Christobel Mattingley, 1931-2019: Birthday Letters, a Personal Tribute

Christobel Mattingley died at the beginning of June, in the week I turned forty. In Adelaide, South Australia, in June, there are wattle blossoms and driving rain. In Norway, there are long, bright evenings, sunsets that last for hours, and fluttering, brand-new birch leaves. Christobel lived in Adelaide, and I had moved to Norway, but every year, for many years, she sent me a birthday e-mail. She would tell me about her garden, about the wattle (little, fluffy, bright-yellow balls with a distinctive smell, that flower in winter) and the koala who visited her gum trees, and she would tell me about what she had been writing and publishing. She said it was perfect to have a birthday in Norway, in June.

Early summer in Norway is a lovely time to celebrate—so different from winter birthdays in Mt Gambier. It's sunny here today in Stonyfell. The local koala is high in his favourite gum tree by our garage, in view from my study as I write, the last of the leaves on the Manchurian pear hang gold and bright, and the Flinders Ranges wattle is still in fluffy flower, and has been for almost 6 weeks. Quite unusual.

(Personal e-mail, June 7, 2013)

As the Australian poet Les Murray writes, "[T]hings don't recur precisely, on the sacred earth, they rhyme" (281). Christobel was attuned to the rhymes, rhythms, and variations of the natural world, and how our own lives entwine with them. My birthday fell a week before her beloved husband David's birthday, which was very close to my grandfather's birthday. So whenever I had a birthday, I thought of them. Christobel told me that she and David remembered the strawberries in Norway as the best they had ever tasted. One year, she wrote: "We always remember the carpets of forget-me-nots in the summer meadows in Norway and we hope they are blue and beautiful for you today" (Personal e-mail, June 7, 2013).

Christobel Mattingley was a prolific and much-loved Australian children's author. Her publisher's website declares: "She writes as she lives, with compassion, sincerity and a firm commitment to social justice" ("Christobel Mattingley"). She is the author of over fifty books, forty-seven of them for children. In 1990 she received the Advance Australia Award for Service to Literature, and in 1996 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to literature and social justice. With David, she had three children, and worked as a librarian before turning to writing full time in the 1970s. She wrote picturebooks, middle-grade fiction, history, poetry, and biographies. As Better Reading puts it:

Christobel was a contemporary of Colin Thiele, Ruth Park and other giants of Australian children's publishing and her books dealt with many significant issues including conservation, Aboriginal social justice and the plight of refugees—well before such themes became widely explored in children's literature, and during times when they were actively considered to be unsuitable or not of interest to a child audience.

("Christobel Mattingley, Iconic Australian Children's Author")

Her book Rummage won the inaugural Children's Book Council Junior Book of the Year award in 1982. No Gun for Asmir (1993), which was nominated for several awards, told the story of a Bosnian refugee family, and was followed up by two further instalments: Asmir in Vienna (1995) and Escape from Sarajevo (1996). In a speech she gave when accepting an honorary doctorate from the University of Tasmania in 2015, Christobel reflected: "[L]ooking back, I can see now what my themes have always been—nature, war and courage" ("Acceptance Speech"). Her picturebook The Miracle Tree (1985) tells of the effect of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, and The Angel with a Mouth-Organ (1984) tells of refugee experiences during World War II. Her novel New Patches for Old (1977) is remembered by many as a childhood favorite—a vivid, poignant, and convincing tale of growing up in Australia. The Battle of the Galah...