Writers are always collecting. Ideas for stories, poems and books can come from anywhere. Things writers see or touch or read can return – sometimes unexpectedly – in the future to inspire them.
State Library is filled with treasures and curios. In this new series, we invite authors to find an item in our collections that inspires them to write a new, original creative piece of work.
Brisbane-based author Steve MinOn has just published his first novel, the inventive and thrilling First Name Second Name (UQP).
Echoing that story about (a rather strange) pilgrimage to North Queensland, Steve found his way to the John Oxley Library on level 4. There he found a little green spiral-bound pamphlet that opened up a vision of 2 characters meeting on a rainy evening at a pub in Innisfail. More about Steve's inspiration, and his clever and surprising short story, "The Golden Gumboot", below.
Steve's first novel is First Name Second Name, winner of the 2023 Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer. Image: UQP/supplied.
The inspiration
"I grew up in Far North Queensland as part of a mixed-race clan. My mother was a Scottish immigrant, but my father was of Chinese Australian heritage. His family had lived in Innisfail for generations. He eventually moved away with my mother, but his brother, my Uncle Robert, stayed and worked in the Innisfail Post Office.
When I was looking through the collection of the John Oxley Library, going down the rabbit hole of my family’s history, I found the Innisfail edition of The Australian Post Office History. It is a modest, spiral-bound document written on a typewriter – full of details about the post office my uncle worked in. I was hoping to find information about one of the jobs my uncle was tasked with: the collection of rain and weather data for the Bureau of Meteorology. There was a story that my uncle used to tell, about something he once did on the job. But it was a private story and so there was no official record of it. Still, I thought it would be worth telling it, in a roundabout way for Finders Keepers, to add to the official record, but with a very strong caveat of course, that this story is only fiction." – Steve MinOn
It is a modest, spiral-bound document written on a typewriter – full of details about the post office my uncle worked in ... There was a story that my uncle used to tell, about something he once did on the job.
We love the verdant green of this booklet (and wonder who designed that cover and who typed it up). Booklet courtesy John Oxley Library (Innisfail / Rea, Malcolm M.; Australia. Postmaster-General's Department. Brisbane : Australian Post Office, Public Relations Section; 1969)
The Golden Gumboot
by Steve MinOn
It’s pelting outside. One hundred per cent humidity. I slide two coasters under my glass to soak up the condensation that’s running onto the polished timber bar of the Innisfail Queens Hotel. Every surface is varnished by humidity, including the XXXX posters, the fishing trophies and the wall of ringing, dinging poker machines.
“How long has it been raining like this?” I ask Old Mate, whose copper brown forearms are like dock bumpers either side of his almost floating pint.
“I dunno. I’ve only lived here eighty-two years,” he cracks, from the corner of his mouth.
I’m not sure it’s him yet so I probe a little more. “You’ve been here that long, eh?”
“Even longer.”
Laughing as naively as I can, I smile like a tourist, glance around the bar as if this is all new to me. He takes the bait.
“Travelling?”
I tap my finger on my glass, craving a cigarette to ash.
“Just visiting.”
“Who? Friends? Relatives?”
“My father’s grave.”
This gives him pause. He looks across the bar at the frosted fridges before turning to eyeball me. “Was he a local? From Innisfail?”
“No,” I say, thinking of my father, the creases ironed into his short-sleeved shirts even on weekends. “He was from Tully.”
Old Mate, his white Bonds singlet the colour of wet teabag paper, finds this amusing. “Why bury him in Innisfail, then? We’re not that far from Tully, you know.”
“I know,” I say, “but Dad had this crazy idea that he didn’t want his corpse fouling up the groundwater in Tully.”
I let that sink in before I ask, “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a retired postie,” he says.
“You don’t look like a postie.” I surprise myself with my gall, but he is not what I expected. Short, pudding-like, not built for an upright career.
“I did it for over forty years.” He says it as if people should know.
“I bet it rained the whole time.” I expect he thinks I’m riffing off his earlier joke, which I am, but also, I’m not. I smile, but he doesn’t taste the vinegar.
He says, “It was my job to check the rain gauge.” An aside, but maybe he’s getting defensive.
It occurs to me that I’ve been quite brilliant in moving him onto the subject. I feel a rising sensation in my chest akin to pride but I’m not satisfied.
I steer it back. “It rains a lot in Tully too.”
“Not as much as Innisfail,” he volleys.
And now I know it’s him.
As I sip my drink and ease my thigh off my vinyl stool, the skin that’s not covered by my shorts makes a sound like a seal being broken. Turning his way, I tease for more.
“Oh really? I thought rain was Tully’s claim to fame.”
He takes a great, emphatic slug of his beer. “Not for any of the years I was working at the Post Office in Innisfail.” Then he blinks an eyelid. It’s a minuscule movement but an absolute provocation. You wouldn’t notice it unless you’ve been bred to watch for it.
“You know what’s funny?” I prod. “My father was a postie too.”
Gears are grinding behind his eyes. I get up off my stool and head to the urinal.
As I stand watching my Tully-bred urine being flushed away, I think about the water in those Innisfail taps pouring town water in on top of other water. Town water mixing with natural water. Town water diluting pure rainwater. And all I can think of is Old Mate in his day, juicing the rain gauge at the back of the Innisfail Post Office, scamming my dad out of the one thing he wanted. The Golden Gumboot Award for the highest rainfall in Australia. That’s an award that was rightfully Tully’s. An award that was rightfully my father’s.
Thank you, Steve, for coming onsite to search for inspiration. Everyone is welcome in the John Oxley Library – a favourite spot for writers and researchers of all ages.
Steve MinOn was an internationally awarded advertising copywriter and a restaurateur before becoming a writer of fiction. He grew up in North Queensland and he now lives in Meanjin/Brisbane. Steve’s debut novel First Name Second Name (UQP 2025) won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards. He has written often about outsiders and his family’s mixed-race ancestral history, and his articles and short stories have been published in SBS Voices, Mamamia and various newspapers and anthologies.
Comments
Your email address will not be published.
We welcome relevant, respectful comments.