AUGUST
23 - 25
2024
AUGUST
23 - 25
2024
Our successful 2023 Festival is now over. To whet your appetite for next year, the program for 2023 is shown below. Join our mailing list to be informed when the program for 2024 is available.
The entire festival with the lot! Click to view inclusions.
Festival Pass with Saturday Night Dinner at the Royal Mail Hotel.
10 sessions and boxed Saturday lunch. Cheese platter.
Access to all three sessions at the Mount Sturgeon Woolshed.
The James Dawson Oration is a conversation which honours and acknowledges Dawson’s outstanding advocacy for aboriginal people in the early days of colonial settlement in the Western District. The recording of the language of our indigenous people in their seminal book Australian Aborigines. The Language and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria by Dawson and his daughter Isabella Park Taylor, published in 1881, is a tribute to their interest and their scholarship. Dawson is honoured in this Conversation as a friend and mentor of indigenous people in a time of unrest, and as an indefatigable defender of their human rights in the press of his day and in his writing.
Marcia Langton in conversation with Barry Jones.
A Book Launch of First Knowledges Laws: The Way of the Ancestors with both authors, Aaron Corn and Marcia Langton signing their books, will follow. Drinks and canapes included.
Featuring Marieke Hardy, Jason Steger and Jamila Rizvi. Our expert panelists will present a riff on reading, in a light-hearted kick-off for the weekend’s sessions. Drinks and canapes included.
Chaired and hosted by Jason Steger, three award-winning authors, Margaret Hickey (Broken Bay, Cutter’s End, Stone Town), Mark Brandi (The Others’, Southern Aurora and Wimmera) and Garry Disher (Bitter Wash Road, Day’s End) will celebrate and sign their new books.
10am – 10.30am Join us for Morning Tea where DUNKELD OLD BAKERY CROISSANTS will be served for guests at either 9am or 10.30 am sessions
10am – 10.30am Join us for Morning Tea where DUNKELD OLD BAKERY CROISSANTS will be served for guests at either 9am or 10.30 am sessions
Chair: Gideon Haigh
Panelists: Barry Jones, Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn.
Megan Davis uses this quote from the poet Longfellow to vividly conjure up the dangers of silence when it relates to our indigenous history. This panel will explore many of the aspects of this history and Australia’s reaction to this very silence that many hope we are about to emerge from. All three are at the forefront of political, educational and social reform and are strong voices in advocating for the advancement of indigenous Australians.
12.15 – 1.15pm
Lunch and transport or self drive to Mount Sturgeon Woolshed. Royal Mail Hotel lunch boxes available if pre-ordered. Bar open all afternoon.
Chair: Jock Serong
Panelists:
S.D. Hinton, Garry Disher.
A fine line-up of
absolutely top quality writers whose works revolve around country communities. Garry Disher has written intriguing mysteries
using specific regions, first on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula and lately in an isolated South Australian bush town
with Bitter Wash Road.
S.D. Hinton’s ‘The Brothers” is set on the south coast of Victoria and is her
highly successful debut novel. Jock Serong writes engaging colonial mysteries
as just one aspect of his published work.
A highlight of the
weekend, fine food and wine sourced from local ingredients is the signature of
Dunkeld’s Royal Mail and we are proud to showcase our well-known treasure. Our writers will be in attendance, the
atmosphere will be literary, the food will be superb as usual, the conversation
is sure to be outstanding, but numbers are limited for the Festival Dinner, so
please book in early.
THE AMAZING SCONE MORNING TEA is supplied a local fundraising group DRASS (Dunkeld Refugee and Asylum Seeker Support group) for guests to either of the 9.30am or 11am sessions.
10.30am – 11am
Note: Program correct at time of publishing and may change.