Justin Heazlewood

And that honestly felt like the universe just communicating with me somehow, saying, take strength, Justin, it's going to be OK, mate.

These are the same sorts of conversations I'd have as a kid.

I was like, does the universe care what is happening to me?

Does anyone care?

Like, is anyone paying any attention to me and to this?

It's got to be some sort of force watching over my life.

You know, it just has to be.

Well, I was hanging out with Lyndall Thorne of the Bernie Arts Council.

She was trying to manifest this project.

honouring some of the artistic alumni of Burnie, of which they had this long list of 100.

And I was just in Burnie trying to work out how the heck to make myself useful as an artist, sort of cooking up this ambitious project of, well, I could interview 20 of the artistic alumni and could really get into what they think of Burnie.

And so it sort of grew from there.

And I was sort of trying to tap into some of the beautiful bits of Bernie and the nostalgia and the quirky things.

And I thought, what if we made this incredibly awesome, colourful book, which is just all about Bernie, not even about the Northwest Coast or about Tasmania, just Bernie.

Just go full Bernie, the most Bernie book of all time.

Just double down, triple down on how niche it is and just be unapologetically niche.

It occurred to me in that moment that that was absolutely the right direction to go down.

Just celebrate your village.

I'm on some sort of mission to feel... It's like a...

I need to plant my flag in Burnie.