AUTHORS and readers mingled in the sunlight at Clunes at the weekend as the Booktown Festival attracted thousands of people to what is one of the best literary festivals in Australia.
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Artistic director Tess Brady said it was another successful festival.
“Isn’t this fantastic? We couldn’t ask for anything better ... all these happy people are wearing (Booktown) badges,” she said.
“It’s something where the whole village gives itself over and you wander around and you just don’t know what you’re going to bump into next.”
Dr Brady estimated the number of visitors at a minimum of 18,000 over the weekend.
The book foragers and families mingled on Sunday – with Saturday apparently the day for collectors – and there were author talks and entertainment running constantly.
Newly crowned Stella Prize winner Emily Bitto picked up an old and thoroughly outdated “matrimonial guide for women” before her talk.
“It’s so hilarious ... ‘Too often ill-cooked dinners have put asunder that what God hath joined together’,” she said, reading from her new book.
Bitto won the $50,000 Stella Prize for her debut novel The Strays less than two weeks ago.
“(The festival) seems lovely; I wouldn’t mind living here really,” she said.
There were also authors selling their wares away from the hustle and bustle of the big city.
Castlemaine writer Val Case said her book The Undertaker’s Wife had gone from being a patron to a seller at Booktown.
“I’ve only come as a visitor before, so it’s pretty different (being in the small publishers section),” she said.
She said the hard work in writing her historical novel, set in Beaufort, was worth it.
“There were a couple of years of writing there, but I’m so pleased with it.”
In addition to the literary program, the festival hosted a landmark photography exhibition.
In the works since 2012, In the Spirit of George Rose saw two photographers capture Clunes and its sister city in Korea, Paju.
Dr Brady said she was tremendously pleased with the photography exhibition.
“It is just absolutely extraordinary,” she said.
“It was a new way of looking (at ourselves). The other thing that comes through is the enormous sense of humanity in those photos.”
alex.hamer@fairfaxmedia.com.au
