| November 2008
 Hi Kids,
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I wrote in this diary! And what a year it’s been! I’ve been to various parts of Australia either on holidays with my wife or visiting schools and talking about my books. And I’ve been to Canberra, Tasmania (twice), both to see my grandsons and to go bushwalking on Mount Field and on Bruny Island. I live in Sydney but I always love to visit Tasmania. And, as always, my wife and I have spent lots of time bushwalking in the Blue Mountains just to the west of Sydney.
I’ve been to the Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney, four times and I even got to see the huge new ocean liner, the Queen Victoria, sail into Sydney Harbour for the first time. It’s so big that it’s a wonder it doesn’t scrape along the bottom of the harbour.
 It’s also been a big year for overseas travel. A few months ago my wife and I were in the northeastern part of America in the states of Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. We stayed on an island in Maine for most of the time and spent a lot of time with friends and relatives. It’s a beautiful place and great for boating but not so good for swimming because the ocean water to too cold.
While we were in America my wife and I visited a friend who is a retired doctor and a wonderful jazz musician---he plays the saxophone. He also loves anything to do with trains. He even has a model railway running around his kitchen and a tiny model railway built into a coffee table.  But the best of all is a huge model railway that he’s building that fills the whole basement of his house. And they all work! He is such a fan of trains that he bought a real railway car and had it put on tracks in his back yard. This one doesn’t go anywhere.
After our time in America we went to Japan and met a group of wonderful women who have translated some of my Selby books into Japanese. We had met them before when they came to Sydney in 1995.  We had a fantastic meal with them in a restaurant that overlooked Tokyo Bay and then one of them, Noriko, invited us to stay with her family in her house on the outskirts of Tokyo with her. Noriko and her husband, Akira, took us up a mountain called Mount Takao near where they live. Mount Takao has a Buddhist temple near the top and we not only went to a Buddhist ceremony there but had a wonderful vegetarian meal in one of the buildings of the monastery.
They say that the mountain is protected by a forest goblin named Tengu. Tengu means “Heaven Dog” and is supposed to have supernatural powers that lets him change himself into an animal or a human. He can speak to humans without moving his mouth and he can move instantly to another place without using his wings. They say he can also appear in people’s dreams. He is both a warrior and a mischief-maker who loves to play tricks on people who brag too much or feel too important. I didn’t actually see the real Tengu but the people we were staying with gave us a mask of him---with a long red nose---to bring back to Australia. Now it’s hanging on our dining-room wall to remind us not to brag.
Recently I took the Tengu mask to the KOALA Awards ceremony. Have a look at http://www.koalansw.org.au/page/awards_day.html
I always enjoy going to the KOALA (Kids’ Own Australian Literature Awards) ceremony and meeting many of the school kids who vote for the awards. This time they had voted Selby Shattered as an Honour Book. (Thank you, kids!)
 Tokyo is such a wonderful city. We loved the people, the food and all the parks and museums. One of the best museums was the Edo-Tokyo Museum which tells the history of the city. It’s in a very modern building that looks like something out of a science-fiction movie. Inside are many models of Tokyo in times past. Tokyo is a huge city---one of the biggest in the world---and has lots of modern buildings.
 Just in front of the Edo-Tokyo Museum is the stadium where the sumo wrestlers compete. We were there on a day when some of the most important competitions of the year take place. We saw many sumo wrestlers arriving for the day’s events but we couldn’t get tickets. They were all sold out. So we went back to our hotel and watched them on TV. I like sumo wrestlers because they make me feel thin.
Since I wrote last, my book Selby Santa was published and so was Eyespy Emily Eyefinger and now there’s a new Selby book, The Joke’s on Selby. It’s a collection of all the Selby stories that also have Bogusville’s corniest comic, Gary Gaggs, in them. Of all the characters in the Selby books I think the most popular one, apart from Selby himself, is Gary.
But the most exciting thing of all is happening as I write this.
I’ve just finished writing a collection of funny poems called My Sister Has a Big Black Beard. I shouldn’t be telling you about it because it won’t be in the shops till the middle of 2009. The exciting part for me is that Kerry Millard---the wonderful illustrator of Nim’s Island and many other books---is doing the illustrations for it. She’s only just started but I know the book will look fantastic because her drawings are absolutely great.
You can see some of them if you look at the “On the Drawing Table” page of Kerry’s website: http://kerrymillard.com/page15/page15.html And, while you’re there, have a look around at the rest of her website. It’s loads of fun.
Duncan Ball
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