Speaker 1
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.
Speaker 2
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and I guess today is Hayley Morton, author of books for children and adults, educator, librarian and yoga teacher. Welcome to the program, Hayley.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Kate.
Speaker 2
Would you begin by telling us where you grew up and when you first started writing?
Speaker 3
Well, I was born in Whyalla, South Australia, and when I was five, my parents moved to Port Augusta, so I grew up basically in Port Augusta. I started writing from a very early age. I came across my old report cards from school that my mum had saved, and it was either reception or year one, might have been year one, where it said, you know, Hayley's writing quite long stories for her age. So yeah, I used to write lots of little stories and draw pictures with them all through primary school and did a little bit of writing in high school and then stopped.
Speaker 2
You have a website, HayleyMorton.com, with details of your books and where to find them, which we'll talk about during the program. You also write on your website about the lack of self -confidence that led you to shy away from doing any writing for a time. However, years later, a manager you were working with set you a writing challenge. What was that challenge and what did you produce as a result?
Speaker 3
So the manager was at SA Water. I was the librarian for SA Water and my manager was tasked with setting up a school education program back in about 2008 and she randomly got this idea one day and she told me later she didn't know why really she asked me but she said, you're a librarian, write me a book. I want a kids book for our school program that we can give away and you know wasn't going to cost the earth to buy copies. So the result was Captain Plop's water saving mission.
Speaker 2
Tell us about Captain Plop, because you've got three books in the series and print coppers of those are available from SA Water and public libraries. So how did you go about doing your research for each of these books and what's the focus of each of them?
Speaker 3
Okay, so the first one, it was a very broad scope. She had no idea, my manager had no idea what to focus on. She just said, I want a book. So at the time we were going through a drought in South Australia and we were producing lots of material for the public talking about how to conserve water. So I thought that would be a good topic. I didn't need to do a huge amount of research around that because I was living and breathing it pretty much every day. But what I did need to research was were there any other books like that already in existence and have a look at how children's books were written and constructed because I'd always wanted to write a book but I thought it would be a novel. I didn't know much about children's books at that point.
Speaker 2
And some of what's written in Captain Plop is in rhyme. Yes. Some of it's conveying the more serious information about water usage. And you cover topics including desalination and just what happens to the water that we send away as wastewater. But you include some rhyme.
Speaker 3
Yes, so the spoken words of the main character, Captain Plop, are in rhyme. He speaks in rhyme and the rest of it is in normal prose. And yeah, the second book was about desalination. The year after the first one was published we were in the process of building the desalination plant and a lot of teachers were coming to us, primary school teachers, saying they couldn't find anything that explained that process in easy-to-understand terms.
Speaker 3
And I thought, oh my god. So I actually engaged the services of one of our desalination engineers to go over what my ideas were and then read through the different drafts and help me convey that process in a way that kids could understand it.
Speaker 2
And the third book in the series, what was the focus of that?
Speaker 3
That's the Tour de Recycle. So it's got a French theme, a cycling race theme, which we've just seen recently, and it's about how we manage our wastewater, you know, the process of treating wastewater.
Speaker 2
What happens after you flush the toilet basically?
Speaker 3
Yeah.
04:45
Speaker 2
Does Captain Plop experience the adventure of recycling?
Speaker 3
He does this. In all of the books he experiences the treatment process or the process of going through pipes because he's actually made of water. Very small little character that has a superpower some might say where he can shrink children down to his size so he takes two children through the journey with him.
Speaker 2
Sounds wonderful. And as we said, those books are still available from SA Water and from public libraries.
Speaker 3
I believe so, the SA Water, they had quite a back stock of them. So I think if you just call, you should be able to get hold of them. And some public libraries still have copies, yeah.
Speaker 2
It's a wonderful way to convey aspects of science to children as well as the technology that's around our water usage.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that was the backbone to the school program. It was called Brainwave and it was all about explaining those scientific concepts of water treatment to children.
Speaker 2
Brilliant and I suspect it would be useful to many adults as well. Those of us who have an idea of how it works, but we don't really know.
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. Well, you need to kind of have the mind of a child when you're reading it, but it does explain the science in a non-scientific way. Brilliant. And I just, yeah, when the presenter was speaking about emotions and the links between our thoughts and feelings, ideas just popped into my head like little rhymes and I started to note them down. And by the end of the three days, I had the first draft basically.
So the second one, I've actually written three. I've got two in draft phase, but I left it for a long time, busy with life and then decided to write other things in between. The second one on anxiety specifically, it's in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment because the illustrators, the original illustrator was to be working on this one as well, of course, but I had a second illustrator who was going to work in tandem, but I'm not sure if we're actually gonna get to do that because they're both rather busy as well. So whether I look for someone else or just park that, we'll see.
Speaker 2
And you mentioned that the ideas came to you in rhyme form. So like the Captain Plop series where his voice is in rhyme, you've produced these other books for children in rhyme. So was that a case of wanting to think in rhyme or did the rhyme come to you?
And then you realised, oh, I'm thinking in rhyme, I'm going to write this in rhyme.
Speaker 3
Yeah, mostly it just comes to me. Yeah, for kids at least I enjoy doing things in rhyme. Yeah.
Speaker 2
And you have another children's book my perfect pet and part profits from the sale of this book are donated to pause and clause adoptions. Would you tell us about the book and then also about pause and clause adoptions?
Speaker 3
So there's a bit of a story to this one. It's also in rhyme and I originally got the idea from the Libra sanitary products, women's sanitary products. I don't know if they still do it but they used to print these odd spots so they were just like random facts on the backing of their products and I happened to notice that some of them were about animals and just strange and interesting facts about animals and I thought oh they could be interesting one day I'll just keep those and put them aside.
And then I started to work through that and put it into rhyme and came up with the idea of a story about a cat and a child who had a cat but wanted something that was more interesting and different and you know grass is always greener on the other side and then I got quite a few drafts out of that and then left it again you know life took over and then I met my husband who at the time was living in Spain and he loved cats, he still loves them but he was allergic to cats. He was allergic to a number of things in Spain right from a child so he could never have one.
His grandmother had cats outside like kind of alley cats that hung around the house so he would go and play with them outside and deal with the consequences later but he couldn't have one at home and then the year that we met about six months beforehand he went to England to do a farm stay working on a farm and they had a ginger cat named George and he was okay with the cat he didn't have any allergic reaction and he decided he wanted a ginger cat named George one day so then we moved to Australia and all of his allergies disappeared.
So then I think it was December, January, New Year's Eve 2020 he was just scrolling through Facebook and pause and clause adoptions which is a local agency that rescues street cats and dogs and then adopts them out and yeah they'd advertised a ginger cat named George so we got him and so I've actually created the perfect pet and took that original story I had and used images of our cat George in a cartoonised fashion and turned it into this book.
10:41
Speaker 2
Fantastic. What an extraordinary coincidence. I know. And you and your husband have recently translated the book.
Speaker 3
Yes, into Spanish. So the first of my books to make its way into Spanish. So that will be out, it kind of is out now. There's just a few technical bits and pieces I need to tidy up but yes, it's called Mi Mascota Perfecta.
Speaker 2
Which is “my perfect pet”. As the title says, on Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is Hayley Morton, author of books for children and adults, educator, librarian and yoga teacher. Hailey, you've written a novel for adults titled Peace of the Puzzle - and for our listeners, Peace is spelled P-E-A-C-E - and there's a sequel, Missing Peace, which is underway. Without giving away any spoilers, what is the story of Peace of the Puzzle about?
Speaker 3
Okay, it's a reimagining of Tennyson's poem, The Lady of Shalott. When I was at university, I fell in love with that poem because one of the lecturers played a musical version of it that Lorena McKenna had composed and it was just divine. I loved it. So I used that idea of a woman who is, feels trapped in her life and feels like she's cursed in some way and she can't kind of, she can see the world happening around her but she can't participate in it fully and then falling in love with someone and it being the end of her basically and turn that into a setting in modern day Australia.
Speaker 2
Would you read us an extract from Peace of the Puzzle?
Speaker 3 (reads)
As Elena dusted the frames on their bedroom wall, she studied the petrified butterflies beneath the glass. The kaleidoscope of bright fragile wings seemed poised to take flight, but there would be no more flying for these lifeless shells, doomed to be pegged forevermore in their square glass prison. Michael's butterfly obsession had taken over their house. Reminders of that to which his heart belonged were everywhere, framed pictures and preserved specimens on every wall, colourful adhesive motifs on windows, figurines on the dressing table, coffee mugs, tea towels, calendars displaying a different fluttering beauty every month.
She wasn't blameless though, having bought several of them as birthday gifts because he was so difficult to buy for. The only other gift she could think of was wine, and that seemed so impersonal. She'd started something that had no end, and she shuddered as she envisioned their twilight years, every inch of their home cluttered with butterfly paraphernalia.
Speaker 2
Thank you. For listeners who'd like to find out what happens next, details of how to order the book are on Hailey's website, HaileyMorton .com. Hailey, you have a blog on your website in which you tell of some significant events in your life. You're writing a novel at the moment, Camino Into The Heart, about these events. Would you tell us first about the Camino, what it is, what it has meant to you and who you met along the way.
Speaker 3
Okay, so the Camino refers to the Camino de Santiago, which is a pilgrimage across the top of Spain, across the northern part of Spain. So it was originally a Catholic pilgrimage and people came from all parts of Europe and made their way through the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela, a city where they were building a cathedral. Rich people would sometimes pay others to walk it for them because it was quite a treacherous journey back then and they thought that it would save their soul if somebody else did it for them. And these days it's a combination of people who are still very religious, do it for religious purposes.
Some people do it for more spiritual but not religious purposes and others because they love to hike and there's lots of mountains in the Camino. So I decided I was going to walk the Camino after I read Shirley MacLean's book El Camino. And then I saw a movie The Way with Martin Sheen and I got really excited about it and I thought yes, this is my next overseas adventure and it was before I had met my husband. So I started learning Spanish and then I downloaded an app to practice speaking with native speakers so it matches you up with people around the world that speak the language that you're learning.
And my husband, Joaquin, happened to download it at roughly the same time and he was learning English so we started talking and then he about a week after we started to speak he asked me if he could walk the Camino with me and I said No, definitely not.
I'm doing this on my own. It's a spiritual experience. And then the next day I changed my mind and said well maybe, maybe you could come along and in the end we did it together. So it's just under 800 kilometres and it took us 31 days. We carried our backpacks for all but three days of that and yeah it was a really, really good experience. It was us getting to know each other so it was more a Camino of love in the end than a spiritual experience and by the end of it we agreed that we were going to get married.
So the book is our experience of walking the Camino and interspersed with how we met and how it all kind of evolved and then a bit of what came afterwards.
Speaker 2
So the Camino ends at Santiago de Compostela. Where did you start?
Speaker 3
We started in Saint Jean-Pied in France, so just over the border, French border. So we walked the first day, you walk across the Pyrenees. Wow.
Speaker 2
So what kind of places do you stay in on the Camino and how do you get food and water? What are those experiences like?
16:59
Speaker 3
Well I imagine these days it's a whole lot easier than it used to be. Now you stay in albergues which are like hostels, group hostels. Some of them are run by local government, local council and some are private. You can also stay in you know hotels which we did a couple of times because we were just over the you know sleeping in rooms of 10, 20, 30 people and not getting much sleep. So in terms of getting food and water we carried water with us but you know there's lots of tiny little towns all through the Camino so every I guess every 10 kilometres or so, give or take.
There'd be a place where you could fill up your water bottle at a fountain and yeah stop. Sometimes you could stop for food. These sleepy little towns if you ended up there in the afternoon it's like the place was dead for siesta so you just went hungry until later on. But yeah.
Speaker 2
I'm interested in this. I haven't walked the Camino. What sort of food can you find along the way? What are the meals like?
Speaker 3
That's actually one of the themes in my book. I have a friend here in Adelaide who is part of the Friends of the Camino and he's walked multiple, I think more than nine now, Caminos, and he warned me that the food in the Camino was not up to the standard of Spanish food in general. Spain's well known for its food, but along the Camino it's, yeah, because it's so touristy now as well. And I had the added problem of at the time I was vegetarian and vegetarianism is not all that big in Spain.
It's starting to get more of a following now, but I found it really difficult to find food and even Joaquin, he was not impressed with the quality of the food overall. Except for in the big cities then you've got lots of choices.
Speaker 2
The sights and what you could smell and feel along the way would have more than compensated for perhaps not eating quite the food you would have liked.
Speaker 3
Yes, yeah, it was overall it was an amazing experience and by the time we finished You know you're kind of anxious to get to the end because you're so tired after walking for so long But then when you reach the end you just want to keep going It's like it's become a way of life and it's just the pace is a lot slower than normal daily life And you've got time to smell the the hollyhocks and there weren't too many roses I saw but there were lots of hollyhocks and poppies and yeah fields of gold.
Some days we'd walk along and you know play a little bit of music And so I was playing things like stings field of fields of gold as we walked and so there were times where you were with Lots of people big groups of people walking and or riding and other times it was just the two of us on our own
Speaker 2
What sort of time of day would you set off?
Speaker 3
Early - we tried to leave before sunrise just because we also walked it in summer so during the middle of the day it could get quite hot and we wanted to get as much walking in early as we could so anywhere from 5 .30 to 6 .30 in the morning.
Speaker 2
So you take a break in the middle of the day in the hottest part of the day?
Speaker 3
Yeah, we'd stop, well, depended on the day and where we were headed, we'd stop for lunch sometimes and then in the latter part of the Camino we decided just to keep walking and arrive early afternoon and have a late lunch at the arrival town. Yeah, we would just take little mini breaks as we needed to in the little towns and have a coffee or a tea as the case was. And yeah, it was something we'd love to do again but we'd like to do it on bicycles this time. So we’ll see.
20:43
Speaker 2
Oh, so there are people who do the Camino by bicycle?
Speaker 3
Yes, there are. Cycling, of course, is very popular in Spain with the Tour de France having started in the Basque region this year. So you would have walked from France, you crossed the Pyrenees, which in itself is a grand feat.
Speaker 2
I mean, if that's all you did, that would be something to write and talk about. But then the Camino takes you through the Basque region.
Speaker 3
Parts of Galicia. You go through some of the bigger towns, Pamplona, Leon, what else is there? Burgos. So we stopped in some of those places. La Grande was another one. We had a couple of days in La Grande just to have a bit of a rest. Yeah.
Speaker 2
So at the end of the Camino you spent 31 days with Joaquin getting to know one another and you decide to get married. So did you get married in Spain and what was it like?
Speaker 3
We did get married in Spain. I went home and then packed everything up and took a year's leave. I moved back to Spain in 2017. And in August of that year we got married in a little seaside town called Agalas in the region of Murcia. My parents came over for it and a few of my aunties and some of my brothers and sisters. I have a very big family and not all of them were able to come. But even some friends actually from Australia came and a few who are living in Europe made their way over too. So yeah, it was really good to have family and friends on my side as well as theirs.
Speaker 2
Are there any differences between Spanish weddings and what we’re used to here in Adelaide?
Speaker 3
Ahh, some, yes. Food again. Food is a very Spanish theme. There's lots of it. Like it was just way too much. You couldn't possibly eat at all. And yeah, there's a few little kind of ceremonial things which are a bit different. I might keep those for the book that people find out when they read the book.
Speaker 2
For sure, for sure. Heli, you and I met recently through a shared connection with the Spanish language, which we both speak. You've lived in Spain as we heard before. Your husband Joaquín is Spanish and you were married in Spain. What drew you initially to study the language and how has your knowledge of Spanish influenced the way you see the world?
Speaker 3
Well, after I had travelled a lot in India and did some volunteer work there, I was looking for my next challenge and I came across an organisation in Bolivia that was asking for volunteer librarians. So I decided, now this was back in 2013, decided that that was going to be my next trip and I needed to learn a bit of Spanish at least so you know if I'm going to travel around Bolivia on my own. So I started to learn, did a couple of short courses.
I also happened to be dating at the time an Italian and it did cross my mind more than once why I was learning Spanish and not Italian because his parents didn't speak a lot of English and I just kind of brushed it aside as it turns out you know that wasn't meant to be anyway and I ended up with a Spaniard. So yeah, I spent a few years learning the language. I thought I had enough of a grasp on it by the time I went to do the Camino de Santiago that you know I could fumble my way through but as it turned out I didn't because when you go over to a country and hear the natives speak and the speed at which you know we tend to speak in our native languages and all of the different local dialects and different accents so I understood very little and I realised just how little I could speak.
And so it took probably most of the 18 months that I was living in Spain to really get a grasp of the language. It's opened up the world obviously for me, learning another language. You know I was able to go and live in Spain. I've met a lot of people through the language so people both here in Australia who are Spanish speakers and people overseas and now it's starting to creep into my work. I'm a very first Spanish translated bookie and I must have got a perfecter and hopefully I'll be able to do more.
25:11
Speaker 2
Fantastic. And to be fair, walking the Camino, you're going through the northern part of Spain. So you're going through the Basque country where people speak Euskera, which is not Spanish. And then you're cutting through Cantabria Astorias, where they had their own language and certainly have a very strong dialect. Galicia, which has Gallego, their own language, which is related very much to Portuguese. So you were in parts of Spain where Spanish is one of the languages, but it's among other languages.
Speaker 3
Well, I don't know any of those other languages or dialects. Only Spanish. And then I spent most of my time in the south of Spain, which is where my husband is from. So, yeah. But yes, definitely even in Spain there's more than one language.
Speaker 2
Hayley, thank you so much. It's lovely to speak with you. So let's continue with part two of our conversation in next week's program. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was Hayley Morton, author of books for children and adults, educator, librarian, and yoga teacher. And Hailey's website is HayleyMorton.com for more information. This program can be heard at the same time each week on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio Digital, online at VARadio.org and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes.
Speaker 1
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26:55
Speaker 2
Vision Australia Radio. Blindness. Low vision. Opportunity.
