Writing for children has certainly, it has a number of facets which I think writing for adults hasn't. And the most important one is in fact that you can't avoid being aware that you're an educator. Every word you write, you're being an educator. And every attitude and belief and approach and point of view, yeah, you're influencing kids. 

I wrote Storm Boy in 1961 chiefly I think because of my love of the Coorong region in South Australia ... It also reflected my interest in the general ecology in the region and conservation and preservation of wildlife, which is of course one of the central themes of the story.

... The world of the wilderness is of course a diminishing area in virtually all parts of the planet and Australia is no exception. And because I feared too that the Coorong would possibly change fairly dramatically under the pressure of population that it was necessary to try to preserve its essential spirit, as it was in its natural state. And one of the best ways of doing that was through fiction, through a story based in the area, although I have also written factual and environmental books about the region. 

I’ve always regarded myself as a political journalist rather than a novelist. If you entertain people they may be in a better mood to listen to what you’re saying. 

I wrote a book called Tiburon, which won the Prior Memorial Prize at The Bulletin. I wrote this book because at the time I was interested in agrarian reform ... Tiburon is a study, as far as I could make it honest, of conditions in a country town. Those were the conditions at the time, I was very interested to alter them.  

... I suppose that my enjoyment is in getting the material for books. I hate writing them, I put it off as long as possible. I start in great desperation and do 9 first chapters. Once I’m in it, I continue on to the end, feeling very frail because there is nothing that makes your shoulders ache like pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, and usually I’m so close to the deadline that I have to do this. 

But I never regarded myself as a novelist, I just somehow happened into it ... I started out by doing it just for the money ... and now I think I really like writing.

So when I was writing The Garden of Empress Cassia, which was my first book ... I gave Mimi problems that I faced. You know, hating being Chinese, self-loathing about being Chinese, ashamed of the parents, all that sort of thing. 

But of course in a novel - in a children's novel - you can make it have a happy ending. So of course Mimi discovers being, that having more than one culture is a wonderful thing. And so, you know, hopefully children who read that can also appreciate their own diverse nature. Yeah, I think all those things that I put in my books are all definitely personal.  

I edit my books probably 40, average of 40 times or more. Go through the whole manuscript again and again and again. So every single time, when the structure letter comes back, I just pull my hair out. And I go, 'Can't do this. I cannot do this. Going to give up. Nuh'. And then Steve comes in, and he says, 'Remember last time? Exactly the same spot. You do this every single time'. And I go, 'Oh yeah, I guess you're right'. And then I pull myself together.  

You have to be, you have to be very resilient and very self-disciplined to be a writer, and to have a very thick skin. And even though it affects you when you are rejected, and I'm still rejected, even though I'm Australian Children's Laureate ... that’s all part of it. 

I just wanted to write the book and write my mum’s story. And having it, seeing it go from book to film, that was astounding. I couldn’t accept that for quite a while, to know that this is happening to me. I never ever dreamed that this would go that far.  

... Seeing Ningali in the, when the children were, you know, taken away from their mothers, that affected me so much, I broke down. And ever since that when it was produced and shown on widescreens all over the world, mothers all over the world had the same, it had the same impact on mothers all over the world. That scene, the adoption scene, lived in their memories and will be there forever most of them said. 

In pre-production, Phillip Noyce always included me in any changes that needed to be made. He was very strict on Indigenous protocol which I encouraged him to do at the beginning.

... So what Phillip Noyce did in his usual manner was to bring two types that they’d run, two takings and brought them to me and said ‘Well, which one?’ so I chose the one that’s on film now ... That’s how we worked all the way through the film, in pre-production process. So, once he had all the instructions from me, he actually went on to film it and still included me in the production side of it. Which was good, I thoroughly appreciated that. 

Well I’ve always kept by me as I work a pad. If I was sitting here painting a pad would be there. I let my ideas function and if words come just write them down you see ... By the time I’ve finished a series of paintings I've got the basis of a novel. 

I often think ‘Thank the wowsers’ for having censored all my novels, because it would have confused the public. ‘What is he? Is he a novelist or is he an artist?’ Well I grew up as an artist you see in this country. In America they took me for a writer. When I was over there, I went over there in the 30s, I was a writer who did a little painting. And they still regard me as a writer ... the stuff I’ve written sold very well over there. 

People ask me when I became a writer, but I’m one of those people who was always a writer, or always a musician, or always a painter, one of those things, you know. I never thought of it professionally at all, I think for that very reason. When there was a high school paper or a teacher's college paper, I would edit it and if there were spaces to fill in, I’d fill in the spaces. Generous spirit, generous to myself of course. But writing to me was just, I didn’t even think about it. And people always said to me from the time I was about 8 or 9 ‘You’ll be a writer’. And I believed them, I thought I would, but I never formed any plans. I had no idea what I would do.

... I adhere to this story that I always was a writer in a peculiar sense. I would get up very early in the morning and write a bit, write a thing, something that pleased me. It was never with any idea of publication. It was because I wanted to. And I must say now that I don’t write with an idea to publication. I don’t care about publication. 

I start with a character, somebody who strikes me very forcibly and I think to myself ‘This is it, this is the one’. Then I allow life to grow up around that person. I don’t question them, I see how it is with them in life, if I may say so, as you would if you were studying a tree and its background and its ecology. Thats kind of a job. And then the drama that arises, arises from them, and their relations with their friends, their background. It isn’t, by the time I'm finished, it isn’t just one person, naturally, it's a whole sector, group of people.