Workshops, a book launch and a festival livestream

May is a busy month at the South Coast Writers Centre, writes Dr

Sarah Nicholson

Term 2 of the South Coast Writers Centre’s Young Writers Program begins the week after school goes back for Illawarra students and is open for enrolments. The program has weekly creative writing workshops in Coledale, Wollongong and online. For ages 10 to 18, the program helps young people to develop the craft of writing with their peers in a supportive environment.

On 6 May, award-winning author of Fury, Kathryn Heyman, will be running an all-day catered workshop at Coledale Community Hall on how to discover and develop your writing voice. Whether you want to write fiction or non-fiction, a novel or a memoir, you will leave the class with a stronger sense of your writerly voice and vision, a deeper understanding of your characters and a toolkit of techniques.

The Sydney Writers Festival returns at the end of May, and the SCWC brings it right to your doorstep. On 27 May, the Music Lounge at Wollongong Town Hall will have events livestreamed from Carriageworks, saving you a trip to Sydney. The livestreams will be interspersed with local in-person author events, including a session titled ‘After the Dust Settles’ with crime authors Dinuka McKenzie and Hayley Scrivenor, and ‘Body and Self’ with Jackie Dent and Phillipa McGuinness. See up to 25 authors in conversation, with tickets just $30 for the entire day.

Also as part of the SWF program, on 25 May join 2023 Senior Australian of the Year Tom Calma AO at Wollongong Art Gallery for the launch of Volume 11 of Dreaming Inside: Voices from Junee Correctional Centre. Dreaming Inside is in its 11th year of producing anthologies of writing from First Nations inmates at Junee Correctional Centre. Overseen by Aunty Barbara Nicholson, the project aims to help inmates improve their literacy skills and results in higher self-esteem, greater cultural awareness and an increased ability to understand their own feelings.

SCWC partner program Enough Said Poetry Slam takes place on the last Thursday of each month at The Forge, an art warehouse venue hidden in Gwynneville. The slam is an opportunity for spoken word poets of every skill level to try their hand at performing in front of a live audience. There’ll be prizes for winners, a pop-up bar and bookshop on site, and featured poets to show us all how it’s done. Entry is just $5/$10. The following weekend, return to Coledale Community Hall on 3 June to join the Film Club screening of A Simple Plan. A neo-noir crime thriller released in 1998, the film is a deceptively simple and engaging story about how the road to hell is an accumulation of small understandable steps that could lure even the best of us. Local film expert Graham Thorburn will provide background and lead the discussion of the movie.

Buy tickets to all SCWC events at southcoastwriters.org/upcomingevents and follow us on social media at @southcoastwriters and @SCWCentre.

Looking on the sunny side at Dapto

By Local Studies librarian Jenny McConchie

You may be surprised to know that in 1952 our city was leading the way for the world in solar research. The Dapto Solar Radio Field Station, opened in that year by the CSIRO, was hailed as the world’s first sun station.

Established on a dairy farm west of Dapto, the station’s purpose was to find out more about the sun and the sun’s atmosphere. It was also hoped that it would help to predict occurrences of magnetic storms, and eruptions from the sun that caused disruptions to radio services.

The antennas (pictured), along with other equipment, formed a solar radio spectrograph. The site was selected because it was level and as it was under the escarpment it blocked out any radio signals from Sydney that would have interfered with operation of the equipment.

In 1965 running of the station was handed to the University of Wollongong who later moved the operation to somewhere near Mt Keira. Industrial expansion at Port Kembla had contributed to increased electrical interference at the Dapto site. This played a part in the CSIRO’s decision to move their operations to Narrabri.

The rusted antennas ended their days being cut up and sent as scrap to the Port Kembla Steelworks.

Staff from the Local Studies Section of the Wollongong City Library are available to help you to access any information, past or present, about our city. Just email localhistory@wollongong.nsw.gov.au or call us on 4227 7414