A Trip To Sydney!

First issue of the School Magazine.

So, I just got home from Sydney. I’ve been many times before, for SF cons, twice to children’s writers conferences and to visit friends. This time I went because I was invited to lunch by the NSW School Magazine, along with other contributors.The School Magazine has been around for over a century - 108 years next February - and I missed the centenary celebration when it was held several years ago, so I thought this time I’m going! And I did.

It has suddenly occurred to me that I’ve been writing for them for around thirty years! It all began when children’s writer Geoffrey McSkimming visited Melbourne for a library conference. Geoffrey used to write a hilarious series of children’s books about a character called Cairo Jim, who was a sort of Indiana Jones for children. Jim lived in Egypt in a village called Gurneh, after a real place where the villagers made a cosy living tomb robbing, and worked in the Valley of the Hairdressers. 

Anyway, while Geoffrey was at the conference, which I attended, he mentioned this magazine he worked for, and said it was a good market because they published four magazines for different age groups and each was four a year. And you don’t have to write for a specific one, they slot your work into whatever age group they think it fits. I started submitting and here I am, all these years later, still writing and submitting - my most recent article was published in September, edited by Geoffrey McSkimming. 

I’ve done a lot of articles about the space program - that one was about the Artemis project, which is going back to the moon, then on to Mars - but also about quirky bits of history and archaeology. A couple of times they invited me to submit items about specific subjects - once about Yuri Gargarin, another time about forensics. 

The thing is, at the time, the head honcho was a delightful guy called Jonathan Shaw, who eventually retired. Both in his time and for some time after, I could write to ask if they might be interested in a particular topic. If they said yes, I had a good chance of selling it. It’s a lot of research to do even a 1500 word piece and I’d hate to do all that only for them to say, sorry, we’ve just published something about that. 

Things changed over the years. For a while they were doing themed issues, which was a disaster for me. I’d written an article on a topic they had said interested them only to be told they needed to find an issue it would fit. Thankfully that system stopped soon and the article was published after all. 

These days you submit via the website, so I resubmitted it and they bought it. But at the time I thought there was no one I could email with an inquiry any more. And I found out on Monday, at the event, that you can, after all, still inquire and be answered. That made me very happy. I’m now researching a topic I think children will like, fingers crossed the good folk at the School Magazine will agree! 

It was an enjoyable afternoon. Lunch was really just sandwiches and sushi, with tea and coffee and cake on the side, but we had a fascinating talk about the history of the magazine. Afterwards, I picked up a copy of one of their best-of anthologies, along with a print of the very first edition. 

I met some folk I’d only known through correspondence, and the lady who pays us! There were the artists, who get a monthly “brief” and do the illustrations.

One of those was Queenie Chan, best known as a comic book/graphic novel artist, whom I met at a convention in Melbourne some years ago, and who told me she had illustrated some of my articles! Who knew when we first met that she would be illustrating my work one day? 

I was even more thrilled when I had a chat with Geoffrey, who said to me, “Keep them coming! I really like your work.”

A very nice ending to my visit to the offices of the School Magazine.

It was held in Paramatta, a bit of a way out of town, and I got lost on the way there! 

I saw my first jacaranda trees in bloom that day, something that has been compared to cherry blossom in Japan. 

Tuesday morning I met some fannish friends I have known forever and we took a trip to Manly by ferry, sailing past the Sydney Opera House. We caught up over lunch in the sunshine, fish and chips and lemonade, and watched people dressed for the Melbourne Cup walk past for some event of their own, then we walked on the beach with my friend Susan’s tiny rescue chihuahua, Pocket, whom she had brought along for a treat. Pocket was a breeder dog who was given away when she could no longer have puppies, so not a young girl, but a fine pet. 

In the evening I met my brother’s best friend, Michael, who enjoys talking about his family history and loves researching them. He really does a lot of research, and found relatives he hadn’t known he had, as well as finding, in the National Library’s newspaper archive, Trove, old articles about a relative who had been arrested and imprisoned for fraud! I also learned, after all this time, that he is a fellow Trek fan. We went for dinner at a favourite restaurant of his, with Israeli food. 

I woke up early yesterday morning to find the Internet was down, as was my phone. It wasn’t until I logged into the hotel’s wifi that I read the news that one of our major ISPs, Optus, had crashed all over Australia! If you live here, you’ll know about it. Really a disaster, with hospitals losing their connections, prop,e unable to call 000 for emergencies and trains in Melbourne getting backed up. My brother, who takes a train to work, got his wife to drop him off on the local tram line. I had to go home, so I used whatever wifi was available wherever I went; by the time I reached Melbourne airport, the crash was fixed. 

Still - much as I adore technology, it did show how much we rely on it. 

What do you think? Are we relying too much on our IT? Is it worth it? 

I think it is, but still…