Happy birthday, book lovers

In the main street of a small town in northwest NSW there’s a street sign covered in hieroglyphics. The strange wedge-shaped strokes look like some ancient Sumerian script. ‘Stock Brands of the Liverpool Plains’, the title says. Next to the hieroglyphics is a list of names - ‘Known Early Squatters’ - and all but one are men.

As I wander the deserted town I notice all the names on all the buildings – lawyers offices, proprietary hotels, automotive repair shops – are men’s names. The women are silent and invisible in the public records of this town. Behind the scenes, though, the women have been making themselves heard.

I am here to speak at the fiftieth birthday party of the oldest regional book club in Australia.* Five decades ago an American woman blew into town, university-educated and newly-married to a local grazier. She was a big reader and quickly found some bookish friends in the local community. This American had planned to be a diplomat, until love intervened. She knew how to run a meeting.

A book club was formed with a strict but sensible list of rules. Membership would be limited to thirty women. Everyone would take a turn at hosting a meeting and reviewing the chosen books. In a booklet about the club’s history one inaugural member described herself living in ‘an isolated new corner on a property (with) no hours to spare.’ Then came a phone call from the brisk American (“you will always find time, if you really want to do something”) and a chance to pursue her ‘greatest love – reading and sharing of books and minds’. The spare hours were duly found.

At the first meeting Patrick White and George Johnston were up for discussion. Over the ensuing years the quieter club members were given gentle encouragement to overcome their fear of public speaking. When their turn came around, they discovered they could give impassioned presentations about literature. Five decades on, the club has discussed over seven hundred books.

The fiftieth anniversary party is held at the local golf club. Silver-haired women clasp my hands and tell me the group has given them nourishment, grace and insight. One confides, ‘The printed word has been the most stimulating part of my life’.

I have been invited to talk to them about how social anxiety can reduce people to silence. But there’s nothing I can tell these women that they don’t instinctively know. In this book club they have assuaged each other’s loneliness, stimulated each other’s minds, and eased each other’s fears. They have found their voices. I hope they’re still going in another fifty years time.

This column was first published in The Age/SMH in 2016.