We have also invited The Apollo Bay & District Historical Society to be involved and they have chosen some pieces of writing to be read by Isobelle Carmody who will MC the event. Local musician, Steve Cromb, will play from his latest CD Songs of the Great Ocean Road in-keeping with the theme of the day.

The format of the afternoon will be, as in the past, each writer, in 40 minutes, will present their work informally with discussion of background, aims and feelings about their writing. Questions are also asked and discussion traditionally ensues.

Gregory Day

Gregory Day is a writer, poet and musician whose books and CDs deal with human ideas of the natural world, animal love and loss of place. His previous books include Trace (in collaboration with photographer Robert Ashton) and Melaleuca Perfumeries. His CDs include The Black Tower: Songs from the Poetry of WB Yeats, which was hailed by the Yeats Society of Ireland as the finest musical interpretations of Yeats ever made, and his most recent release The Flash Road: Scenes From The Building of the Great Ocean Road. He is a regular contributor to the literary pages of The Age and his debut novel, The Patron Saint Of Eels (Picador 2005) was recently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book award and is currently on the shortlist for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal award for 2006. He lives on the south west coast of Victoria.

Jeff Brownrigg

Dr Jeff Brownrigg in a freelance cultural historian whose special interests include Australian and Irish/Australian biography, Australian cultural history with an emphasis on performing arts, aspects of the history of World War One, the proselytising of the Bass Strait Islands as well as more general areas of Australian experience. He held various positions including Head of Sound and Radio Collections and Head of Research and Outreach at Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive for twenty years. In the past five years he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and is Adjunct Professor of Cultural History at the University of Canberra. He gives scores of lectures and presentations each year, and is well known for singing his own illustrations. In 2005 these presentations included talks about Australian colonial cultural history and bushranging, but also numerous accounts of the lives of individual Australians. He frequently broadcasts on ABC radio and has been numerously interviewed for television: ABC Rewind history series, Irish commercial breakfast television and RTE (Dublin). Dr Brownrigg latest book The New Melba: The Tragedy of Amy Castles, a story from the heartland of Irish/Australia and Australian cultural history, was released in April 2006.