, in 1988. Peter and Jane started writing the verses on the long drive home. They continued to compose these verses for the next few years. These verses remained in a draw for many years. In 2022 Jane got them together as she had met an artist who beautifully illustrated the book.
Illustrator: Monica Batiste
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
W. Benjamin Lindner
Musician Author HistorianW. Benjamin Lindner practised as a Melbourne criminal barrister for forty years. He was introduced to the outback in the 1980s, as in-house counsel for the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service. Returning to the Victorian Bar to specialise in appearing for the defence in serious indictable criminal matters, he taught advocacy. In 2017, his article in the Victorian Bar News, Where there’s a Will, we’ll go a Waltzing Matilda: Serendipity in Chambers, told the story of the Last Will & Testament of Paterson’s fianceé, Sarah Riley.
Benjamin has enjoyed playing, singing and researching folk music for more than forty years. After researching the origins of Waltzing Matilda, he published a comprehensive history of the origins of the song in Waltzing Matilda: Australia’s Accidental Anthem: A Forensic History, forword by Geoffrey Blainey, Boolarong Press, 2019.
During the COVID lockdown, his research into the history of the first building in the world dedicated to a song, The Waltzing Matilda Centre. Without precedent, a modest outback township, Winton, managed to pull off a coup to create a vibrant tourist magnet. Its story had to be told. Hence his 2019 book, Winton’s Waltzing Matilda Centre: From a Song a Home is Born.
It was published a year after the Winton Shire Council, on the recommendation of the Waltzing Matilda Centre’s Board, conferred upon him the title of Ambassador of the Waltzing Matilda Centre, on 21 March, 2023.
Lindner has been an advocate for recognition of the unsung contributor of the music to the song, Christina Macpherson. He campaigns for a life-size bronze statue of Christina erected alongside the statue of A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson on the forecourt of the Waltzing Matilda Centre.
Lindner looks forward to further advancing Winton’s Waltzing Matilda Centre, as its proud Ambassador.
Festival Appearances:
Ian Mathieson
Editor AuthorIan is a freelance editor, published author and biographer. He sees the role of the editor as analogous to that of the crystal-clear prisms which form a vital part of a pair of binoculars – there not to change the view or the scene but to make it clearer and closer.
As well, editing helps with the quality of a manuscript for submission to a publisher. Ian edits a variety of genre: fiction, historical fiction, family history, memoir, illustrated childrens stories, military history, thriller, management training. He is a Professional member of the Institute of Professional Editors.
Festival Appearances:
Nikki Mottram
AuthorNikki Mottram is the bestselling author of Crows Nest (UQP, 2023) and Killarney (UQP, 2024). She has a psychology degree from The University of Queensland and has worked in London and Australia protecting and promoting the welfare of children at risk of harm.
She uses her background in child protection in her crime fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize and the Hal Porter Short Story Competition and was a recipient of the Katharine Susannah Pritchard Writer’s Centre Fellowship. She grew up and resides in Toowoomba and brings to her work an understanding of rural communities.
Killarney – When child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney, she has one goal in mind: locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn’t expecting is an attraction to her colleague’s younger brother Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud. When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden’s disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run.
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
Claire Saxby
AuthorClaire Saxby writes award-winning fiction, non-fiction and poetry for children. Some of her books encompass all three. Her work includes historical novels with strong curriculum links (Haywire, The Wearing of the Green), historical picture books (My Name is Lizzie Flynn, The Anzac Billy, Meet the Anzacs), picture books about Australian animals and the worlds they inhabit (Wedge-tailed Eagle, Tasmanian Devil, Emu, Koala), Antarctica (Iceberg) and strongly rhythmic picture books (Treasure, Seadog, There Was an Old Sailor).
Can you see the forest on this misty-morning mountain? Can you see where the tree stands? It is the tallest in this forest of tall trees. This tree is older than those who find it, younger than the land it grows from. This is the world of the tree.
In the vein of Iceberg – marrying deep scientific research, lyrical language and stunning illustrations – multi-award-winning and highly acclaimed creators Claire Saxby and Jess Racklyeft return with a change in environment, from ocean to land. Their new collaboration follows a mighty tree, from the bottom of its roots up to the tips of its upper branches.
Festival Appearances:
Book launch
Jill Staunton
AuthorJill is a three time winner of the Outback Writers Festival Short Story Competition.
Queenslander, Jill Staunton, was born into a farming family. As a child, she was raised west of Rockhampton near Baralaba on a Hereford cattle and cotton property memorable for its brown snakes, goats and bales of wispy cotton.
Many school holidays were spent on her grandparents’ dairy, sheep and crop farm. Here, her grandfather taught her to align fence posts by eye and to offside in the dairy and shearing shed whilst her grandmother taught her to stew apricots fresh from the orchard. The fun was in eating the fruit then counting the seeds to her grandmother’s rhymes – tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, silk, satin, cotton, rags.
As a teenager, Jill spent time on Yaramulla, the ironbark and speargrass Brahman cattle property her parents owned (later declared a national park and the site of the Undara Lava Tubes) then on Boonamin, a property where her parents bred Brangus cattle.
Although she left the outback to teach English and History, Jill attributes her love of language to her grandmother and mother and her love of writing Outback fiction, Australian historical romance and poetry to her rural Australian upbringing. Jill resides in Townsville with her husband.
Festival Appearances:
Ian Waples
Author ResearcherIan Waples has a passion for researching and recording the lives of the nation’s pioneers. To bring their stories out of the past and into the present, he has used station diaries, ledgers, employment records and personal interviews to provide a broad outline of the lifestyles, hardships and personalities of our forebears. He has had a wonderful journey publishing only a small portion of our history and he hopes that his readers share the same experience.
Festival Appearances:
Awaiting biography information from the following presenters:
- David Crane
- John Griffiths
- Kerry Yates
- R Jocelyn Doran
- Rainie Gillies
- Ann Alcock
- Julie Ramsey
- Dr Ray Kerkhove
- Fiona McArthur
- Janette Paul
- Jaye Ford
- Emeritus Assoc Professor Noel Loos
- Kim Mahood
- Scott Whitaker
- Tim Borthwick
- Annie Seaton
- Kelsey Neilson
- Pamela Cook
- Debra O’Halloran
- Rose Siva
- Ivan Rudolph
- Lori Patrick
- Anne Alloway
- Helene Young
- Sue Williams
- John Morrison
- Norah Kersh
- Ron Pearce (Poet’s Breakfast)
- Ross Davies
- John Morrison
- Don Douglas
- Kaye Kuhn