A friend sent me a clipping a few weeks ago from the Cobram Courier, the local paper of where we used to live. For those who don't know it, Cobram is a small town (about 4000 people when we lived there, though I think it's grown a fair bit since) in the Goulburn Valley irrigation farming area of northern Victoria (Australia) Of course since we had a dairy farm we didn't even live in Cobram; we were about a ten minute drive out in an area called Yarroweyah.
The clipping was a lovely little note congratulating me on the film and mentioned that although I'd been a writer when I lived in Yarroweyah, my career had really taken off since we moved closer to Melbourne. Of course this is true in the sense of the film happening.
But I felt that I really wanted kids to know - not just in Yarroweyah or Cobram, but any small towns around the world, when you sometimes feel that great things can only be accomplished in big cities - Nim's Island, the first Australian children's book to become a Hollywood feature film, was written and published when I lived in Yarroweyah. (Ark in the Park, which won a CBCA Book of the Year (junior readers) was written when we lived at Yalca, another tiny farming area.) Where I lived didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to Paula Mazur picking the book up in a Santa Monica library, or to Walden Media’s decision to film it.
So it doesn’t matter where you live – what’s important is to follow your dream the very best way you can.Labels: follow your dreams; book to film