Anne Brisden

Pretty simple reason.

When I decided that I would have a go at writing a book, I thought best write about something I know about to eliminate.

And I grew up in the Mallee.

So what's so special about the Mallee?

Describe it for us.

The Mallee...

is described where I grew up probably not all melleys because some is not as arid as where I grew but where I grew up the melley was actually classified as semi-desert and you can imagine the landscape that it is it's the small

Trees that are probably only a couple of metres high.

There is no permanent water supply at all.

There's creeks that might run intermittently.

But other than that, you're relying on rainfall, which is very limited.

So the average rainfall might be 10 inches.

A good year would be 16 inches of rain.

Yes.

Yes.

Both place and displacement.

So the idea of I'm really fascinated by the impact of environment on people, whether they're consciously aware of it or not.

So I was really interested in people who live in the Mallee and you'll have, if you're going to really dichotomise it, and there's obviously people in the middle, but on one extreme you'll have people who absolutely love it.

Like you say, they're incredibly proud of it.

I had a friend who used to refer to it as God's own country and why would you live anywhere else?