Dispatches from deep winter

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but 2025 is half done. It’s midwinter in Melbourne, the part when it starts to get old. I really tried to be a winter person this year. After a protracted summer skipped over autumn (my favourite season) I was excited about the cooler temps and the potential for hygge when it finally arrived. Fuzzy socks! Cinammony chai! Red wine! Open fires! Walking on the beach for hours without getting sweaty or worrying about UV! I blocked my ears to the naysayers and reports of S.A.D that were cropping up on socials and in my inbox. I was ready to embrace the cool and the quiet. Hibernation time. I escaped for a long weekend with the fam to one of our fave seaside towns – only 40 minutes but a world away, where I couldn’t see the dust and clutter at home or hear the dirty dishes calling me. All there was to do on rainy mornings in someone else’s clean, empty apartment was crawl back into bed with tea, toast and a good book, before emerging when the weather cleared for long beach walks, stopping to sample different soups and cakes in cafes along the way. It was off season in a tourist town, so the usually crowded beaches were close to empty. The only people we passed were brave bay swimmers in wetsuits, dog walkers and people cleaning the beach by hand. Unlike in summer, when you can barely move without stepping on someone’s towel and everyone mostly ignores one another, in early winter the rare souls we passed all nodded hello or stopped to chat. It was like we were surprised to see each other out there, or recognised a kindred spirit. I came back from one walk, swapped my boots for fuzzy socks and crawled back into bed to tap out a picture book draft – the two-word idea that had been floating around in my head for weeks had suddenly found legs. On another walk I got a glimpse of the protagonist of a novel-in-waiting, and knew instantly why she was there in winter and what she was thinking, and the realisation gave me an idea about how to move the story forward.

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But it’s not all doom and gloom. There has been cause for celebration too. Within a week my daughter, Ella and I all had birthdays. Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra was published on 1 July, 2024 – so around this time last year I was touring bookshops and booking trampoline parks, answering interview questions and op shopping party dresses, filming awkward promos and reinventing Aldi mud cakes. I’m unlikely to ever forget this anniversary!

It’s been a memorable first year for Ella. Some of my fave moments include: launch day bookshop-hopping and lunch at Pelligrinis with Kean & Creative, a Zoom session with thousands of kids around Australia during which I answered their questions and we fed a tree frog, creating our own frog orchestras in schools, and getting to see my daughter dress up as Ella for her first Book Week parade (her idea! once she realised the Elsa costume no longer fit). Meeting my publisher Kate, booksellers and signing books at the BookPeople conference in Melbourne. Finishing edits for Book 3 in my little writing shack and celebrating with coffee in my fave frog mug. Making colour-coordinated jelly-frog-in-a-ponds to celebrate the launch of Book 2, Ella and the Sleepover Safari. More bookshop visits. Ella book clubs in three states. Amazing reviews from press and real kids (here’s one of my faves). Slipping a copy to Hannah Kent in the signing queue at Melbourne Writers Festival. Getting longlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers and shortlisted for the Wilderness Society Environment Prize for Children’s Literature.