About ‘Down to the Sea’, by Margaret McCaffrey

In 2018, Tim McQueen from Vision Australia Radio commissioned Elwood Writers to create a series of pieces in celebration of the centenary of Armistice Day. They were to be read on his program Cover to Cover.

I scratched my head for a story.

‘I’ve got nothing to write,’ I told my partner. ‘I don’t know anything about World War I.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Tom replied. ‘Your two grandfathers were in that war, and your great uncle.’

To my surprise, I was reminded that my maternal grandfather, Dr John O’Brien, had been an army surgeon at Australia’s ill-fated campaign in Gallipoli. To me as a child his post-war life looked so prosperous and comfortable, I couldn’t imagine him ever having been at what became a godforsaken strip of Turkish beach.

With much research and a stretch of the imagination, I wrote ‘Down to the Sea’ as a mixture of fiction and memoir. It formed part of the group’s quadrilogy for the radio program, and is now included in our eclectic anthology, Every Second Tuesday.

The new Elwood Writers anthology to be launched 9 December 2020

If you haven’t already registered for a free, online ticket to the launch of Every Second Tuesday by Elwood Writers, you can do so at the following link:

https://www.readings.com.au/event/the-elwood-writers-in-conversation

Armistice Day Centenary edition of Cover To Cover, podcast

A podcast of last week’s Armistice Day edition of Vision Australia Radio’s Cover To Cover is now available at the link below:

https://varadio.podbean.com/e/cover-to-cover-9th-november-2018/

The program, broadcast Friday 9 November and repeated Sunday 11 November, marks the hundred years since the end of the First World War, and features work from Elwood Writers.

We hope you enjoy listening to the program.

Cover To Cover is recorded in the studios of Vision Australia Radio in Melbourne.

THE CENTENARY OF THE END OF THE GREAT WAR — littlesmackerel

This recent post from Jennifer’s website includes details of a special Armistice Day edition of Cover To Cover on Vision Australia Radio. The program will feature work from Elwood Writers, and will be broadcast this Friday 9 November, repeated Sunday 11 November.

For much of my life World War I has hung in the dim past; a brown and white strip of celluloid showing huge, cumbersome guns, and soldiers marching through mud, sometimes at a pace speeded up by old movie film. People in my immediate family didn’t talk about it much, although my grandfather was there, […]

via THE CENTENARY OF THE END OF THE GREAT WAR — littlesmackerel