Playright, actress and now author Donna Cameron (known as DM Cameron) returns to the Redlands to launch her debut novel Beneath the Mother Tree.
The book will be launched as part of the Quandamooka Festival at the Stradbroke Island Museum at 4pm on Sunday, August 12 and then at Macleay Island on August 14 at the Blue Parrot Cafe at 10am and at Coochie kiosk at 6pm. Further launches will be held at Noosa on August 15 and at the Avid Reader Bookstore, Brisbane in conversation with novelist Cass Moriarty at 6pm on August 17.
The local launches are appropriate settings for the novel which is set on an island in the Quandamooka area, celebrating its community, atmosphere, beauty and unique flora and fauna.
Ms Cameron said she repeatedly returned to the Redlands, not only as a school girl in the 1980s (attending Cleveland State High school) but also to offer her children that “messy wildness and freedom” she enjoyed growing up. Ms Cameron founded the Blue Moon Theatre group which she ran for 13 years.
She and her partner moved to New South Wales five years ago, to help care for his parents.
“The Quandamooka area will always hold a very special place in my heart. This is where so many life changing events occurred for me. I can’t help but have a deep connection to the place,” she said.
Ms Cameron started working on her novel in 2013, after receiving a RADF grant from the Redland City Council. Because the book contains peripheral aboriginal characters, she worked with respected Ngugi elder Uncle Bob Anderson on all indigenous content.
“Uncle Bob was the first to make me aware of the violence and massacres that had occurred within the Quandamooka nation. Here I was, in my 40s, hearing these stories for the first time. Suddenly I saw this place, my heart country, through the eyes of the local mob,” she said.
“There was heartbreak and violence scattered through the land, and most of it was and still is, unsigned, unmarked, and not spoken about.”
Then novel is a spine-chilling mystery and contemporary love story, which is played out in this unique and wild setting, interweaving Indigenous history and Irish mythology.
Publisher Anna Solding describes the novel as “wrought with sensuousness and lyricism – a thrilling journey, rhythmically fierce and eagerly awaited.”
“I can’t wait to return to the Redlands. Growing up in the area and then running Blue Moon Theatre, I made so many connections. I hope people will come up and say, ‘Hi’,” she said.
The book is available from August 1 online and at bookstores (information on dmcameron.com).
