One of my favourite magazines is Uppercase from Canada and I was very excited to find out that the creator/designer/editor, Janine Vangool was coming to the Perth Writers Festival! She was on a few panels speaking about magazines with people from Dumbo Feather, Kinfolk, Smith Journal and Alphabet Family Journal. I was impressed to hear how she can produce a whole magazine by herself every few months and still have time to spend with her family and to sleep! After the talks, I got to meet her and she is a very nice lady :) She even wrote a lovely message in my copy of the latest Uppercase. Such a happy fangirl moment!
I've been featuring postcards a lot lately so it's on theme to mention the postcards I got from the Giants' farewell performance. The Giants arrived in Perth with a matching amount of hype and took over the city for three days. I went along on the Saturday and Sunday and it was mayhem! I did get to see the Giants up close on Saturday and from a distance on Sunday when they left via the Swan River.
Part of the procession involved postcards shooting from cannons which I collected a few of. From what I can gather, they were reproductions of old postcards from war times and some were from the Postcards from Home project. This project involved people writing messages to Anzac soldiers who inspired them. There are some great images of Perth in the early 1900s with trams and horse drawn carts and wide streets (some buildings are still recognisable!). There were also reproductions of postcards sent home by the soldiers showing places they'd been such as Egypt and France and also one showing a burial on the battlefield. The postcards were linked to the Giants' story by a young girl in Albany who sent morse code messages to soldiers as they sailed away to war. Her story was featured in a giant book read to the Girl Giant who then got the idea to send morse code messages to the Diver Giant at the bottom of the sea by blowing bubbles into the ocean with a didgeridoo. At least, I think this is what happened!
