Wild about the Murray: Author Darry Fraser.
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Let bestselling Australian author Darry Fraser take you back to life along the Murray and colonial Australia on the eve of Federation when she visits Benalla Library at 2pm on Friday, December 1. This month, Darry had her ninth novel in seven years published, and that is much of what she will be talking about.
She might not have been sitting on the banks of the Todd River, which wends its dry, sandy way through the red centre, but Darry Fraser was absolutely in the town called Alice in 1983 when she wrote her first novel.
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Based on the Murray River.
As you do.
And no sooner had she written ‘the end’ than she thought her nascent career as an author was about to sink without trace.
“In October that year the Seven network released All The Rivers Run – Sigrid Thornton and John Waters were living my book on the screen, it was a smash hit and I quite simply lost my nerve and gave up,” Darry recalls.
“I stumbled on for a little while, won a couple of small, short-story competitions, but it all started to fade.
“So to keep food on the table I had to turn my hand to other things, and that included working in the hospitality industry and even running a four-wheel drive tour company across the country.
“But no matter how far I drove, I could not get away from my desire to be a writer.
“Back in 1983, I thought I had written the greatest thing since sliced bread, so in the 2000s, I started to think it was probably still as good.”
Darry says she suddenly started to realise there was more of her life behind her than in front, so if she was ever going to do anything about writing, she “had better get on with it”.
So she dusted off the old manuscript, which had been lovingly and endlessly reworked, and pitched to HarperCollins.
The rest is a story that would be worth, well, worth a book. Or a TV series.
The prestigious label signed her, Daughter of the Murray was published in 2016, and today, nine novels down the track, she is a full-time author.
Adventure: The Milliner of Bendigo is Darry Fraser’s ninth novel.
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The Murray almost always flows through her stories as a central theme, a love affair that began when she was an eight-year-old and her family moved to Swan Hill.
“My early years, growing up in Melbourne, weren’t terribly exciting, but once we moved to the Murray at Swan Hill, my creativity soared — in my head, anyway,” Darry chuckles.
“But stories of the river have been with me since.
“I love the whole thing about those early years along the Murray; the trade, opening up the inland, taking products down the river to the port at Adelaide and carving a new world in the bush – but with the population pinned to the Murray, and the other rivers, for generations.
“I love my writing, I love the period about which I write (HarperCollins calls her work historical and adventure drama, Darry calls it empowering feminist adventure) and I really love the research.
“You would think history, which has happened, would be a set subject, but history keeps evolving, and I like to think when I include a historical fact, that’s exactly what it is.”
Darry says she can’t be sure when history began to make her sit up and take notice; she reckons it’s always been there, as has mystery and adventure.
And being drawn to those things made for an easy segue into the style and genre of the stories she now writes.
Even though she does write other genres and will continue to do so, she knows in her heart of hearts she works best in the historical drama space, and, as she always says, “loves the research”.
