Carving in Snow

Today I gave the Commencement Address at the graduation ceremony for the Creative Industries Faculty of the Queensland University of Technology, held in the Concert Hall of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Here is what I said: I really don’t know why I’m here.   I think you've been fooled into thinking I'd have something interesting to say.   But no. I’m a fraud.   Standing here, I remember my late friend Nick Enright. He was a great Australian theatre artist. As a playwright he gave us a few classics –  A Property of the Clan, Blackrock, Good Works  and an adaptation of Cloudstreet . As a librettist for musicals he gave us  The Boy from Oz  and  The Venetian Twins . As an acting teacher at NIDA he taught Mel Gibson and Judy Davis and a raft of other big names. He was loved, and a great mentor to many.   He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for George Miller’s film  Lorenzo’s Oil . Nick and I ...

It's probably true that one's early endeavours are more fondly remembered . M emory smoothes the edges of rough biograph y. One of my very first major productions was the first production of Nick Enright's Blackrock . Nick and I were friends - both born in Maitland (along with John Bell and Ruth Cracknell , weirdly) - and we spent some time developing this play at Sydney Theatre Company . Cate Blanchett acted Rache l in the early workshops, and the first cast included a fresh Joel Edgerton, Angela Punch McGregor, Simon Lyndon, Kym Wilson, Rebecca Smart, Paul Bishop, Dan Wyllie, Teo Gebert, Kristina Bidenko, John Walton and Julie Godfrey. It's a piece of which we were all very proud. Yesterday, a new project was launched called Reading Australia , initiated by the Copyright Agency. It aims to promote and expand knowledge of essential pieces of Australian writing. In July, the Australian Society of Authors’ (ASA) Council selected an initial 200 Aus...