Last week my wife and I headed down to Glenelg, South Australia where I was one of the lucky authors taking part in the ONCE UPON A FESTIVAL at IMMANUEL COLLEGE.

Lots of schools were involved and it was great to catch up with a number of writer and illustrator colleagues who I haven’t seen for a while and to meet new ones.

Festivals and school visits are increasingly rare things for me these days so the two days of OUAF were busy and a little tiring but a lot of fun.

I gave six presentations overall: one to a big group (215 students from 10 schools) on Don’t Call Me Ishmael, three talks to smaller groups on Just a Dog and Eric Vale Epic Fail and two Writing Workshops.

All went well but my favourites were the Just a Dog/Eric Vale talks to Grades 3-6. Lots of laughs.

A big thank you to festival director Dr Kylie Booker for inviting me and making me feel so welcome and spoiling us all. Congratulations to everyone who helped make the festival such a pleasure to attend and such a success.

A big cheers and thank you as well to my fellow presenters some of whom (George Ivanoff, Mike Lucas, Belinda Murrell, Charlotte Barkla, James Foley, Kate Isobel Scott, Lili Wilkinson, Megan Daley, Wai Chim) are seen below. You are all awesome!

(Of course because I took all the selfies I managed to get myself prominently in every shot.)

After the festival was over my wife and I stayed on and spent a relaxing weekend at beautiful GLENELG.

And took a bunch of photos.

Back home in Brissie now enjoying our Haigh’s chocolate frogs!

Cheers
Michael

But what exactly is this?