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‘I Wouldn’t Say That’: Finding a Young Adult, Female Voice in a Queensland Mining Town Leeann Margaret Rose Nolan BA (Hons), Grad DipEd, Grad DipCI (CW) Creative Writing and Literary Studies Discipline Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Creative Work (41000 words) and Exegesis (8500 words) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts (Research – Creative Writing) 2013 Keywords Australian Young Adult Literature; Auto-ethnography; Ethnography; Practice-led Research; Participant Observation; Realist Fiction; First Person Narration; Dust; Jasper Jones. Page ii Abstract This is a practice-led project consisting of a Young Adult novel, Open Cut, and an exegesis, ‘I Wouldn’t Say That’: Finding a Young Adult, Female Voice in a Queensland Mining Town. The thesis investigates the use of first person narration in order to create an immediate engaging, realist Young Adult Fiction. The creative work is a fictionalised account of the time that the author and her daughter spent in Moranbah between the years 2002-2004, when she was transferred to the central Queensland town as a teacher employed by Education Queensland. The research design is bound by a feminist interpretative paradigm. The methodology employed is practice-led, auto-ethnography, and participant observation. Particular characteristics of first person narration used in Australian Young Adult Fiction are identified in an analysis of Dust, by Christine Bongers, and Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey. The exegesis also contains a reflection on the researcher’s creative work, and the process used to draft, edit, plot and construct the novel. The research contributes to knowledge in the field of Young Adult Literature because it offers a stark, graphic portrayal of an Australian mining town that has not been heard before. It allows other young women in society to hear stories, similar to their own, and from that, gain a greater understanding of themselves and others. Page iii Table of Contents Keywords……………………………………………………………….............................ii Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….. iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………iv Statement of Original Authorship…………………………………………………………v Dedication and Acknowledgements……………………………………………………...vi Open Cut……………………………………………………………………1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….148 CHAPTER 1: SITUATING CONCEPTS…...........................................150 CHAPTER 2: PRECEDENTS OF PRACTICE………………………161 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCHER’S CREATIVE WORK……………....168 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………..179 LIST OF REFERENCES……………………………………………….181 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………...186 Page iv Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature: QUT Verified Signature Date: 17th December 2013_____ Page v Dedication For my daughter—‘All Because of You I Am’. Acknowledgements In the completion of this project, I would like to thank the people who assisted its development: my principal supervisor, Dr Sharyn Pearce, whose encouragement and belief in the story, and in me, ignited by passion and kept me going over many long years; my associate supervisor, Dr Vivienne Muller, for advice and feedback that made both my novel and exegesis stronger and more polished works. I would not have finished this project without the support of you both. Page vi Open Cut By Leeann Nolan “Much may be conquer’d, much may be endur’d Of what degrades and crushes us” Julian and Hadalo, Percy Bysshe Shelley “When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood … It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.” Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood When you first move to a new place it is as if your mind has been left behind. It still inhabits the old streets, shops, rooms where you used to live. I’ve read in history books that the early Australian explorers painted the landscape as if it were the English countryside. They would sit in the bush, transforming their surroundings into beautiful water colours. They were unable to see what was right before their eyes. Their imaginations were more powerful than the reality they saw, their fantasies blurred and they dreamt constantly of home, yearning to return. It takes a while for your mind to catch up with your body. Given time though, your dreams blur and you’re left with a reality that slams you, shuddering and weak, back into the present. * There had been few signs of life since we made the turn inland from Rockhampton. The last three hours of our twelve hour journey had been desolate; nothing but scrub and the occasional kangaroo. I took my feet off the dash and sat up to change the compilation tape that my best friend Christina had helped me put together for the long drive. It felt as if it was the hundredth time we had heard, “Get the Party Started”, and I couldn’t bear to listen to it again. ‘Peak Downs,’ I said, reading the red block letters on the side of the industrial shed that became larger as we rapidly approached it. ‘What is that? Where are we?’ ‘We must be nearly there. I think this is the mines,’ Mum said. Mum made this deduction having absolutely no idea what we were actually looking at. It was early January 2002, and up until this point we had never seen a mine site before. Page 2 Mountains of soil the colour of HB lead appeared before us, and massive machinery littered a landscape that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. The huge mounds seemed dry and forlorn, unlike anything I had ever seen before. The sky was a cloudless, worn-out blue, but at any moment I expected a sudden bolt of lightning to strike and Arnold Swarzenegger to emerge, naked, from behind one of the huge cranes, muscles rippling ready to take on the machines. A large carpark could be seen from the road, and a Safety Record Noticeboard at the entrance declared that the mine site was one hundred and eighty-four days accident free. What had happened one hundred and eighty-five days ago? We veered right and drove parallel along the mine’s fence line. In the distance I saw what looked like a toy truck driving precariously along the edge of a pit, as it travelled down into its depths. We crossed a small railway bridge that stood over a coal train, which was on track to deliver its load to the ships waiting two hundred kilometres away on the coast. Moranbah, where we were headed, was the major service centre for workers of the mine. The town owed its existence to coal; black gold had given the workers of the town extraordinary wealth. We turned left at a roadhouse, following a sign indicating the direction of Moranbah. It had an enclosed area at the back where a camel gazed at passersby. What on earth was a camel doing penned up out here in the middle of nowhere? It was trapped, sitting in the red dust. Blinding flashes of light darted over the body of a car that looked like it was going to pull straight out onto the road in front of us from a side exit. The driver slammed on the brakes as he caught sight of us at the last minute, the rumbling of the engine Page 3 sounded as he revved the car, impatient for us to pass. The car flung out onto the road, tyres spinning wildly, dirt and gravel spat in all directions. I looked in the side mirror and saw it fishtailing behind us. The car almost clipped us, and the driver looked like he shat himself as he struggled to regain control of his vehicle. When he steadied the steering wheel, he flung his head back, laughing. He turned to the guy beside him, the action causing the car to swerve sharply to the left, and they veered off the bitumen and onto the gravel, sending more stones flying. ‘What dickheads!’ said Mum, as she peered into the rear-view mirror. ‘The morons almost hit us. Shit, they’re just about up our arse. Maybe we should pull over and let them pass.’ ‘Nuh, they’ll overtake us in a minute,’ I said. The end of our long, twelve hour journey had clearly frayed Mum’s nerves. The exhaust of their car thundered aggressively, and with a sudden burst of acceleration the car pulled out of the left-hand lane and zoomed up alongside us, blasting us with the sound of thumping music. They looked crazed as they stared out the window, laughing like lunatics. There were two guys in the front, another two in the back with a girl in between. The guy in the back seat leaned out the window screeching something incomprehensible. He held a Fourex stubbie in one hand, his tattooed forearm leant on the window as he pounded the car door with the palm of his other hand in time to the thudding music. The girl’s sullen face stared out at us. I glanced at the speedo. We were doing a hundred. In seconds they had zoomed ahead of us. The car jerked back into the left-hand lane zigzagging, before it straightened Page 4 up and rocketed into the distance. Just before the turn off to enter the mining town, we passed what looked like a massive red bucket in a cleared park area. The words, ‘Welcome to Moranbah’, were painted across it in white.

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