The future of Somers-Paper Nautilus Take Our Survey

0

The future of Somers-Paper Nautilus: Take Our Survey

Somers-Paper Nautilus has been reporting on life in Somers for over 15 years. But since early 2020, we’ve been in hibernation. Now, we need you to make a decision on the future of the paper. And we’d really value your opinion. So we’re asking you to tell us what you think.

Do you think Somers needs a community paper and, if so, what would you like to hear about, and how often?

Take this quick survey and help decide! Please complete by Friday 29 October. Thank you.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/G56M8WV

Winners of the 2019 Short Story Competition SALT

0

Winners of the 2019 Short Story Competition

We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2019 Short Story Writing Competition. This year’s theme was Salt.

Again, we were lucky to have a talented panel of judges: Peninsula authors Garry Disher and Michelle Hamer; literary agent and YA specialist Danielle Binks; and the Publisher of Western Port News, Cameron McCullough.

We thank all the writers who entered their many wonderful stories, our wise judges, and our generous sponsors. Without you the competition would not take place!

The winning stories across the five categories are:

Adult Fiction—Judge, Garry Disher
Winner:
The Salt-Lamp Seller by Mattias Mazza
Highly Commended: Salt by Tamara Carpenter

Adult Non Fiction
—Judge, Cameron McCullough
Winner:
An Old Salt’s Way to a Brighter Future by David Lloyd Wright
Highly Commended: Saltworks by Deline Skinner

Teens
—Judge, Danielle Binks
Winner:
The Sweetness of Salt by Adana Hulett

Primary Years—Judge, Michelle Hamer
Winner:
Scales the Saltwater Crocodile by Hazel Mazza
Runner-up:
Hope by Emma May-Konning

The winning stories are published in the September Edition of the Somers Paper Nautilus.

The competition was run with the support of our valued sponsors: Balnarring & District Community Branch of Bendigo Bank, Farrell’s Bookshop, Petersen’s Bookstore and the Western Port News.

 

The winners of the 2018 Short Story Competition

0

 

We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2018 Short Story Writing Competition. This year’s theme was Shell.

Again, we were lucky to have a talented panel of judges: Maryann Ballantyne, Publisher at Black Dog Books; Peninsula authors Garry Disher and Wendy Orr; literary agent and YA specialist Danielle Binks; and the Publisher of Western Port News, Cameron McCullough.

We thank all the writers who entered their many wonderful stories, our wise judges, and our generous sponsors. Without you the competition would not take place!

The winning stories across the five categories are:

Open Fiction—Judge, Garry Disher
Winner:
Resound by Maree Louise Purcell
Highly Commended
Hermit by Rebecca Fraser
Johnny’s First Day by David Gow
What’s Left Behind by Louise Zedda-Sampson

Open Non Fiction
—Judge, Cameron McCullough
Winner:
Superheroes by Robert Tennyson
Highly Commended
The Shell by Liz Hicklin
Jane Roadknight’s Volute by Jenny Dexter

Teens
—Judge, Danielle Binks
Winner:
Harbouring Memories by Penny Duran
Runner-up:
Oil by Grace Xu

Middle Years—Judge, Wendy Orr
Winner:
The Beautiful Shell by Clementine Rowe
Runner-up:
Bob the Slug by Audrey & Mack Millen

Junior Years—Judge, Maryann Ballantyne
Winner:
The Magic Shell by Isla Killeen
Runner-up:
A Wonderful Day at the Beach by Campbell Jaksa

The winning stories are published in the May/June Edition 72 of the Somers Paper Nautilus.

The competition was run with the support of our valued sponsors: Balnarring & District Community Branch of Bendigo Bank, Farrell’s Bookshop, Petersen’s Bookstore and the Western Port News.

Short story writing competition 2018

0

 

 

Somers Paper Nautilus invites you to enter a short story writing competition. Write a fiction or non-fiction story inspired by the theme … Shell

Entry is free. Submit your story in one of the following categories:

  • Open Fiction                              Fiction story. Word limit: 500
    (J) Garry Disher                          Prize $150
  • Open Non-fiction                   Non-fiction story. Word limit: 500
    (J) Cameron McCullough         Prize $150
  • Children*                                    Under 8 years. Fiction or non-fiction story. Word limit: 300
    (J) Maryann Ballantyne            1st prize $30 book voucher, 2nd prize $15 book voucher
  • Middle years                              8 to 12 years. Fiction or non-fiction story. Word limit: 300
    (J) Wendy Orr                              1st prize $30 book voucher, 2nd prize $15 book voucher
  • Teens                                            13 to 18 years. Fiction or non-fiction story. Word limit: 300
    (J) Danielle Binks                       1st prize $30 book voucher, 2nd prize $15 book voucher

 


Entries close on Sunday, 15 April 2018
Submit your entry/s to: contact@somers-nautilus.org.au or mail to:
Somers Paper Nautilus, PO Box 338, Somers VIC 3927

Winners announced on Monday, 14 May 2018

 

Judges:       We are delighted to welcome authors Garry Disher and Wendy Orr, children’s book publisher Maryann Ballantyne, along with writer, literary agent and YA specialist Danielle Binks, and publisher Cameron McCullough to our judging panel. Each will judge one category, as above (J).

Entry guidelines

Submissions will be judged on originality, creativity and theme, and must meet entry guidelines.

Please ensure your submission/s meets the following conditions:

  • Separate cover sheet with title, author name, category, phone number, email, postcode.
  • Legible, hand-written stories are acceptable only for Children under 8 years category*.
  • Send work as a doc file or as printed hard copy for all other categories.
  • Do not include your name on the Word file – to assist in anonymous reading.
  • Title and page number on each page, typed, Times New Roman font, double spaced.
  • Word count must be included and limits not exceeded.
  • Works must be original, unpublished and must not have been submitted elsewhere.
  • Entries must be received by 11.59pm on Sunday, 15 April 2018.
  • Only entries that meet all criteria will be considered.

Competition conditions

  • Judges decisions are final.
  • Nautilus retains the right to publish any/all entries in the Somers Paper Nautilus.
  • Fiction & non-fiction categories open to all except Nautilus staff and sponsors.
  • Authors under 18 years to enter the appropriate category per age group.
  • Maximum of two submissions per author.
  • Winners agree to their name being published in Somers Paper Nautilus and WP News.

Sponsors and judges

We are grateful for the generous support of the Bendigo Community Bank as major sponsor for the open categories; and Farrell’s Bookshop, Petersen’s Bookshop and Somers Paper Nautilus as sponsors in the children’s categories. The Mornington Peninsula News Group’s (MPNG) Western Port News has generously provided advertising for the competition.

Our judges Maryann Ballantyne, Danielle Binks, Garry Disher, Cameron McCullough and Wendy Orr are sharing their wisdom, expertise and time as they take part in judging. For this we thank them!

Have a creative 2018 – start writing now!

Rosemary’s Baby

0


Rosemary’s baby

Sally Holdsworth

A story of grassroots conservation and one community volunteer

 Nowadays she has a lower profile. But she is still invested in preserving this ‘unique land’ for everyone to treasure and enjoy.ears ago, Rosemary Birney was known as the ‘witch of Somers’. As a conservationist and dedicated protector of what she describes as a fantastic place, Rosemary stirred mixed feelings in this small seaside hamlet on the Mornington Peninsula.

Rosemary is a small woman whose appearance is practical, unadorned and workman-like. I first encountered her at a foreshore community working bee. She was leading a group to see a shy native orchid: a rare, inconspicuous flower tucked away on the edge of a trail, unseen by those of us who are unfamiliar with the bush.

Rosemary can read the bush. She knows the shrubs and trees tumbling down the coastal hillside to the ocean. She knows how to plant native grasses to coax growth and how to conquer the ever-lurking weeds. She is a natural educator, teaching herself first and sharing knowledge enthusiastically. Her family think she’s ‘nuts’.

Why such devotion to the land? Her childhood was spent on Sydney’s north shore, in what was then mostly bushland. Visits to her mother’s family farm in Kilcoy, Queensland, kindled an affinity with the ‘magical’ bush. As a young married woman she lived for a time in the shadow of the Snowy Mountains and her love of this area looms large. Her life has been spent in country towns and small communities where people don’t ask, they just help out.

Somers was to be Rosemary’s final destination. Having spent holidays here, camping with her five children, she arrived in retirement, ‘I came thinking I’d stay forever.’

She joined the local foreshore volunteer group, eventually becoming secretary. With friends, she founded Nautilus because ‘the place needed a voice’. The foreshore group has been instrumental in creating one of the most beautiful cliff-top pathways in Somers: a winding nature walk that overlooks Westernport Bay. But the politics of building the pathway – a long hard battle – took its toll on the committee, and on Rosemary. Eventually, when ‘life became unbearable’ she resigned and established a new Friends group.

Years later, Rosemary is still active on the foreshore. Much of the work is physically hard. The task of weeding, planting and replenishing a sprawling native coastal reserve, much of it dangerously hilly, seems endless. But Rosemary describes the pleasure of transforming bare ground to native vegetation.

Propelled by a polite steely drive, Rosemary seems an old-school model of diligence and duty, a stickler for process, ‘You must stick to what is right; do things properly’. And yet, there is a cheekiness, and a glimmer of the ‘greenie, hippy, leftist’, as described by her son.

She has a pragmatic stoicism. Her father, who served with the Australian Army in the Middle East during the Second World War, died young and unexpectedly. He was a constitutional lawyer involved in crafting the constitution for Papua New Guinea, and was about to take up a position in Canberra when he died. Her mother, left to raise two children, turned to teaching. Rosemary explains, ‘Parents who lived through the war did have a rough time. My mother was shifted around and it made her very insecure. She brought us up alone.’

As a young woman Rosemary was an actor. With typical understatement she reveals, ‘I was on the stage a little. I went to NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Arts] over 50 years ago – it was another life. We toured, doing children’s theatre, in New South Wales and Western Australia. I still have a hankering for children’s theatre.’

She was unofficial tour manager and caterer for the travelling theatre company, but says, ‘I stopped when my second child was born; I had to start being responsible and become a serious person. It was very hard to stop touring. The hardest thing was staying in one place, it was agony. It was a nice life but a long time ago.’

She is a hospitable soul, in the old-fashioned way. Early community working bees included ‘lovely food, cooked on the barbecue’, which passers-by and locals were invited to share. ‘I think the most important thing is not to say “come and help”, but just to talk to people about what we are doing … so they understand why we are doing things,’ she says.

Now, the self-described ‘works coordinator or bossy devil’ faces a new challenge. She says, ‘I’m getting old and tired and it worries me because I would hate to see [the work we have done] lost.’

What happens when people like Rosemary and her group need to stop? Who do they hand the reins to? She expresses concern that the fragile environment could fail. ‘I have talked to so many people about how do you hand on? I don’t know how to open the door to say that something needs to be done. I wish there was a magic wand to get people to see that this land is really special, fragile. We could lose it if the effort isn’t sustained.’

Family circumstances prompted her move from Somers to the hills; it’s leafy and lovely, but doesn’t hold her heart. She returns often for working days on the foreshore, maintaining ties. She tells a story.

‘One night, after we had finished planting on the eastern cliffs, I suddenly realised I had left my camera behind. I went down the pathway to find it; it was dark, the moon was shining across the water. I sat there on the edge of the cliff, and out in the bay a whale went past – headed to Hastings. As he went past he spouted. This place is magic. Isn’t it worth keeping that piece of ground so that everybody has that experience?’    ʘ

 

Lord Somers Camp hosts Shakespeare Yasmin McKenzie

0

Filming by Shakespeare Republic in the great hall at Lord Somers Camp. Copyright Incognita Enterprises

Is Shakespeare still relevant? Does he still speak to us? Is he REALLY for everyone?

The answer is YES, according to Shakespeare Republic, who recently spent time at the Lord Somers Camp filming Series 2 of the internationally acclaimed web series. Shakespeare Republic is a collective of Australian based actors and writers who have come together to celebrate Shakespeare, his works and his enduring legacy. Using the medium of a web series, Shakespeare Republic takes a journey through the works of William Shakespeare and his fellow Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights.

READ MORE

For the love of sailing… Somers Yacht Club

0

placeholder-cms-1

Come and discover why Somers Yacht Club is the heart of Somers community. For many members the attraction is more than just sailing. Many great friendships have been made during one of the regular Friday night dinners, a social event or BBQ. The sailing/social program is full and new faces are always welcome!

READ MORE

Tough little perennial Penny Woodward

0

Thrift (Armeria maritima) was one of the plants that I grew in my first garden and I have loved it ever since. It is a delightful tough little perennial that grows, in spring and summer, as a small clump of tufting, grassy leaves with white, pink or red button flowers on slender stems. Their ideal home is rocky, well-drained ground near the coast (perfect for Somers gardens). They grow beautifully in cold and warm temperate regions but are not much good in the sub-tropics and certainly won’t survive in the tropics. They also show no signs of self-seeding so won’t grow into the coastal foreshore or other bush areas.

READ MORE