Still Inspiring: March - Julie Meadows

In 1996, I was teaching English to adult migrants at a TAFE college. It was a huge class, too many people were enrolled and I was feeling guilty that they weren't getting enough writing done. So one day I said:

'Go home and write your life story. Write it for your children and grandchildren and I will correct it.'

That took off like something you can’t imagine. I couldn't keep up with it. And then in 1997, just when I was thinking of retiring and reading at leisure and doing yoga and getting thinner, I was asked to do the same with a little group through the Jewish library. It was to get people over the age of fifty writing to their children and grandchildren. We put an ad in the Jewish News and ten people turned up. Seven were holocaust survivors. They were elderly, English wasn’t their first language mostly. Some wrote well, some didn’t. I said, 'Just sit down and start writing. You don’t have to think about it. Just write.'

They would write longhand. We had no computers and they had no computer skills. I made a quiet room. We had coffee and tea and they could get a biccy. But if they wanted to talk, it was out in the corridor.

Sometimes I’d give them ticks. These ladies were not easily won over, by the way. But I’d give them ticks and if I got excited, I’d give them three, and before I knew it, they were comparing ticks. One day, I gave someone two because it wasn't quite up to scratch and she rang me up and said, 'Why did you only give me two?' And I said, 'Oh that was an accident. I meant to give you three!' They were just so excited.

Once they were finished, not before, I would bring them home. They'd sit beside me, in my living room. I made it so that it was a good aspect and pleasant and we'd start at page one and they would read aloud. And then I'd edit with them. That was how it started. Then more people came. I had people waiting. And more people.

In the beginning, I thought the writing would just go to their families but then I thought this could be archive material, a social history of a whole community. But I knew if we were going to make an archive, it had to be done well. I had to find people to help. And I had to find the money to pay them. I can’t sell a raffle ticket. (I always end up buying all the tickets myself) And yet there I was going out to find money. To find sponsors.

We have produced sixty four books, nine of them in 2006, as well as three anthologies. We've been at the Writer's festival three years running in Melbourne. I've had my writers stand up there and read. And their books on display in the lobby. And now we have the programme running in Sydney through the Jewish Museum which is also a holocaust museum.

The work is so exciting: so real. People reveal themselves and are true to themselves. And the stories are so healing for families. The family members love it, particularly the grandchildren. They say, 'I didn’t know this, I didn’t know that.' There are tears and there's understanding where there wasn't. There are guilts, certainly with holocaust material. There is unquenchable sorrow…and relief.

The younger the trauma happens, the harder the writers are to work with because they have closed up whole sections of their emotional life. And there are great gaps in their memories. They’ve got it all muddled up and you’ve got to make sense of it. I have a half a dozen history experts who I can call on to say.. ‘Could this have happened at the place? Could this be right?’ Many of the details are lost. Some of my writers are impossible too, so difficult and I can end up screaming! And then, when I apologise, they will say, ‘Oh well, your patience cannot last forever.’

There are four or more of us working now, editors, proof readers, a graphic designer and myself. At seventy one I’ve just come to a very taxing point in my life where I have some macular damage. I’ve stopped driving and my kids have bought me a huge screen for my computer so I can enlarge the font. It’s getting a bit hard, but I believe the little finger of fate is pushing me. At present, I’m getting an anthology of thirty stories by Russian migrants ready for publication in March, 2007 and another in 2008.

And there's always someone who has a story to tell. Like a woman, still beautiful at eighty something, dressed up to the nines. She lives nearby and meeting me in the street, always hisses in my ear…. 'Darlink, I have a story for you. Nobody has a story like mine!'



Julie was awarded an OAM in 2005. She would like to acknowledge the work of the small group of people who help to publish these stories and who feel passionately about the archive they are creating.

For more information see 'Write Your Story' program on the Makor Library website.