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What I've Learnt - Trent Dalton · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

0:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lola in the Mirror is a love story first, but it's also a story of art, crime, mystery, and most of all life.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: His books have sold over 1.2 million copies in Australia alone, and Boy Swallows Universe has been adapted to a smash hit theatrical production, soon to be a series, but more on that later.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, record-breaking award-winning and best-selling author Trent Dalton returns with a big-hearted, gritty, magical, and moving new novel, Lola in the Mirror.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: A girl and her mother are on the land.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: They've been running for 16 years from police and the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota hi-Ace van with four flat tires parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Lola in the Mirror is a big, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking, and beautiful novel of love, fate, life, and death, and all the things we see when we look in the mirror.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: So, Trent, welcome to the What I've Learned Podcast.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: I am thrilled to have you here because I love your work and it's just an absolute treasure to have you on the What I've Learned Podcast.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Deborah, you're the best.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: It's such an honor to be here.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: And it's so good to talk things like storytelling and learning and um and just to do it with a great Aussie journo.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: It's just, it's really sweet.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: So thanks for having me.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Absolute pleasure.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, on that note, as a fellow journalist and a documentarian, which is a term that I like to call us um universally, we all start out with a dream of capturing that story, the truth, the heart and soul.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: How challenging was that to do?
1:48
SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, when I was speaking to Jane Harper, who's the author of The Dry, who recently joined me, she's also a journo.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And she was saying that it the journalism gave her some very important tools.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So, compatriots like us, I'm in awe of how you've used those tools to create very incisive writing.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you think your social journalism skills paved the way?
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And if so, how has it helped you to create your deep fiction?
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a great, great question, Deborah.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, completely.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm so glad uh I waited.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: So I started journalism at the age of 20.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: And at that time, I was tinkering with a sort of a version of Boy Swellers Universe.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: I haven't really told this uh too many times, but at that age, I had a version of Boyceweller's Universe, and it was the fairly sentimental and earnest title it had was Armour.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: The title of it was this thing called Armour, and I was about 20,000 words into it, Deborah, and it was called Armour because in the the suburb I grew up in is this place on the edges of Brisbane called Brackenridge, Housing Commission area.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: All the streets in that neighborhood were named after Knights of the Round Table.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: So, um, and I'm a massive fan of Arthurian legend.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: And so there were streets in that neighborhood, wondrously, for the Dalton Boys, who I've got three older brothers, I'm the youngest of, we were all into King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: So we couldn't believe it when we got sort of shifted over from the south side of Brisbane to the north side, and we end up in a place surrounded by streets like Lancelot Street and Arthur Street and Gullain Road.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: Amazing, it was amazing.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I informed put all that into this sort of version, really early version of Boyce Weller's universe, right?
3:31
SPEAKER_02: At the age of 20 or something, I was writing that.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: I was living in a like a half a house with this guy named Tom, who was this World War II, British World War II veteran who used to like get drunk and talk to his ginger cat um, you know, rambles.
3:44
SPEAKER_02: And it was a wondrous time in my life.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: But um, but I I realized that I had to do kind of 20 years of journalism to write that story in the in the way that it needed to be written.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Because so the original version of my first book, Boy Swellers Universe, had none of the things I'd I'd learned in journalism.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: So that that book was very dark and it was like hopeless, like as in lacking in hope, and uh didn't have any of the light that uh and I I only got all of that light and all of that hope by doing that job and at the same time becoming a dad and a husband and just finding all that hope and light and like the job I I would do as a journalism.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: I found myself drawn, just like Jane was, you know, um, to a lot of crime stories, um, to a lot of stories of kind of heart a hardship and and tragedy in the suburbs.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: Like I just did that a lot, Deborah.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: Like I spent a lot of time just walking through suburbs, knocking on doors, and I just asked people, hey, do you mind if I come in and would you mind if if you're up for it, just telling me your whole life story for the next four hours?
4:50
SPEAKER_02: And I promise you I'll try and turn that into a really beautiful magazine piece.
4:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's like I did that for like 20 years, and and all of that, all of that stuff I learned about humanity and and overcoming trauma and and and dealing with hardships and all the stuff that's in Boy Swellers Universe, which is the great lesson, is you will get through all of this stuff if you hold on to love.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: And um journalism taught me that.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: I saw that time and time again, and so I have no doubt at all that um that that I wouldn't have been able to write Boy Swaller's Universe with the kind of with the that it's got a lot of truth in there, not just truth from my authenticity, yeah.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, that's a better word for it, Deborah.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not just yeah, the truth of my life, it's the authenticity of life in the suburbs, and and that all came from journalism as well.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's an amazing thing to have, yeah.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's definitely it's so true what you say, because in a way, it's a privilege, isn't it, to be able to go into people's worlds and like I mean, this is why I do what I do, and it's why we're drawn to that journalistic essence.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: It is quite a skill, but it's also you've got to have a type of commitment to the listening and to the hearing and to the seeing and the to the observing.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: You're a great observer, like you're a phenomenal observer.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: I like read your stuff and go, that detail literally blows my mind.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Some of the things that you write, you know, which I will actually I'm going to read some of them because they just, you know, are really yeah, yeah.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Some of the little excerpts are just, you know, quite riveting because of your capacity to observe, which I think, as you've just outlined, journalism really harnesses that capacity to do that, is it, don't you think?
6:32
SPEAKER_00: You know?
6:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, completely.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: Deb, I I was doing that.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: Um, I was doing that as a kid, though.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: That's just something I did always, like looking for the details, like looking for the the small little signs.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: And so like that's a sort of a, you know, you could call that a safety mechanism sometimes.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: Like when you're when you're worried about something or you're like worried about the people you love and and you know that something's about to flare up or something, you're really attuned in a kind of superpower way as a 12-year-old.
6:57
SPEAKER_02: Like you really, you do have a sort of a sensoral superpower, and it's and it's and it's a foreknowing of sort of um of of things you've seen and bring, you know, so you're just hyper-aware sometimes when you're in a, you know, I don't know, whatever, you're in a kitchen where you know some shit's gonna happen, and you just really get to know that stuff.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: And I and so you use that, you know, you don't even know that that's a skill you're developing that's gonna help you out later on in life.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: And for me, it was absolutely that I would then go in to a kitchen, um, you know, as a journalist, and you're just looking for like, okay, the they're telling me their their mouth is saying all this stuff, and they're telling me a story, but what are the what are the pictures on top of their television telling me?
7:40
SPEAKER_02: And what are the tattoos on their arms telling me?
7:43
SPEAKER_02: And and um what's the moldy bread telling me on the bench?
7:46
SPEAKER_02: And what's the um, you know, what's the painting they have like your amazing painting behind you right now says so much wonderful, says so much beautiful thing, you know, a lot of beautiful stuff about you, you know, and so it's sort of like that that kind of thing.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: And I I realized as a journalist, sometimes that's the stuff you're trying to convey in those journalism articles.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: I'd always just go to town on the details of the place I'm in because it really put the reader there and I'm and I and I did the exact same thing in my novels, yeah, definitely do it all the time.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, you do it all the time.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: And so it's interesting.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that you were drawn to journalism because of that?
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Like, was that just a no-brainer that that's what you were going to do?
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Because for me, it was that like it was unequivocal from the age of 12, 10, whatever.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: So that was your calling, yeah.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, definitely in the sense that um all I was good at was stringing words together, like literally not good at anything else.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: Like, like maybe I can do a spiral kick with a steed in football, and then that's it.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: And right, that's like that's it.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: Like, um, you know, I know how to pitch a tent, but it takes me a day.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: I know a vague idea how to change the oil on my car, but I'd make a mess of it.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's really embarrassing all the things that I don't know.
8:54
SPEAKER_02: But that one thing that I I and I don't even get me started on how deep I could go on it, Deborah, because um that thing kind of saved my life in many ways.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Like it helped me process um some really dark stuff, like really worrying, troubling things.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: And and I don't know why the universe decided to say, hey, we're gonna give you a way out of this.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: And and it's that's such a beautiful thing.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: I get very emotional even thinking about it, is that that I was able to use this thing called words to process stuff that that other people would process with bourbon, you know, and and that's really powerful to me.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: And so it it not only felt like a calling, like I just didn't even know that it was like, wow, there's a you mean there's a job where you get to go into people's homes and and talk to them and and then you might be able to process the shit that's in your head.
9:45
SPEAKER_02: Like it's like that was that was really powerful.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, so I just think instinctively like I was just heading down that way.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: The the thing about um the thing about it though is that you don't know you're allowed to do it.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: That was the thing for me.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Like I just didn't allowed to, you know, like it was sort of you come you come from like where I was at in Brackenridge, you just don't know you're allowed to do certain things.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: Like literally, you don't even know you're allowed to go to the races, you know.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I'm that that's how stupid it is.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Like you're just sort of you're that much caught up in the invisible wall that you don't even know that you can you can go dine in a fancy restaurant in the city.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: Like it's so stupid, but that's how you feel when you're 14 out there, and so let alone, oh, I can go become like an Australian journalist that might write stories around the country.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: It's so it's such a leap in your brain.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: And but I just I felt instinctively if I could just get some way into someone's living room, I knew I could do some good stuff with well, you've certainly done a lot of good stuff, and and just on that, can you touch briefly on just what you're referring to when you talk about the upbringing, the trauma, or the context of why you needed this toolkit so much?
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Can you just give a little snapshot of what sort of things was it seeing things that, you know, clearly there was trauma, as we know, um, which is not uncommon, unfortunately.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, you grabbed your toolkit, and I always say everyone's got a toolkit when this when trauma happens.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: It's just a question of how they access it, which is what you're referring to.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: For you, what was that?
11:17
SPEAKER_00: What can you give us a brief insight into that?
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm well, I I mean, you know, the scourge of Australia, domestic violence.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about, you know, losing people to prison.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, yeah, the stuff I write about in Boy Swallers Universe, that's a that's a semi-autobiographic.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but but it like it comes from the time where my mum fell in love with this, you know, dangerously successful heroine dealer, and he went away for 10 years to prison and and mum did her time for two years uh along with him, you know, and um, and you know, that so I'm not at all sort of saying that was sort of some darkly sort of um, you know, sort of physically traumatizing moment or anything like that, but just the the the sort of shock wave of that um and the weirdness of it, it was just weird, you know.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I remember, you know, for example, you know, that that whole book, Boy Swallows Universe, is just all about me missing my mum on Christmas Day and just knowing how to do it.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: So powerful made me cry.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a really, really upset, powerful.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, Deborah, it's a really good time to talk.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: My family and I have just watched the like a preview sort of copy of the TV show they've turned that book into.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: And and then we've just been through the most cathartic, emotional family experience watching that show, and and and I was remembering the reasons why, like getting very emotional remembering why I wrote it.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: And at the heart of that story is a kid who you know just miss literally just wants to give his mum a hug on Christmas Day.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's all that story's about, and that just comes from me being eight years old, going, Oh shit, wrapping, unwrapping a skateboard.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: My dad bought me this skateboard and going, Oh, why's my oh that's right.
12:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh mum, yeah, mum's not here, you know, and it's sort of just really like, oh my god, she must be doing it really tough right now because her sons are out on Christmas Day unwrapping gifts and she doesn't get to see it.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, and then and then later, like some of that stuff like DV that mum would experience and things like that, real life, like heavy stuff that's in that book.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: And let me tell you, like the stuff mum saw and mum endured is only five percent of what you see in that book, Boy Squellers Universe.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: So it's um, so when I say sort of, you know, the toolkit, it just yeah, it's amazing that I was just given this way of sort of talking about later on, like all the stories I would gravitate to in journalism were DV stories.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: All the stories that resonated with Australians were stories about DV, stories about crime, stories about loss, stories about heartbreak, um, addiction, yeah.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh, addiction, yeah, like drugs, yeah, exactly.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: Like in the and the way drugs can, you know, affect, have a ripple effect, you know, and all of that was um, yeah, very much um, you know, this thing called journalism, this thing called writing was really brilliant at helping me process all of that stuff.
14:04
SPEAKER_02: And the ability to to have a to have a job where you go talk to other people about their like I would literally go do an interview with someone who's been through some heavy stuff, and I'd drive back in my car listening to the tape and just bawling my eyes out because I go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: That's what that did feel like.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: And you know, and so that was very powerful, and I'm very measured, like nowhere near the stuff, whatever the Dalton boys went through.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: It's not anywhere near what a lot of kids out there are going through right now, but it's sort of just my version of that stuff I got to process with that toolkit, and I feel extremely grateful.
14:35
unknown: Yeah.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's actually really interesting.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: Two things.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: One is the rawness, and I would I would call you a chronic empath because I'm one.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: So I hear in you the same thing.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: That chronic empathy that actually you have to harness because if you if you immerse yourself too deeply, you can't think clearly.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: But what you've done is take that.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: I can hear that in your writing, in your voice, in the way you talk.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh that that is quite a gift, and you know, it sometimes it can be a curse, let's be honest, because you can get completely saturated by it.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: But what I can hear in your writing and what you're describing is that's really also your fuel, like that capacity.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's why I just, you know, every dinner party I ever have, I don't want to talk about real estate, I don't want to talk about Danish furniture, I want to talk about when you cried last, or I want to wanna talk about who you miss, or um, you know, I it's why I like it's weird, but I like cemeteries more than nightclubs, you know, and it's um and it's you know, because there's just there's feeling there, you know, and it's like uh history, there's legacy.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: There's history and story and heart and feeling, and you know, so it's sort of um yeah, it's it's just everything I am.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: And and you you're so right about that word empathy.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: I I believe in two kind of e-words, empathy and enthusiasm.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: And it's like enthusiasm, enthusiasm is my big one lately, where it's like just just feeling enthusiastic um for another human being helps you get that empathy.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, you you to understand someone, you need to enthusiastically embrace their past and and where they're coming from.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: And if you do, like just in any interaction, it's a really healthy way to kind of start feeling empathy for them.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: So actually being enthusiastic about what they're saying.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: If you are, it's gonna help you just really listen properly.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: And and sometimes I'm not like sometimes I'm just like, okay, total max capacity, I'm done, I can't, you know, and I tune out all the time, and it's terrible.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes, you know, I'm guilty of it.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's your safety valve, you have to have a safety valve.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yeah, right, because otherwise, but but first of all, your dinner parties sound amazing, and you definitely have to come to one of mine.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: But because I love that, no, no, I love that very that, and that is well, there's two things I want to touch on.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: One is I love the authenticity and the naturalness in the way that you speak and engage, because what it does is while your work is very profound and very deep, it's also very accessible.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, you know, there's a lot of people I think you access that some other authors can't because it's a little esoteric.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Whereas your yours is not, it's it's very in the real world, we know what we're dealing with, and that's a that's a real gift.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: So when did you thanks, Deborah?
17:16
SPEAKER_02: That's lovely.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when did you first realize you could tell a damn good yarn to use impressions?
17:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, you could really, you are in there, like yeah, just feel it.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: You just feel it so real.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Is that something that you think you've got better at?
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Have you learned how to do that better?
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Or do you think that that's innate, something you've just oh no?
17:36
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's the thing I thank the readers of of every newspaper I've ever written.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: I knew that I was okay at telling a yarn, it's because the readers of the various newspapers that I worked for told me, you know, and so I had this inherent kind of self-doubt that springs from whatever you might call it the reason for it, and it probably is from that past and from coming from the sort of places that I did.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: You you really doubt that you really belong.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, but I'm I'm getting better at now because I'm kind of five books in and I'm talking to you literally about my fifth book, and I feel really proud that it's come so far.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: But there was absolutely a time where it's like, oh, is this actually working?
18:14
SPEAKER_02: Is this story that I'm telling working?
18:15
SPEAKER_02: And the readers would tell me.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: Like they would write, it's incredibly powerful to get a to receive a letter from someone.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: I remember this guy wrote in, I was writing a this is just a simple story.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: I was writing about mango trees, right?
18:27
SPEAKER_02: And I was writing about my my daughter sitting in the wedge of a mango tree, carving her initials into the bark of a mango tree.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: I just described that as this sort of beautiful moment.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: I was just watching her do this and I was describing it.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: And and I remember this this old bloke wrote in a letter and he just said, mate, that was Tim Winton-esque.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh, that's really beautiful.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: And I was like 26.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and it's just like that can really, it's just like, wow, he's like, and it was genuinely, he's like, when are you gonna write us a novel?
18:55
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, wow, like I had never even considered that.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: Like, like, you know, maybe you dream of it, or maybe you go, oh, one day I might, and you know, and then it's amazing.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, cut to cut to um, I'll tell you the most beautiful thing, and then uh, you know, talk about feedback and the the power of what people can just literally write and and affirm things for you.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: This this kid from South Korea, it's my probably my favorite piece of feedback of all time, and uh this kid from South Korea.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: They they turned they they they did a Korean translation of Boy Swellers Universe, and this kid just writes me a message.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: Um I receive it, um, and it says, Trent, um, I'm from South Korea.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea where Dara, Brisbane, Queensland is, you know, the home of Eli Bell, the hero of that story.
19:45
SPEAKER_02: But I just wanted to tell you that I read Boy Swellers Universe, and and now I've decided to live to adulthood because he was thinking about not.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and I was just like so deeply freaking powerful.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: That is insane, and and very much, I mean, that goes to the power of your wordsmithing and also the power of of the pen as we talk about.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna read a little excerpt.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: This is just a little excerpt for our listeners, which I just found very powerful.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you something afterwards because so this is a little paragraph.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: When mum told me about the monster blood and how it felt to stick a powering knife in the throat of her husband in order to save her life and mine, the words landed inside my head like breaking glass.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: I swear I felt a crack running across my brain, just like the crack in my magic mirror.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: On one side of that brain crack was everything.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, that just like gives me goosebumps, first of all, that that paragraph that you've written in this latest book.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And I want to read it, I wanted to read those pages out to the to our audience because it's so visceral.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, and to be honest, I can't put the book down because it is really it's very hopeful, but it is, you know, pretty dark.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, where does this deep dark pain come from?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of sadness, but a lot of hope.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And you referred to your upbringing and certain things that happened, but this is like once again, you have almost immersed yourself and become Lola.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can hear you've become this voice, and there's enormous pain and angst in her dialogue.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: How have you managed to capture that so powerfully?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And and yet still she's sort of hopeful, this character, but she's deeply sad and and you know, yeah, deeply in ill equipped in many ways, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Um, no, thanks, Deborah.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: And you read that really beautifully.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, it's uh that's how like that break, that thing coming in like cracked glass or something, you know, it's almost like it splits your brain when you hear someone you love tell you a story that really kind of shatters you.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: And and that's just, you know, that's my mum like out on the back deck of the house I'm sitting in right now.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: Like just she would, you know, she read Boy Swallow's Universe, and then she said, Trent, um, you know, like, you don't know the half of it, you know, you don't, and then she proceeded to tell me some things that she knows of about kitchens inside Australia and and things that nearly killed her, you know, and and it and it hits me like cracked.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: It it literally breaks my brain in half, you know, and and I'm referring to that.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: So the whole book, Lola, opens with um my mother danced the Tyrannosaurus Waltz, and there's just no doubt I'm talking about my own mum.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: So the kid in that book who's the hero, she's got this mum who's kind of they're on the run, and and they're on the run from this moment that happened where, you know, the only way they could get away was to shove a um knife in this guy's throat in their version of the monster, and that's just that's just uh that's just from real world stuff, Deborah, you know, and that's that's the stuff now.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: That's from my mum being trapped in my my very real mum being trapped in kitchens and having to to step left and then the monster steps right, and she steps right and the monster steps left, and suddenly it feels like a monstrous dance.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: Like that's very powerful when you sort of either you you you your mum's telling you a story and you're visualizing that in your head of what that must have been like, and it feels like your your brain's breaking, and and I wanted to convey that in that book, and so but but the light from the darkness stuff is just everything for me.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: I feel like that's what us writers should be doing.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And and there's a line in that book where the girl talks about she's talking about sketching just with black ink, and it's like you can you can you just can't you cannot draw light on a white page with black ink, you know, you can't draw it.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what you have to do to get that light is to is to work with the darkness, so it's the darkness of the black ink that creates your light, and it's like there's just yeah, that's just a metaphor for like everything for me.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Like that's yeah, right like brilliant metaphor.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: That's that's yeah, like that's something that's that's yeah, yeah, that's the truth of life for a lot of people out there dealing with the darkness of this country of ours.
24:05
SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of I wanted to reflect that.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: And I I talk, I go, I you know, that's at the heart of a lot of the stuff I write, which is this like hold on to the light amid these times of darkness.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: And it's I just find that very powerful.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of at the heart of all this all the writing that I love, all the books I love are like that, and it's like it's very powerful because it's true, it's absolutely true.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, yeah.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: It's it's well, what that's what I find incredible.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: All your characters somehow find a way to hope and light, most of them.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: This this is one other paragraph I want to read that I love.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I've just a little bit.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: No, I love it there.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm so honored.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm so honored that you write them, but it's like you feel like even reading it.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: And and it feeds a lot of what you're saying because it exemplifies to the listeners who haven't read it yet because it's not released, that it, you know, it gives them context.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: This is another great little para.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: She said sometimes you can find a light inside a fella.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: This is Lola speaking to her mum.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, she said, sometimes you can find a light inside a fella that burns so bright that it starts to burn inside you too.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: But all my mum found inside my dad, I was was black monster blood.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: That's the shit that bubbles because it's hot and troubled.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Acid monster blood.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: My dad's blood could have cleaned your oven.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: You could pour that stuff on the bonnet of your Subaru.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, like I'm like, wow.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, I love that notion.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: That badass poetry is sort of what I sort of say it.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, thanks, Deborah.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: No, it's brave, you know.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much how much did you edit that?
25:34
SPEAKER_00: It the work seems so unrestrained.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I was just I was just talking to my edit editor about that.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: She says she calls it a kind of boisterousness, and it's true.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: It's you have to you can't you can't put your brain, that's all heart, like it's all I try and write from the heart first and then brain second.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: And you can't let this big traitor of a thing being your brain get in, like it'll it'll it'll betray you, like it will, it will doubt you and it will um it will stop you from getting to the places you need to go, and you need to go with your heart and go with your spine, I call it like the spine never lies.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: And it's like if you're if you're writing stuff like that, and then I get to the point of like, oh, that blood could burn through the top of your bonnet of your Subaru and and get right through the bottom of the engine, it's like, yeah, that's really cool because that's how it feels sometimes, you know.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: And and then, you know, blood is a big thing in all my writing because um, you know, you it's just something I've thought about always is um if you are if you are from people who have the demons, who have the kind of demon blood, you know, um, does that mean you're gonna have the blood as well?
26:37
SPEAKER_02: You know, and is that stuff in you?
26:39
SPEAKER_02: That's a very interesting question.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: It's like I mean, and what I mean by that is, you know, for example, this beautiful dad of mine, my real real dad dad, um, he incredibly, incredibly beautiful man, just had these demons of drinking, right?
26:53
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, that's in my blood.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: I love, I love drinking too much, you know, and it's sort of like it's something I have to always watch, you know.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, it's in my blood to love that shit, and it's in my blood to let that rule my life, you know.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: So it's sort of like um I've got to fight against that.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: And it's like the girl in the books got a deeper thing she's thinking about.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: She's going like, oh my god, like um, what sort of blood um do I come from?
27:18
SPEAKER_02: And and and do I have the blood that I'm that my mum clearly has if she did indeed do this horrendous act of self-preservation, mind you, and self-defense.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a almighty bloody tough act to do to shove a knife in some guy's throat.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: And she's like, Yeah, could I ever do something so um so brave or so um so horrific, you know, so monstrous as well.
27:42
SPEAKER_02: And so she's sort of she's thinking about all those things, and that's where that blood stuff all comes from.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: But it all like everything I try and write, it's yeah, absolutely coming from truth.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: But I love the way you say it's that sort of badass poetry, like it's working with engines and blood and and like acid, you know, like it that's it, it's it's strong.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like using those strong words, and it's very it it hopefully is visceral when you sort of go, Oh god, very I do feel the bubble of that.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh yeah, no, 100%.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly speaking personally, I mean, do you think fact is stranger than fiction?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Because I always am in awe of some of the things that I know and have heard and have seen, as have you, particularly as a journalist, but just as a human, but as a journalist, I've I've been privy to things that I'm just like, is it is it like you're saying, right?
28:31
SPEAKER_02: Like, what if I wrote, if I, you know, people didn't believe me when I told them, Deborah, that you know, that stuff in Boy Swell's Universe about a um about a secret room that the boys find underneath um their stepdad's house, like and I just go, yeah, the Dalton boys when we were kids found a secret room under this guy that we all loved.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: My mum fell in love with.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: He had a secret room with a red telephone, and people just go, that's insane.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, yeah, that's life.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: Life is life out there in the suburbs uh is bizarre.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean, would you believe it if I told you uh about a I don't know, just one story that comes to mind of uh a beautiful mum and dad who came to the rescue of their daughter who was uh whose car was broken down on the side of the road, and they they're just helping their daughter, and then a car comes past and kills them both, you know.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: And it's just like you know what I mean, you know, stories like that, and you just go and try and go out and cover that.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Or um, yeah, you know, just profoundly moving things that just happen in real life.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: That if um that if I wrote them in a book, people go, Oh, that's highly unlikely that two parents would go like that.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: And what, well, okay, well, what about a family who who's a woman loses, you know, a son, a daughter, a husband in the space of three years.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: You know, you wouldn't believe it, but it's true.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: It's out there, and you know, yeah, calamity is out there facing it.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Calamity, exactly, and trauma.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing too, though, is you know, your book Love Stories, one of my favorites, I might say, a few times, given it as gifts a few times.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it made us all cry, let's just say.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, thanks, Deborah.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the tenderness was palpable.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Where did this come from?
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Because, in a way, I don't know, I think amidst or in sort of in contrast to some degree, those love stories were just full of the most extraordinary, once again, fact is stranger than fiction, but also the strength of love, as you often refer to as the is is the hope dome.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, where did you where did you access this?
30:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you think it's nature or nurture that has fed that for you?
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Or do you think in seeing so much of this trauma and having to embed yourself in a lot of these quite tough characters, love stories also brought out a lot of the other side, didn't they?
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Was that how was that?
30:48
SPEAKER_00: How did that come to?
30:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know how it came to be, but maybe you can talk to us about how that filled your cup.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's such a beautiful way of putting it.
30:58
SPEAKER_02: It really did.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: Like when I needed it most.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: I'd spent, you know, both both Voice Falls Universe and my second book, All Our Shimmering Skies, were very autobiographical in this, in the way, and it wouldn't seem like it all our shimmering skies, this sort of World War II Darwin story, but it was actually a it was like a tribute to my dead dad and sort of saying, Hey, I wish I could talk to you in the sky, and thanks for the moments when I do talk to him in the sky, and I get no response, but in but it still makes me feel good in my heart.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: And uh, that's what that was about.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, I'd spent a lot of time talking about that, and then Boyce Weller's universe was like, Time to get out of here, like time to get out of my own head, and it was time to get back into the heads of others, where I'm I feel really strong and it and it's very cup-filling.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh, and then this extraordinary thing happened where there was this woman named Kath Kelly who is absolutely a champion of my writing, had been for quite some time, Deborah.
31:50
SPEAKER_02: Like she would send me these typed letters on her sky blue Olivetti typewriter when I was in journal, like Kuri Maldays, um, writing for the weekend Australian magazine, and just sent me these typed letters, like Trent, you nailed that one on the weekend and keep going, keep going, Trent.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna write something great one day type stuff.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and then you know, she passed away on Christmas Day 2020.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, we go to the funeral.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, it's the most beautiful funeral where you watch a woman's life who's 89, dies at 89, and you get to see a complete life of love and generosity and selflessness through black and white photos, uh, you know, from from the 1940s um to the and 50s, all the way through to um to to iPhone shots in the 2010s, and then you look back behind you and you realize there are people standing up the back who came late, and you realize Kath Kelly led a life of such selflessness that uh latecomers couldn't find a seat at her funeral.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, that's what life's about.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: Then we're at the back, um, uh just celebrating Kath wet.
32:55
SPEAKER_02: We're having a beer because on on her um yeah, at the hospital, she's talking to her son, who's my best mate.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: He says, Um, I want you to drink these four X gold cans that I left in the fridge when the ambulance came to take me to the hospital.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: There's 30 cans, I want you just to have those.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and then Kel turns to me, was my mate, Greg Kelly, turns to me, Kath's son.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: He turns to me, he says, Trent, she had another request.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: And he leans through into the back of his car and pulls out a sky blue Olivetti typewriter and he says, She wanted you to have the typewriter.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: And it was like easily the most amazing gift I've ever received.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: And and so two months later, I call him up and I'm like, I, you know, we're in the middle of COVID and a lockdown had just closed and ended up here in Brisbane.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: And I said, called him up and said, Would you mind if I took this typewriter out to the corner of Adelaide and Albert Street with a sign saying, Sentimental writer collecting love stories?
33:45
SPEAKER_02: Do you have one to share?
33:46
SPEAKER_02: And Kel says, uh, I don't I think Mum would love that more than anything.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, she'd loved when I write that type of stuff and just talk to random strangers.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: So for about the next two months, I'd I'd irregularly go out for like eight-hour days out to this corner.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: And then the most extraordinary thing happened, Deborah, where like, you know, about 150 to 200 strangers just stopped and just said, Yeah, I'll tell you a story.
34:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, I've got no reason to sit by this total idiot who's sitting out here in the sun, looking like so strange, was such an ambitious, ridiculous thing to do.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: But the the kindness of people got me through, and people would stop, and then they'd go, Okay, so then Graham stops and he says, Um, I'm actually I'm blind.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I just want to tell you about this woman who's standing bus beside me.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: She's blind too, but I I need to tell you how much uh it means to have love in a in a in in my life.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: And I'm and uh for you to understand that you'd have to sit in a in a room in darkness for two weeks and then open up a door and someone goes and gives you a hug for the first time, and then and then I say, Graham, I say this stupid thing to Graham, um, uh Graham, what would you do if you had clear sight for just five minutes?
34:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, this is like the first story that stopped, the first story I got.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: And uh and I'm going, is this idea even gonna work?
35:03
SPEAKER_02: And and uh and I go, Graham, what would you do if you had five minutes of clear sight?
35:06
SPEAKER_02: And you go, and I go, like, would you go to the edge of the Pacific and look out to the ocean?
35:10
SPEAKER_02: Or would you spend five minutes just looking up to the stars and you go, no, no, no, I've thought about that question.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: It's not a stupid question.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'd spend five minutes just looking at my wife's face because I've never seen.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, damn, that's just a small little love story, right?
35:25
SPEAKER_02: That was just a small little love story.
35:27
SPEAKER_02: And then um, you know, and that that's it.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: And it and it made me think, yeah, this is what I'm talking about.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: It's about this idea.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: If you if you take the time, you will get you'll get to the point of someone.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: If you took the time with me, you would get to the point where I told you about the secret room that I saw as a boy that kind of changed my life.
35:47
SPEAKER_02: And if everyone has their kind of secret room, is what I'm trying to say.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, everyone has their secret room story, and it's just I wanted to do on that corner, I wanted to like hit now's the time.
35:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like, and everyone would say it.
35:57
SPEAKER_02: It's like there would there would be um there'd be mums who would come past and they'd go, um, like a 75-year-old woman would come.
36:03
SPEAKER_02: I remember this happened a couple of times where I just remember this one woman in particular.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: She comes past and goes, Would you mind if I told you about my husband who died five years ago?
36:12
SPEAKER_02: But um, I just want to tell you about him because my children don't like me talking about him anymore.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: They said they they they worry that I talk about him too much.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: So I've stopped, I've stopped talking about him, and I was just like, Well, that's what I'm here for.
36:25
SPEAKER_02: Like, I would love to hear that story.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: And then and then you get the flip side where you get just a a completely unbelievable and deeply, deeply romantic story of a woman who um, you know, Kerry, who's my just an incredible woman, um, who's who, you know, I get the privilege of sitting down with her, and as she tells me about the three photographs she puts up on her fridge on a rotational basis of her late husband, Chris, who who died in the most tragic circumstances around Christmas time, walking to buy a gift for someone in a shopping strip, and an awning, a shopfront awning, falls down on him.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: And the last act he does on this earth is to push two kids to safety.
37:09
SPEAKER_02: And every night, you know, his beautiful wife um cries over those pictures as she's cooking the pasta, and she tries to keep her crying down so her son, who's in the lounge room watching Telly, doesn't sort of worry for his mum.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: And uh, and every night she contemplates whether or not she will take those pictures down off the fridge, and every night she comes to the conclusion that she will keep them up there because crying those tears um is is worth it if she just gets to keep looking at him.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, man, that's like that's just a that's just a woman's life, you know.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: But that's what you've just relayed so beautifully.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and obviously, love stories is a reflection of your capacity for observation, empathy, and connection.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, that is what you do so well and and what you've harnessed.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, just moving on to the fact that you're now gonna have a Netflix series that's in your train.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: Wow, insane, and also really exciting because you're gonna capture a whole other audience for those who have not accessed the book.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, can you actually believe your story will be on film?
38:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is it's very magical.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, I've just been researching, it's the eight, it's an eight-part limited series.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Um it's gonna be global on Netflix.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: How are you feeling about that?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And and and also, are you ready?
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Are you are you okay with like you know, this is your baby, one of your many babies, but this is this is a big thing as a writer, right?
38:34
SPEAKER_00: To let go and allow other people to take your creation and uh I suppose uh harness it in a new form.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: I saw that you've got there's Brian Brown and Phoebe Tonkin and Simon Baker, some pretty hard-hitting Aussie actors going to be on board or are on board.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and do you have much input or say in the cast direction?
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Um is it three years in the making?
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And and how do you keep control of that story?
39:02
SPEAKER_00: Because whether we like it or not, we like, you know, this is your baby.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: So I'm very interested how you're how you're navigating that.
39:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh um, all I did, Deborah, I just kept on going like yes in massive capital letters with exclamation marks whenever I'd read a script.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: Like I just I just sort of asked, like, just I just like just keep me saying yes, just keep doing these beautiful things that you're doing where I get to just scream yes.
39:30
SPEAKER_02: And uh, so I'd read a script.
39:32
SPEAKER_02: John Collie, you know, he wrote Master and Commander.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: That guy writes with Peter Weir, like one of my all-time heroes.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: And brilliant, yeah.
39:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: And uh, so I'm like, oh wow, yeah, okay, he's the guy who's gonna write the script, yes.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: And then, oh, who are you gonna get to um, you know, to play essentially like this guy, Robert Bell, essentially, you know, my dad.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: Simon Baker?
39:54
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes, he's brilliant.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and it just it's kind of been like that all the way through.
40:00
SPEAKER_02: And I tried not to, I knew, like there was a talk, like maybe really early on, um, you know, Trent, do you want to write some of the scripts or something?
40:07
SPEAKER_02: It was just like, no freaking way, because I just knew I'd just get in the way of it and and I'd be too um, I'd be too close to it because it is such a baby, it is genuinely, as you say, and it's not it's even even more than a baby.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: Like it, I feel like it's some of the reason why I'm here.
40:23
SPEAKER_02: Like that's how that story is to me.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: I feel like sense of purpose, yeah.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: I feel like all of that crazy stuff, there's a case to be made that it this is the wrong way of thinking, and it's not the truth of life, but I I feel there's a way of thinking that I've thought sometimes that all of that stuff happened so I could write that book, and that's just a crazy thinking, but it's not true, but it's it's a beautiful thought, and and that's how much that story means to me.
40:45
SPEAKER_02: And so to let it go to these people, it was very much an act of faith.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: But um, I do think if you you let someone and you just are there, which I tried to be, which is just all I was was like an encourager.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: Like I was just like every person who would come on board, I would just go, thank you, and like I cannot tell you how much this means to me, so please give everything you've got.
41:06
SPEAKER_02: And I know I know enthusiasm, yeah.
41:08
SPEAKER_02: It was enthusiasm, which is going like, please bring it, bring it, and everybody did, Deborah.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: Like Phoebe Time.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here's the thing.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: So any fear I had is just been obliterated by the fact my family and I saw this preview, and it's okay.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: Of course, I'd say this because it's like part of me that's that book, but I'm telling you, it is profoundly moving.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: Like it is so I'm watching it, and like my whole family were crying.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: And I turned to my daughter who's crying, and she's weeping, and uh, and I say, Um, is it too sad?
41:38
SPEAKER_02: Is it too sad, darling?
41:39
SPEAKER_02: And and she goes, Nah, dad, it's like it's too beautiful.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: And and what what she was seeing all the light.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: There's just so much light in it, Deborah.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: They brought yeah, so the director, you know, they they just went, we're gonna bring that magic, Trent.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: The thing we like most of it about it is the magic.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, that there is everything about that that process and experience on that on that TV show, and that yeah, to think all I keep thinking, Deborah, is that when I was a kid in Brackenridge, and you know, all that stuff's going down, and like, you know, you're a bit worried for the people in your life.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: And I just I just know I would have loved to have turned on the telly at Brackenridge and and seen this this show, you know.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: And I it would have meant so much to me to see my world on screen.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: And I've never seen I've never seen my world on the screen.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: I never saw it growing up.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people in those outskirts of all our major cities have not really seen their world that much.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, I know and maybe we've seen a little bit, we've seen we sort of see and we've seen the dark stuff in some shows, but we've never seen this balance that the kids of Australia know, which is you can go through hard times and still love every single person deeply who's in that world with you, you know.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: And that's what I that's that's what I can't wait for people to see, you know, and they're gonna really see themselves in that in that story, and it's um yeah, it's the most profoundly moving thing to be a part of.
42:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I can tell you stories of the main, you know, it's just even the making of it was unbelievable.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: Like just seeing Simon Baker do his thing and then go to this this place where they've recreated my childhood home and then to look out.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: And that my favorite part, Deborah, there was this group of women who would gather on um across the road from this house, right?
43:21
SPEAKER_02: And they were just watching, they were just neighbors into this street where they were filming in Brisbane, and they'd gather at like 5 p.m.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: with their garden chairs, and they'd pour a pink gin, and they'd just watch Simon Baker walk back and forth into this house.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: It was just brilliant.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: It was just I mean, the actual process is what you're saying was incredible for you as well.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: But also, what I love, I'm hearing from you, you've also relinquished to the process, and that is also part of being a great writer, a great talent, a great, a great creative, actually, because the the challenge to want to control, as you said, you you've sort of relinquished and allowed the people to do what they do.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The actors, the producers, and that's not easy.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: And I know Jane talked about that with the dry, you know, and her, you know, that concept of letting the story go into the next universe.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: Did she do a similar thing?
44:13
SPEAKER_02: Was she tempted to write the dry?
44:16
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm sure she might have been.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: She was involved similarly to you, but she was really she loved the process and she was very treated very well and was very well regarded in the context, but she also allowed the process to just go on its journey because it you know you're dealing with people, as you say, who are highly proficient in what they do.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Totally, yeah.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: And and that sort of was probably and for you, that probably just involved.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, you're saying that you didn't struggle with it, you allowed it to just happen.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: The best thing I had as long as like I read the scripts and I was like, Yeah, those scripts are great, they're they're beautiful, you know what I mean?
44:53
SPEAKER_02: It's like they they can't go wrong.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: Like if they just yeah, okay, so you've got the script.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: What you don't what you don't expect is that, oh, these amazing directors are gonna come in and just make it 10 times greater.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: And then um, you know, through their visuals and their their visual storytelling.
45:07
SPEAKER_02: And if like you imagine me, this chump from Brisbane getting in the way of that, you know.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, like Barrett, who's like, you know, Barrett Neluri, like he he he he directed Life on Mars, you know, like this show I love, you know, and it's just like, hey man, I am not getting in the way of that, you know, you're amazing, and you should be allowed to just freely Jocelyn Morehouse, Deborah.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: Like Jocelyn Morehouse is a freaking hero of mine.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: Hero, hero.
45:33
SPEAKER_02: The emotion she has brought to this.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: It is unbelievable what she's done.
45:36
SPEAKER_02: And she's she's just brought her heart and soul.
45:39
SPEAKER_02: And like, imagine if I got in the way of her feeling all that stuff.
45:42
SPEAKER_02: And then Brian Brown comes along and just like plays this character Slim that I knew as my in my childhood.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: And so this hero that I loved, and this guy that my brothers and I can quote from the movie Cocktail, like we used to say, Goblin's Lord.
45:55
SPEAKER_02: We used to quote his words like all the time.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: I've told him that.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, yeah, he's just amazing.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: And then Phoebe Tomkin comes in playing my mom, this sort of angel actress model, like huge figure comes in and playing this sort of just you should see her, Deborah.
46:12
SPEAKER_02: Like, she is just she's just put everything on it.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: Like, she's just gone, no inhibition.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: It is just it is just a purging.
46:20
SPEAKER_02: Like it is the most actorly purging I've ever seen an actress do.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, I can't wait for people to see it.
46:25
SPEAKER_02: And so you I can't wait to see it.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, when is it?
46:28
SPEAKER_00: So for our listeners, when is okay?
46:30
SPEAKER_02: Well, all I can tell you is this summer, and it's close.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: It's this summer, but they'll be they'll be announcing that.
46:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, they'll be announcing that soon.
46:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they've got some huge announcements to say about where it's all gonna happen and how it's all gonna go down.
46:45
SPEAKER_02: But um, all I can say is uh it's cricket season, it'll be in cricket season.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, that's good.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure our listeners will remember that.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: And I just like to thank you so much for your your energy, your enthusiasm, your empathy, your humility, which I actually think is reflected in the last little chat we just had.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: And also, you know, we started this by saying you've made your dreams come true.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think you have, in that you have followed through this trajectory and you keep learning, you keep listening, you keep observing, and we're grateful.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to see um when Lola in the mirror is out, which I think is October 4th.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: October 4th, yeah.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, everyone go out and grab a copy because it's amazing and honestly, just another gem to add to your uh library.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Deborah, hey, um, well, it's called What I've Learned, and I've learned a lot just talking to you.
47:38
SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: Hey, I really appreciate the chat, and it's an honor to be on here with you.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Trent, and good luck and take care.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, can't wait to see it all.
47:48
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Deborah.
47:49
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the great questions.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: You put such lovely stuff into that.
47:52
SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, comes from the heart.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, yeah.
47:58
SPEAKER_02: Um I want I'm gonna go try and track down a Bromley like that cool painting you've got behind you.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, I'll I'll connect you too.
48:04
SPEAKER_02: A Bromley with a Patty Smith tie-in.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty amazing.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it's pretty cool, isn't it?
48:09
SPEAKER_00: It says it all, doesn't it?
48:10
SPEAKER_00: But I will I can connect you two, just so you know.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: Really?
48:13
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I don't yeah, yeah.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: But I mean you can just I think you two have a lot in common, actually.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Creative surge, the creative surge, it's it's overwhelming, the overwhelming driver.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: That's so true.
48:29
SPEAKER_02: That is so true, isn't it?
48:30
SPEAKER_02: The surge, yeah.
48:31
SPEAKER_02: Gotta gotta gotta flow with it.
48:33
SPEAKER_02: You gotta take it when you got it.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
48:36
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Deborah.
48:37
SPEAKER_02: Lovely chatting.
48:38
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for your time.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: Have a great day, have a great afternoon.
48:41
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
48:41
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: Love dear.