Encore: the life and legacy of author John Marsden

ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Today is my conversation with the late John Marsden. John was a beloved children's author and a visionary educator who started his own school called Candle Bark in Victoria. I spoke with John in 2018. John Marsden was a high school English teacher when he wrote his first novel so much to tell you. John's writing took teenagers seriously. And right from that first book, they loved his novels. Tomorrow when the war began was the start of a series of books that imagined the invasion of Australia, resisted by a small band of teenagers waging guerrilla war. Long before the Hunger Games, John made young people the heroes of stories that had real consequences. But even as he became an internationally best-selling author, John never lost his love for teaching. In 1998, he bought a giant swag of natural bush on the northern edge of Melbourne, and eventually started his own school there called Candle Bark. It's a school that John's described as somewhere between Steiner and the Simpsons. Hi, John. Good day, sir. What works about that combination, Steiner and the Simpsons? Well, I shouldn't take too literally. So I think I like the subversiveness of the Simpsons and the way it causes you to challenge your question or most every aspect of society. But I also like the fact that Steiner was on about being reflective and about big issues and profound thinking. There's stuff about the Steiner system I don't like, and stuff about systems I don't like. But between the two is some sort of worthwhile area to explore, I think. Let's go back into your childhood. What's your earliest memory, John? What comes to mind? Well, this is embarrassing being toilet trained. I remember sitting on the toilet and screaming in terror, thinking I was going to fall in. And I could hear my father and siblings playing outside. So the toilet must have been in the backyard, in the traditional manner. And I was, I think I was angry that they were having a good time while I was about to drop into this bottomless pit. The darkness didn't smell good either. So who else was in your family? How many siblings do you have? Three others, yeah, boy, boy. Well, I can't say, boy anymore, he's nearly 70. Two sisters and one brother. You unspent some of your time growing up in Devon Port in Tasmania. What was that like as a place for you? It was idyllic for a kid. I mean, we just wandered and explored and adventureed all day long. There was a ferry you could catch across the river and go to North Devon Port, which we did quite often. We loved the town tip. That was always a great playground. The town tip? What would you find? Oh, just anything from old stoves to the brick and things, broken plates. If they weren't broken, we'd break them. Or if they were broken already, we'd break them again. And we'd go through the bush, we'd go through the town. And the library was ever small, but it was my kind of safe place, I guess. How much time would you spend at the local library? This sounds a bit like self-agrandesment, but I'd go down after school and borrow three books, which was the maximum allowed, to fiction and one nonfiction. And because rules were strict in those days. And take them home and try to read them before the library closed at whatever 6 p.m. or something. What, read those three books? And then race back and get three more. So I was an avid reader. And what were you getting from those books? Was it a kind of a competition if you were trying to get them read? Was it where they were? No, it was the fear that I wouldn't have anything to read after about 9 o'clock if I didn't get three more books. It was an escape. It was disappearing into a different world. And so in everyone from England to Blighten to Nan Shaw and C to Geoffrey Trees, mostly British writers with quite a lot of Australian and a few American and not much else. There was a few European novelists that read, but it was just going into a world where things were so different and I felt completely detached from reality, which seemed to be desirable to me. Why, what was reality like at home? I was a bit grim, I have to say. I don't want to defame my parents after their deaths, but they were themselves, I suppose they mirrored what their parents had done. So my father had a tyrannical father. And I guess that made him quite a severe person himself. And my mother had a very manipulative and really quite negative mother. And I think she echoed some of those behaviors herself. So although they did their best as parents, they were forever changed. But their own childhood experiences, this is my best guess anyway. And that then meant that they weren't, it wasn't a very safe house to be in. As a kid, did you feel that your parents were interested in you? Interested, say, in your love of reading? No, they were interested in our achievements, which had to be of the highest order. And they were extremely critical of us at home, but very angry if anyone could have s-this outside the home. So if we got a bad school report, they'd be angry at the teacher and angry at us. It created conflict intention, which meant that by the start of adolescence or early in my adolescence, I stopped being the conformist child who was trying to achieve the highest possible standards in order to satisfy the unsatisfiable parents. And I became the rebel and went to the other extreme and started listening to Bob Dylan, God help me. That was the beginning of the end. I do remember the first time I heard a Bob Dylan song, it was lent to me by an amazing guy called Rob Bilby who I was at school with. And it was Mr. Tambourine man. And from the first notes and the first syllables of that voice, I was transfixed and transformed. And I remember almost consciously thinking, is this legal? You're allowed to do this? It just sounded like something so much the voice of the outlaw that I couldn't believe you were allowed to do it. And reading the catcher in the rye had the same effect on me. I was like, "God, this isn't Thomas Hardy. This seems like our voice." And that seemed extraordinary to me that you could express that voice openly and publicly and even get paid and recognised for doing it. You're right. In Dylan's voice, there's so much attitude, isn't there? There's an identity in that voice. There's a message that's coming across regardless of what he's singing. There's a posture there. Yeah, it's like he's torn up the rule book even though he knows the rule book. I was talking at a conference organized by Griffith University about creativity and saying to teachers who are at the conference that as a teacher you need to teach kids what's in the rule book, and then they teach them to tear it up and how to tear it up and when to tear it up. And Dylan, he knows music as well as anybody, he's got an extraordinary knowledge of folk music and blues and gospel, but he's chosen to go his own way. But nevertheless, you can see the elements of those influences in his work. Why did your family leave Tasmania, John? My father was a bank manager and they had an inflexible policy that every four years people were transferred. And the way you'd find out that you were transferred was to get the Fortnitely staff bullies and the last perhaps four or five pages was a list of the transfers for this fortnight. So you'd look up the list and if your name was on it you'd bring your partner and say start packing. We're off to Calgouli or Devonport or Brisbane or whatever. Yep, that's the way the system worked. Do you remember how you felt about moving from Devonport to Sydney? I was torn, I was excited about the big smoke going to the big city, but also had very strong feelings about leaving my friends and just walking away from a place where I'd just gradually established my own kind of territories and did feel safe when I was roaming around the countryside and the town. What was the drive up to Sydney like? It was a marathon, we took two nights staying in Golden and County Liberty, have a place along the way, Aubrey. And yeah, it was a massive road trip to us and it was hot, it was January and then we came to Sydney and it was just mind boggling to go through suburb after suburb after suburb and being a car from Tasmania with Tasmania number plates made us an instant object of curiosity. And so crowds would gather when we stopped anywhere or when people would point to the car and look at it with amazement as we drove around the city or the suburbs because I saw one other car from Tasmania during those early months before we got the number plates changed. Once you got to Sydney John, where did you go to school? Well, I started at Castle Hill primary and then went to Eastwood primary and then ended up at the King School which is for people who don't know it in all boys school, Anglican, very conservative with a military bent military philosophy or ideology. We had to wear military uniforms all day every day and a lot of marching and saluting and. Who did you have to salute? Now teachers, if we met them down the street or if anyone stopped to let us cross the road we had to salute the driver of the car. We had to stand to attention when we spoke to prefects. Yeah, it was all down along Victorian lines and I mean Queen Victoria not the state of Victoria but it was pretty inaccurate. As a bookish kid or kid into Dylan and into Catherine the Rye, how did you find this environment? There was a small number of teachers who were quite liberal and I guess I could use a word. It's not used much in Australia and said that there were intellectuals and they were the people who kind of kept me sane, but they were in a minority and I don't know how they survived because it was a pretty rigid and authoritarian atmosphere and I copped it big time because it was, as I was saying earlier, the start of my kind of adolescent rebellion against parents and that rebellion extended to the school and to the universe really. I remember this moment. I don't know whether this is common, but I was 4 to 1. I was standing outside my lockers after school one afternoon and I could take it to the spot today if you had time. There was a kind of lightning strike through my brain and I suddenly thought what if my parents aren't perfect and what if the school isn't right in all these rules and regulations and what if there is no God and what if all the politicians are not telling the truth and this all happened in the space of it seems to me, I don't know, 8 seconds and it was like a lightning bolt in earthquake. The world was turned upside down to mix my metaphors and I was never the same again. I was just from then on I questioned everything and challenged everything and started to see that appearances did not tell the truth and that there were other worlds which were difficult to find sometimes little and explore but it was very worthwhile to try to get inside them. It's amazing that you can remember that in a, like I wrote to Damascus moment, were there other kids that you kind of had shared sensibility with you? - You talked to this stuff about? - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, kids had a little prep school at the Mosfail called Tudor House which was a very idiosyncratic school and the students from there skipped the first year of secondary school at Tudor House and then came on to Kings in Year 8 and they were quirky, funny, engaging and challenged everything and rebelled happily at every opportunity and I found great kinship with that group and again they helped keep me sane to, well not that I was particularly sane but it was a lifeline really. Did that moment feel liberating or terrifying? I wasn't saying that I was liberating but just incredibly powerful, I just felt that I was now in a state of chaos or a limbo and I didn't know what was true anymore. I mean, Kings was very good and what I say about Kings now refers to 1968, I'm sure it's a very different school in 2018 but it was very good at appearances and so the school looked wonderful. The campus looked beautiful, the buildings were spectacular and the site of aspirating around all day was apparently impressive and yes it was more like the heart of darkness. There was a tremendous amount of violence and bullying and I think that was very important for me to realise that rest in society was too much into illusion and appearances. You had a letter published in the school magazine in 1967, John told me about it. I wrote a letter just challenging the idea that the prefix should have so much power. It's that old adage which applies to anyone in a position of authority, are you yourself, omnibal enough to use an old fashioned word to tell other people how to behave and to punish them when they don't behave according to your criteria. So there were prefects who were obviously corrupt and were spectacularly corrupt and usually in the way in which they exercised their power which was violently. So I wrote a letter just suggesting that this wasn't a very good system which caused outrage among some and the light among others I guess. What was expected of you after finishing school? Well I think just to follow the traditional career path and so I got into Arts Law at Sydney University and didn't really think twice about doing that course. I had little interest in science or maths through my secondary schooling and I have to say that's largely due to inadequate teaching. I think that's a fair and objective comment. The science department in particular was really weak and I don't know how you can make science boring but they managed to do it. So that meant the very few paths were open to me and going to university was definitely expected. So I signed up but I was just lost at university. I think there were 23,000 students there in that era and the psychology lectures I remember in particular because there were just giant video screens all through this massive auditorium and the lecture was sort of a distant figure at the front of the hall. So you'd watched the video screens so the whole thing was incredibly impersonal. What about all that freedom and that meaning that you were wanting or hungering after as a high school student wouldn't that have been everywhere on the campus in the late 60s? It possibly was but I'd gone badly off the rails but then by January had enough of life at home and I did the traditional thing of leaving a note on the pillow and nicking off. It was meant to be a three o'clock in the morning and a friend was going to pick me up by stealing his mother's car but he didn't arrive and luckily I had a plan B which was a taxi driver who'd heard me talking about my plans one day when I was with a mate in the back of his cab and he said, "Oh, you're doing a midnight flip?" I didn't even know what that meant but sort of gave an evasive or ambiguous answer and he said, "Oh, yeah, I'll come and pick you up for a car." I can't remember now whether it's 20 bucks or 50 bucks. Any time 24/7 just ring this number. There was a sympathetic soul. Well, he was and it's a turned out. I wasn't sure what his motives were but I rang the number at about 5am and he came burning out to Paramount and I was so fast that his radio boiled and we had to wait a while till it calmed down and then took off again like a. Where were you going? Where did he take you? Well, I found a room in Kings Cross. This sounds incredibly sorted and unlikely but it's all true. I'd been checking out rooms via a state agent's just little rental bed sitters and I noticed that the window in one was open at the top to allow ventilation and it was on ground level in Kellogg Street and I thought I could come in through that window and get into this place and I just gambled that it would still be empty when I arrived with my few mega possessions. So a couple of days later that's what I did. It was the Australia Day weekend. It was a public holiday. So Monday morning we arrived at this place and luckily the window was still open. So I said to the taxi driver, "I've lost my key. I'll go in through the window and let myself in through the door." I squatted in there for a few weeks until I had enough money to pay the rent and then went back to the real estate agent and said, "I want to rent that room that you showed me a few weeks ago." And they asked for the rent in advance which I had so that was fine and then they asked for something called a bond and I said, "What's a bond?" And they said, "Well, let's watch you and they explain what it was." And I was just dumbfounded because I didn't have any more money. I guess this wouldn't happen now but the two women there looked at each other and once said to each other, "You seem like a nice boy." The other one agreed and they decided that I wouldn't have to pay a bond. So I moved in legally and. I hope you took very good care of that room. I did. I actually didn't do anything to damage it at all. I vacuumed it occasionally even. And I was there for about eight months, I think. What did you have any contact with your parents who just left a note on the pillow? Yeah, I had friends whose family's three friends in particular whose parents helped me in different ways. One gave me a lot of crockery and cutlery and cooking stuff and one let me 50 bucks and the other one helped me find a job. So, yeah, there was a big factor. And so when you were there at Sydney Uni and feeling overwhelmed by the numbers and the impersonality of it, I guess, were you seeing a kind of future for yourself when you looked around at the other students, the people who were there? What did it look like? Yeah, I didn't really think about that much. I was mainly interested in earning money to keep myself afloat. And so I had a mantra which was, "Take any job you're offered." And so at times I was working three different jobs, cleaning job on week nights, working at Sydney Hospital on weekends and just picking up casual work occasionally as well. So I wasn't giving much time or effort to study. And the time came when I'd actually, some couple of years down the track, I'd go to the second year law and I'd landed articles with a very good firm. But towards the end of the second year I was in the cafeteria at the law school in Phillips Street and the final year students were all coming in for their evening classes and they were all doing articles, so in apprenticeship effectively. And they all had these grey pinstripe suits, three-piece suits, and I just saw this army of pinstripe suited men mostly, coming through the doors of the cafe and I thought, "I can't do this, I can't join that army." And I got up and left and went back a couple of days later to clear up my locker, but that was the last time I entered the doors. So how are the doors of the law school? How were things going for you emotionally at this time, John? Oh, badly as you'd expect. I ended up in a psych hospital for about six weeks, I think. What was going on? I was desperate and I was suicidal and I thought in a very rational way I Haven't ever seen a psychiatrist and I think psychiatry sounds like a load of bunk him and I'd seen American Comities about psychiatrists which made them all sound like seem like nutcases But I thought it'd be pretty silly to kill myself without at least trying this path because obviously you must have something to offer and So I went and saw one and I Think that was the turning point really. I think what I learned in that hospital was immensely valuable and although it was a painful time It was also a time of discovery and so I'm very grateful to the staff there it was It was a positive experience when you you took that you know very courageous and smart decision to check into a hospital Could you name what you were feeling? Could you even have the language to talk about what you were experiencing? No, there was something that slowly dawned on me while I was in there that I didn't have the language of emotions I look back on that and think how weird that is but it was true that They'd get me to talk about things that had happened to me and I'd do that and then they'd say but how did you feel when that happened? And I'd just look at them Completely unable to answer and look at them quizzically and say what do you mean? How did I feel and I'd say well you must have felt something and I'd think god. I don't know what I felt And I had to develop a learn of vocabulary for feelings. I was 19 when this was going on and To be late to be learning those words But that's essentially what happened and that stood me in good stead since I think I learned a lot there about Amastean emotions How do you go about learning that language if you haven't learned it from your family or your teachers? Well, I guess because they were good at job and They kept probing and saying and they'd prompt me. They'd say you know, did you feel anger? And I think yeah, I guess I did yeah, yeah, and I remembered for example looking into a mirror when I was about nine and Using all the bad words I could think of against my parents who weren't in the room at the time of course But I was saying them out loud to the mirror that you are beep beep beep And I was a bit horrified at that age that I was doing it And I didn't know why I was doing it, but when I looked back at that at the age of 19 I could see that yeah, that's anger So there was just recalling all the aspects of those Experiences I guess was there one Therapist or one psychiatrist in particular that you made a connection with? Yeah, there was a young social worker there. They had a team to look after each patient and So there'd be the psychiatrist and the psychiatric registrar and a couple of nurses and so on under social worker and Something about this social worker meant that About her ability to listen and respond seem to work for me So I asked if I could sort of make her the person I talked to most and then when I was discharged I kept seeing her and she became a psychotherapist the psychoanalytical psychotherapist not even sure what that means even to the state But I kept seeing her intermittently for 40 years She moved to Melbourne eventually and later I moved to Victoria and resumed the connection So that became yeah an extremely long relationship obviously which meant that I was seeing her for many years it was five days a week Sometimes four days a week or three or another during other periods Dependent on which decades you're talking about Yeah, it's until she retired that was An incredibly important relationship. What was it about the way that she listened to you that was so helpful? She never gave me advice and she never talked about herself And she was completely scrupulous and honest and ethical in every respect I'd never met anyone like that, but I sort of needed that I needed someone objective because I'd been surrounded by people who were emotionally uh very caught up in their own lives and I didn't want to take on someone else's emotions again it was to Taxing so what was it like when she retired? Uh, she gave me plenty of warning and we So that meant this we could sort of prepare for it, but yeah, I was uh I was very tearful for the last couple of sessions and I still If she went back into business tomorrow, I'd be there on the doorstep. So it was life sustaining I think without that I think I probably would have ended up taking my own life to be blunt. I was I was pretty desperate so I'm very grateful to her, but Yeah, there wasn't there's no magic cure. I don't think that I'm now, you know, completely happy healthy Forfilled person not sure that anyone is, but uh it's a lot to ask for a hope for but it has given me strength to cope with crises and to deal with difficult situations and running a school you certainly need some sort of inner strength But how did teaching enter the picture? Partly for negative reasons. I think I was so angry at the schooling that I'd been subjected to I mean in 13 years I'd had two inspiring teachers and another one who was pretty good, but I wouldn't say inspiring And the rest varied from mediocre to just appalling And really for 13 years that's not much And yet people I met nowadays young people nowadays seem to have a similar strike rate So I don't think anything much has changed. So I was angry about the way I was taught I felt that it could be done better and Having dropped out of four university courses which you could do in those days in five years I'd lost all confidence So I thought I'd choose the easiest tertiary course that I could find If I failed that I dropped out of that that would prove to me that I was a completely useless student So I chose a primary teaching course at a country CIE because I figured that you can't get anything easier And I got to say from the first day I was utterly energized and excited but of course because they were quite overtly teaching us to be subversive and they were saying get out there and change the system and Don't accept the practices and traditions that you'll find but instead turn them upside down and You know change everything So John when you began your teaching degree and and found it invigorating and exciting You then moved out into actual teaching in a school. How did that compare? It was good in many ways. It was a school at Bathurst in New South Wales or St. College and They'd had a An extraordinary few years under the leadership of a guy called Peter Gebhart Who later went on to run Jolong College in Victoria And I think he was appointed principal at 28 or some extraordinary age like that But he gathered around him the most exciting group of teachers that anyone could possibly find and the place just took off as far as cultural and spiritual and artistic and aesthetic kind of issues went and Unfortunately, he just missed that because he'd left and a new person had come a very conservative person but So many of his staff remained that it was a really exciting place to work And I learned more about teaching from those colleagues in those first couple of years Then I have ever done before or since How big a part Was sport of that school culture? Oh, yeah, it was it was I was a sport master for the first year It was Not at all but I was desperate to get a job and tried to make myself I've been getting a free board in exchange for helping Supervised borders and coached sporting teams and so on well. I did my university course on my my CAE course And so I already was at the school for two years before I got a job there And I could see that unemployment in teaching was a problem So I decided to make myself indispensable so that that offered me a job and they did But the only vacancy they have was sports master and PE teacher So there I was And I mean when I said kings they ranked rugby teams by ability And rugby was compulsory but you could be in the under 16 aides b c's all the way down to h's I was reserved for the h's for my whole school career So to end up as a sports master was certainly something paradoxical but I quite enjoyed it And then gradually I got to teach more and more English and enjoyed that even more I'd have to say When did you first have the idea of starting your own school? Was it way back then? Yeah, absolutely in about my first or second year of teaching in Bathville I put an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald and we got about 18 or 20 replies from people who were interested but it wasn't enough and we didn't have any money or Location or anything there's a couple of teachers at all Saints and I who put the ad in And it was yeah, it was certainly enough to wet my interest and to make me think yeah there is a Response that's possible to generate for something like this But I didn't try again until many years later the mid 80s when I tried for waga and In a very rational way picked waga is the 17th biggest city in Australia and the highest one on the list That didn't have an independent school. So that's the only criterion that I used And again it's fizzled out we got much closer I've made the decision then that the only way to do it was to get enough money to do it yourself without having to go around Sort of with cap in hand begging for money and trying to squeeze a dollar here and a dollar there And I thought if today it becomes when I get enough money to do it myself. I'll do it But otherwise it's just a waste of time and energy. So did you start writing fiction as a way to make money? No, I don't think that was I bought lottery tickets, but that didn't work funnily enough I don't think that was connected writing with something I'd always done and loved and it was just my creative outlook. When you started though writing the book that led to being published your first novel, did you have a particular reader in mind or what were you trying to do with that book? I just wanted to write something that modern adolescence would respond to, because having studied Thomas Hardy at school and other writers like him, the society had changed, but the literature hadn't. And although a couple of American writers were just emerging who wrote for teenagers, there was an unknown field, an unknown genre. But I read those American writers, Paul Zindale and Judy Bloom, and I thought these guys are onto something. And then at about the same time, the uninstudent started asking me for books that I could recommend. And I went into the school library and combed the shelves and came out empty handed and feeling very depressed and feeling that I'd failed them. And I thought, "Bagga, this I'll write one myself." And so I did write so much to tell you and gave it to six students to read and they all responded positively. One girl, wept, she talked about the effect that it had on her. And I don't know, maybe she just wanted an A in English or something, but she seemed very sincere and I was very moved by her response. And so I kept going. What was it about the way that you were writing that you think connected with those six readers and then all the readers after? Was it different language? Was it the story? What was it that you were doing? Well, it was a certainly different language and different story. Had in mind that at age of W.H. Eldens, you should marry the highbrow with the lowbrow. So I wanted to write a story that would be accessible and engaging, but at the same time have more profound, I don't know, depths to it than in the blood and God rest her soul. And I think you said in your introduction something about treating young people as important, I totally respect their feelings and their thoughts. So if they fall in love, I'm not going to mock it or make condescending comments about puppy love or tell them, oh yes, we all get a heartbroken when we're 14. It's the love that you feel at any age is intense and incomparable. And I respect that, whether it's a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old or a 50-year-old. What did you understand teenagers to be interested in to care about from your experience with them as a teacher? Relationships in the world, they're at that age where they still have the egoism of young children in that they are concerned about their own lives and so on, but they also can take a global perspective. And so they're deeply interested in the environment and issues like that. Many of them are interested in politics, many of them are interested in history and philosophy. So we are pretty patronising in the way we treat them. Like I've been to schools where they set Royal Dile books for year seven or eight students. And I really admire Royal Dile's books, but not for studying in a year seven or eight English class. They've written for primary-aged children. And I think it's incredibly patronising to give them stuff like that. In secondary school, when I teach year seven English, I start most years that I've done it. The very first lesson is Shakespeare. We dive straight into Hamlet because I want to give them a shot and realise, okay, we're in the big world now. But also they're ready for that. They can handle that and they can take on that challenge. After your first novel so much to tell you was published, how quickly did you start hearing from readers? Oh, yeah, pretty quickly. It was kind of what you dream of as a writer that people will write to you these letters. And they were heartbreaking. Many of them, ten edges writing about their lives and the difficulties they encountered. Some of those became quite long correspondences that went on for some years, including one with the girl who died essentially of psychological problems that she was experiencing. And yeah, it was pretty heart-rending stuff. How do you know how to respond to those letters? I guess just because I'd been through therapy myself. And so I wrote back in the same kind of style, really, I just respond sympathetically without getting mushy or emotional. But I'd make it clear that I was hearing what they were saying, that I took it seriously and regarded it as important. And that, yeah, it was not to be trivialised. The tomorrow series, John, which so many readers around the world have loved, is set in an Australia that's been invaded and occupied by foreign power. And it's a small group of teenagers led by a teenage girl, Elliot, Waging War and Enemy Soldiers. What drew you to that subject? Well, I think growing up in the 1950s and 60s post-war, I'd read so much about World War II. So the naked Arlen by Russell Braden was one of my bibles when I was growing up. And reading it over and over again, the question that was always in my head was, "What would I have done? Would I have been able to cope with that? Would I have pulled the trigger in those circumstances? Would I have run away or thrown myself on the ground and sobbed?" Or, "Would I have jumped out of a tree onto a Nazi's shoulders and throttled him?" Those questions are unanswerable because they're all hypothetical for me. And I've been lucky in that way. But I think one of my motivating factors in writing a book is that I want to explore a question to which I won't ever get a complete answer. But by exploring a question, I'll get some insight. And so the question that I was in my mind when I started writing those books was, "How would today's teenage's cope if they were in that sort of situation?" Because there was a commonly hurled view that today's teenage is a soft, they're weak, they're flabby, they're all they care about is computer games. And I thought I wonder if that's the case. So I just wanted to put them into a extremely stressful situation and see what would happen next. And I had no idea when I started the book as to whether they would triumph or succumb. But I suppose I felt that some of them at least would come out of it. The ten novels, I think you wrote, featuring Ellie and her friends. Is it hard to let go of those characters once you've put your pen down for the last one? So, not just rightfully, not after ten, I tried, I've sort of wound it up after seven. I really wound it up after one. And then the next day started writing another one so that didn't work. And then I thought I'd stop at three, then it was seven. After ten years, I felt that there was nothing more that I could say about them that I'd explored their lives in every possible way. And the air didn't feel so much regret. In terms of kind of making peace with some of those inner demons, I think it helped with that. Is it one of the ways that you wrestle with emotional or psychological stuff? I don't think it does much. I mean, I know people often believe it does, but I don't think it has, for me, reading has. I read books which often stop me in my tracks and have me thinking for days. It might be just one sentence. And I'll think, wow, is that true for me? Is that true for the world? Is that true for whatever? Talking to people does, teaching does. In particular. What does it do for you then? What need does it scratch? It gives me the ability to explore because I'm so sick of lips statements and one-liners and mottos and mantras and all the things stuck on people's fridges that they claim are the truths that they live by. I just find that incredibly meaningless and forgettable. So a book gives you a chance to really get into something in depth and to really understand it in its many aspects. I think it was Andre Guide who wrote that the colour of truth is always grey. So all of my books, I think you could say, do not present life or explore life as a black and white kind of subject. They're all about ambiguities and complexities. Tell me then how you came to buy this land outside of Melbourne. I believe you had a conversation with some accountants. I did. I'm embarrassed about it really. But the book's had done well and I had ended up making a stack of money which was not something that seems to happen often enough to writers. But the accountants eventually never three of them are lawyer and two accountants and they had a meeting with me and they said, look, you've got to spend this, some of this money. It's ridiculous. And I. Trim had having meetings like that. I just. I just gazed at them blankly and said, well, what am I meant to spend it on? And they said, well, you know, I've got this friend who just flew first class to Fiji and had a fantastic three weeks and why don't you do that? And I thought, well, I'm not really interested in doing that. And they said, oh, cars, you could buy cars. And I thought, well, I don't really care much about cars. So it all fizzled out and I went away and thought about it. And I suddenly had this kind of flashback to when I was at King's and these grazeeers would come to pick up their kids. And that arrived in these uits that were covered with the brown dust of inland Australia, the brown dirt. And I loved. there was something incredibly romantic about that. And I had stayed on a few properties and loved the lifestyle and the whole landscape. And so I went back to the accountants and said, I want to buy a farm. And they looked at each other and one of them said, that's a great tax deduction. And. So obviously I'd satisfied their impulses. And so I went out looking for a farm. And as I did so, I thought, you know, if I was really smart, I'd buy a place which wasn't just a farm, but I could run writing courses, which was something I was really keen to do. So I found a place which was actually not a farm, it was native bush, 850 acres. And according to a real estate agent, the biggest privately owned native bush market. property in Victoria and so I bid for it and got it and ran writing courses for eight years. So it had never been a farm? There'd been a bloke who'd been a logger who'd lived in a little cottage there and had slowly cleared a few acres just back in the 19th century using an axe and whatever else but apart from that the rest of it's still in its virginal state. When you say 850 acres I don't really have a sense of how big that is when when did you get a sense of the size of what you'd bought? Well this is embarrassing too because I didn't have any idea and I'd never seen the boundaries and I'd only seen probably 10% of the property at most and after I've been there some weeks one of the accountants they keep popping up arrived in a four-wheel drive which you just bought and I said oh great let's go for a drive so we started driving on this track through to property and we went further and further and I thought God we must be on someone else's land this is ridiculous and we drove and drove and did this huge circle and came back to where we'd started and I still had no idea how much of it was mine and then a few months later I met a bloke who was a sort of part-time map maker and we were chatting away and when I learned that he did maps I said you're interested in if I commissioned you to map my property and he said yeah yeah so he came and mapped the property and when he gave me the map then I knew where the property was and what the boundaries were but then I've been there I don't know six months at least and I was stunned because I realised that when I drove with the accountant that day we'd been on my land the whole time and but I you know I call it my land but it's very not just something that you take care of and then hand on. So when you decided to set up a school on that land John what kind of school did you want to create? I wanted first-hand experiences for students for young people. I was getting so bored by conversations with teenagers who talked about nothing but what they'd seen on TV the night before that I thought there's something going badly, a miss here and we need to put people back in touch with first-hand experiences so to this day 13 years later that's what the school does very powerfully and very successfully I'd have to say so. What kind of experiences? Everything we have kids going to on the Larapinta trail next week we've had kids going to Womad in Adelaide later in the year we've got 45 kids going to France and Spain for six weeks we've got canoe trips, ski trips trips to the theatre to the opera to the ballet. What you're describing were all trips away from the land what what happens actually in that enormous stretch of land? They rum and they climb trees and they ride bikes and they ride skateboards and they roll down hills and they chase each other and they they play tag and they play stick wars and they and they sit under a tree and read a book or they play chess or they talk it's not all wild activity but anyone who comes to the school I think would notice the energy level of the students are terrific and we don't have a problem with childhood obesity these are kids who look healthy and fit and they are healthy and fit because that's the kind of space that we give them and we don't have to stand there supervising and say right everybody it's time for tag or it's time for stick wars or time for basketball we just sit back and they just make it all up themselves. Is the fact that those kids are in a natural setting that they're around trees and animals is that a big part of what you want it? It's a bonus it's lucky but it's not everything and I don't think it's necessary at all so you can have a terrific school in an inner city setting or in a suburban setting you could have a school in a barn or in a in an attic except you wouldn't be allowed now about a government because of all the strict regulations but if I had an inner city school then I'd be using all the parkland that I could get to I'd be using excursions up to the country we do two little things which are incredibly helpful one is that when parents enroll their children they sign a generic form saying that we can take their kids anywhere anytime without any further permission so that we don't have to get all those tedious permission slips for everything we do and we also have our own fleet of buses we have 11 buses for 350 kids and most of the teachers have licenses so we can just say to a group okay hop in the bus we're going to the gallery and they don't need any further preparation than that we just tell them to go to the toilet before they get on the bus is it a structured timetable or what's a day like for kids on the face of it's very structured and very normal looking so you might have double science followed by English followed by PE followed by art but that timetable is varied frequently so teachers know when they start works at the school that they have to be prepared to be flexible that they might lose their class for two weeks running but they might then be able to take their class on an excursion or a camp which goes for three days the next week so it all ends up balancing out pretty well I think I think the flexibility helps the kids too because they don't go crazy when there's an outing and the teachers constantly say to me it's such a pleasure to take them anywhere because it's like just traveling with you know a group of your friends they don't go mad because they're so used to it they just recognize that that's their routine what kind of teachers are you looking for when you employ someone at candlebark people who have lived adventurous lives which can be physically adventurous they might have canoeed across best straight or hitchhiked across Russia or can be creatively adventurous they might have published their own book of poems or they might have composed music for the Australian ballet it's just people who have lived life in an adventurous and creative way and have shown that they are not dull or humdrum or banal in their approach to life as principle john what's your approach to discipline conversations which can be very one-sided as in don't ever do that again forwards it forwards no it's a bit more but they can go on for months and they can be prolonged and they can be pretty far ranging so it depends on the situation and the student and we don't really have I do suspend kids occasionally I have expelled kids in the past I don't know whether I do it again I suppose I would have the circumstances arose but it's pretty rare a kid might be kept in occasionally to do some homework or to finish a piece of work from class but there's no formal disciplinary process and it's not a major element in the school's life it's really just certain kids need a lot of attention from staff and that usually consists of talking to them about their behavior and how they can improve it and why they should improve it I guess that has as a assumption that kids want to get on with adults as well as their friends is that the kind of underlying is that the starting point that you've got yeah I mean no one sets out to be the naughtiest kid or the worst kid or to be destructive or damaging I don't think it's anyone's ambition in life if they come from a difficult background then we can't fix every problem in their life but we can gradually bring them to an awareness that school is a place which is different to the other experiences they've had in life and that they will be treated with great courtesy and that they will be treated with regard and their feelings will be listened to and respected even though at the same time we might be saying to them that their behavior has to be changed we can't allow them to damage other people or property in the way that they might have been doing you now also have a high school connected with candlebuck what do you want kids to have when they finish their time at school what do they need to be graduating with I want them to have access to whatever path they're interested in following if they want to build a little cabin in the woods and live there or if they want to go off to a third world country and help people or if they want to do medicine at a prominent university then whichever of those paths or any one of a million other paths they want to follow I want them to be able to follow that and that takes not just the qualifications and the academic experience it also takes a certain inner strength which we try to develop I'm interested in a genuine confidence which is not spectacular or flamboyant it's a strength which enables people to cope with everything that life throws at them the Koreans have a saying life is 10,000 joys 10,000 sorrows and I think it's important having said before I don't like lip statements nevertheless I think that's worth keeping in mind because we try to pretend that we can somehow help our children navigate through life where they don't ever experience sorrow and that's ridiculous they will experience many sorrows and many griefs what we can do is give them the strength to cope with those griefs when they happen rather than try to shield them from them how did you meet your wife John well I call it a parent teacher interview that went horribly wrong horribly right well yeah it's been fantastic actually when I started teaching I remember thinking as I did parent-teacher interviews if today if it comes when I look at one of the mothers and think wow you're really hot then I'll know I've been getting old and that certainly happened so yeah Yeah, we've been together 10 years and it's been wonderful, it's been a massive change in my life, but for the better. And we have not just a marriage but a strong friendship and I think one without the other is probably difficult to make work. She had kids when you guys met. Six of them. Six sons. Yeah, yeah. So it's been a massive change in my life too. I've gone from knowing kids as students, from writing about kids as teenagers. What was the biggest shock actually becoming dad to six sons? I don't think there have been many shocks. It's been pretty good from my point of view. I hope they'd say the same. It's been pretty fantastic. We've laughed a lot, they're very funny and they're quick-witted and they're very physical, which I'm not particularly, but I've started playing backyard cricket and all that stuff. When Chris, my wife told them that we were getting married, only two of them burst into tears. So I thought that's not bad out of six. I'll settle for that. And in the years that have passed, they seem to have adjusted pretty well to the situation. Yeah, I think having all boys is perhaps easier than having a mixture. The noise level in your place must have changed a lot when I moved in. Oh, that's certainly over the top. To the point where a couple of times lately I've pulled over in the road to have a nap on the way home because I know there's no hope of having one when I get home. John, I think whether the kids are your kids or your students, they're very, very lucky to have you. Thank you so much for being my guest on conversations. Thanks, Sarah. I spoke with John Mazden in 2018 and he died in 2024 at the age of 74. Candle Bark, the primary school that John founded and Alice Miller, the high school, are both in Victoria. This episode of Conversations was produced by Nicola Harrison and the executive producer was Pam O'Brien. I'm Sarah Kanozki. Thanks for listening. ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.