October, 2025

It’s raining as I write this, just a light sprinkle through the night air, that the weather bureau said we wouldn’t get. They are almost invariably wrong, at least for this valley. They’ve been predicting showers we haven’t had for months but missed this one. But the lyrebirds sang, and the frogs croaked, and the termite queens rose up in a cloud for their mating flight; they knew rain was coming, even if not quite enough to dampen the hard ground.

Apologies for the irregular newsletters. Things have been hard, as well as magically wonderful.

changes

I’ve put off writing this for eight years, hoping things would improve, but instead the damage is progressive.

Eight years ago, after a series of hospital accidents, severe spinal damage among other injuries meant the lower part of my body was paralysed for a while. Slowly, I was able to walk again, but not for long – enough for rambles most days in the garden and bush surrounds, which is a constant treasure.

I can’t sit or stand in one place for long. Bryan is used to me walking in circles to talk to him. But I also live in an astoundingly lovely and always surprising valley, with animal friends all around, and a fabulous community, even if I’m not able to attend many activities. And I can still write and watch the full moon rise every month with Bryan, as it slides up the sky, golden and mysterious.

Thanks to an adapted chair, I can also give video sessions. I love doing them!

VIDEO SESSIONS

Available for schools, festivals, libraries, book clubs and even, to my surprise sometimes wanted as a birthday present for just one person, either to mentor them in writing or just to chat about wombats and the wonders of the world.

I loved travelling to schools and festivals, but to my surprise the video sessions are far more effective. Kids get bored with just another person talking on a stage.

When I do a video session there’s a wombat hole just to my left, the one dug on the final page of Diary of a Wombat. Her granddaughter lives there now, and on winter days you can watch her munch through the window. High above is the very real setting of Somewhere Around the Corner and Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger, and of course our house is the one in Hitler’s Daughter, Pennies for Hitler, and The Matilda Saga. We built the heart of the house ourselves, with the help of many friends, using techniques from two centuries ago, as well as concrete tips from the ancient Romans.

Almost every book I write is set here. This is where I predict floods, fires or the annual return of the rufous whistler. The vegetable garden sits just outside the wide windows where I do the video talks and workshops, with the orchard in the view too.

It is always beautiful, and often enchanting to the students who watch, especially when a wallaby wanders by and peers in, annoyed that I’m making so much noise.

The video audience shares the magic of the valley.

I can’t promise an eagle will swoop down and grab a pigeon during every video, or even that a mob of roos will be resting in the background. I can guarantee the wombat holes, the mountains and stone walls built in a millennia old way will be there, if the audience wants to share the magic.

Contact with an author can turn a non-reader into a bookworm, scribbling poems instead of playing video games. It needs to be live, not a recording, so author and students can truly make a connection. That connection is deeper now. They see me at my desk, with my home, and the settings of the books behind me, changing with the seasons.

You also don’t have to pay for travel, accommodation or even feed me for a video session. I’ll be fresh, enthusiastic and not (said in a whisper) with the ‘What school am I in now?’, and ‘Do I give speech 54 or 28?’ that all authors feel and try to hide when touring. (Authors shared a lot in my decades of touring.)

I give video sessions for every age group, including ones for festivals or libraries where the audience will range from six months old to six, 16, or 96. They tell reluctant readers where to find the magic book that will turn them into bookworms. There are sessions based on one book, or a series like Flood, Fire and the other natural disaster books that kids enjoy, but also absorb, increasing their resilience.

Other sessions focus on writing well, or even one aspect of writing, for example persuasive or descriptive. They convince kids who want to be electrical engineers why they, too, need to learn those persuasive techniques; to communicate well; to build the imagination muscles they’ll need in their careers.

After so many decades of books, awards and fabulous editors, I am very, very good at what I do. It's even better when I’m not up on a stage, and there’s a wallaby peering through the window.

RECENT RELEASES

The Whisperer's War

Adult

Historical fiction for adults, as Lady Dee uncovers the (true) plot to instal the Duke of Windsor back on the throne.

It’s a love story: why does British intelligence warn her to stay away from a heroic Aussie pilot?

It’s a mystery: is the man who staggers up the smugglers tunnel really the lost duke? Why do the three evacuee children refuse to give Dee their names? 

It’s an expose of secrets, where men die just to save the royal family from embarrassment. It’s glorious escapism, and just sometimes profound.

The Mushroom In The Sky

Ages 12+

1942

Japan has bombed Sydney Harbour. Sixteen-year-old orphan Ossie lies about his age to fight imminent invasion in New Guinea, but must leave his only family, one eyed dog, Lucky. Kind-hearted Mrs Plum is already caring for 46 dogs for far away soldiers. It is almost impossible to even feed them. There are no rations for dogs. Enter 13-year-old Kat Murphy, evacuated from harbourside Sydney to a new school and an aunt she hardly knows. Kat and Mrs Plum will forge a partnership, gathering support for all the animals. Ossie will see first-hand, the mushroom cloud rise above Nagasaki and its aftermath, and Kat will see it too, in a strange telepathic like connection between her, Ossie and the dog they both love.

This book is not just an adventure story: it is an important history of a time that had been hidden, when the Japanese Military Government planned to kill 10 million Japanese civilians, and even kidnapped the emperor for three days, to prevent the surrender.

As we remember the 80^th anniversary of the first atomic bombing, this knowledge is vital to our understanding of what can happen in a war, and the first step to prevent it, too. But most readers will simply love the story of Kat, Ossie, and Mrs Plum.

This is a book of unexpected kindness and generosity and many kinds of love.

Tigg and the Bandicoot Bush Ranger

Ages 12+

Published in 2024 but mentioned now because it was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. It’s glorious fun but also lets kids relive and understand the gold rush era, and particularly the treks by Chinese miners, so often neglected and almost always misunderstood in the history books.

The Drought Kangaroo - released 28 October

Ages 3+

With the glorious Danny Snell, this is the true story of the young kangaroo who travelled possibly 100 kilometres to find water here, in the drought of 2019, and who is now ‘Big Boss’ of the kangaroos around our house.

Jackie French's Guide to Companion Planting

Reissued by CSIRO. There are many myths about companion planting. This book is what works.

LITERARY AWARDS

There were half a dozen short listings, including the CBCA’s wonderful shortlisting of Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger, as well as the naming of another of The Girls Who Changed The World, Ming Qong ‘time travel’ adventure series a notable, as Herstory sends Ming into the past to find the hidden or long, long history of the very real girls who changed the world, from inventing the first computer and jet engine at 14 to creating the star map we still use today, or the very closely held secret of the young German women who taught Aussie blokes how to shear, class wool, get rid of scab and improve the bloodline, creating Australia’s major industry for over a century. Why don’t we revere them today? Because they were German, married Australian men, and at the beginning of World War One every mention of them was removed from archives and libraries and family histories, to prevent their descendants from war time prison camps.

Sorry: back to awards…The Sea Captain’s Wife won the 2024 ACT Book of the Year: adult historical fiction about an island where women hunt for a shipwrecked husband on the shore, and one finds the heir to a shipping fortune. But this island of castaways has learned to survive by kindness: making others happy increasing general happiness for all. Can two people from such different backgrounds make a life together?

Many, many thanks to CBCA, the kids’ choice KOALA awards, the BookLinks Historical Fiction Awards, and the ACT literary community for all the short listings and long listings. You add so much richness to Australian life, at a time when the depth and richness of books is being lost to the zombie states of downloading movies and tv series…which I do too. There are times you need to be a zombie, though even the best movie never gives the depth of escape and relaxation of a book.

WOMBAT NEWS

It’s getting dry, but we still have loads of grass, which means the wombats aren’t interested in ‘wombat nuts’ of compressed lucerne and grain, or even carrots, and specially not humans. Wild Whiskers still wakes me at 2am with a growl and then a furious shriek at any wombat or wallaby trying to invade her territory, and the wombats have begun to drink from the small pool in the garden again, as the grass is now too dry to provide all the moisture they need.

There are also still wombat droppings outside the front door too, a reminder to all wombats that her territory includes this house, and every human in it.

HOW TO TEACH KIDS NOT TO PLAGIARISE

I’ve just been judging the annual Dymock’s Young People’s Story Awards. The entries were the best ever, and the top three – by students no older than Year 6 – were brilliant, even when compared to published stories by experienced writers. I’m also sure they were original, neither plagiarised nor AI.

AI can write an ok story, but it can never write an original one. Inexperienced writers also don’t notice that AI has lifted whole sentences or paragraphs from the work of human authors, and those excerpts will show up if the story is put through a search engine that looks for plagiarism.

Sadly, plagiarism is becoming more common.  Kids aren’t taught that while they can take information freely online, they can’t take the exact words to mix with theirs or present as their own.

 Many years ago – and never forgotten – a young person won a major national award by copying one of my poems, changing only a few words and one line, to be published in a book. My poem had only been published a few months before, so teachers weren’t familiar with it.

But a teacher at another school did recognise it and reported it. The lawyers of the publishing house who owned the rights to my poem demanded that the plagiarised poem be withdrawn from the book of winning entries, or only the original line left.

I was speaking at a festival at the time, but every 20 minutes or so there’d be a phone call from the competition organiser, judge, publisher, teacher demanding I let the poem be published as an original work from the student. How could I possibly shame a young person like that, embarrass the competition, even destroy a life?

I kept saying there was nothing I could do.

And there wasn’t – I tried to get the lawyers to let the poem stand with a note ‘based on a poem by etc etc published by’ but they refused. Legally only that publishing house could publish the poem, or give permission for it to be published, and legally it had to be ‘by Jackie French’ as that was in the contract I’d signed. I couldn’t ‘give’ a version to someone else. I asked the organisers if they could publish another poem by that student, but they said none were anywhere near the quality that could be published.

The frightening thing, for me, was that neither the organisers, the judges or the teacher understood that plagiarism is illegal and stealing someone’s work is morally wrong. I never spoke to the child involved, and it certainly wasn’t their fault – they were far too young to understand unless someone explained it. No one did. I was the villain – they couldn’t understand that a major publishing house wouldn’t give them the copyright on a poem that formed most of a book, and that had cost the publishing house a lot to publish and illustrate, no matter what I asked them to do.

We need to teach kids the difference between using someone’s work or being inspired by it, and stealing it, or passing it off as your own, especially in this world of growing AI in almost all we do.

I’ve wondered how to do that ever since that incident, but a kid has just shown me how. They sent me a poem to comment on – and about half of it, and the structure, was one of my poems. I gave a gentle as possible lecture, explaining how it’s hard for all of us sometimes to know when we might be using someone else’s words; how we learn to write by using other writer’s techniques, but we must make them our own…

I expected either silence, or an email saying I was mean.

Instead, only a day later, the student sent me another poem, on the same subject, but totally original. And wonderful. The kid loved words, and so had used mine, but then understood the difference between inspiration and perspiration.

I sent an email of delight and congratulation and hope I see hundreds of poems with their name on them for years to come.

So how to stop plagiarism? Just work with the student. Explain that anyone can steal other people’s work, but they are at school, so they need to learn to create their own, and that every generation produces new and better creations, because they’ve absorbed what others have already done.

If a student loves words enough to plagiarise, they can create their own word visions. Take each image and ask them to find another; each original bit of structure and say, ‘how else could this be done?’.

If they’ve used AI because they couldn’t be bothered doing their own work, they’ve lost a chance to become more focused and creative - and they’ll need to learn that to succeed in whatever they do when they leave school.

I wish I could write to that recent student and tell them they have taught me how to deal with young plagiarists, but I can’t, because I carefully didn’t call them a plagiarist. But they taught me a lot.

Yes, we can teach kids why they shouldn’t plagiarise, by themselves or with AI. We can also give them the tools and confidence and sheer pleasure in learning, so they will never want to plagiarise again.

GARDENING NEWS

About 10,000 roses decided to bloom the night before last. The garden is flowers and perfume, and I am trying to stop myself from asking Cath who helps with all the ‘bending stuff’ to plant out the tomatoes.

This is the exciting time: trees are setting fruit and are bright with pale-green leaves – it’s a time to dream about the abundance to come in a couple of months. October is just too encouraging. The days are balmy, and you feel like you can cultivate the world.

Take a grip of yourself. Whatever you plant now you’ll have to tend at Christmas. Three dozen tomatoes planted now mean one week bottling or freezing or sauce making in late summer; three zucchini plants will mean you’re forcing them on your friends. The more you dig now the more you’ll have to weed in a month’s time.

Start small and extend your plot week by week. That way you won’t start more than you can tend.

Planting: Cool areas can start spring planting as soon as the ground is warm enough to sit on, because that is where plants live, not in the spring warm air. In warmer areas, plant more lettuce, beans, and corn.

Harvest: This is a month that tells you how good your garden planning was last year. We’d have had peas if the wallaby hadn’t eaten them, and young dandelion leaves if the wombat hadn’t sat on them (The leaves are probably still edible, but I don’t fancy them.)

Vegetables

Keep picking the tops out of silver beet that goes to seed so they’ll keep cropping till the new lot are ready. Pick brussels sprouts as soon as they form, so more grow. Asparagus will be yielding now, and early artichokes. Our purple asparagus is fat and sweet but needs more watering. In warm areas lettuce, Chinese spinach, corn salad, and peas may be starting to yield, if planted in August.

Fruit

Loquat, navel orange, lemon, lime, tangelo, mandarins, grapefruit, cumquat, calamondin, pomelo, citron, Tahitian lime, Malabar lime, finger limes, early blueberries, lillypilly, Japanese raisin ‘fruit’, the last of the winter avocadoes, early strawberries, early raspberries in warm spots,  especially native raspberries that fruit most of the year, rhubarb, banana, passionfruit, and tamarillos ripening from last season. Keep eating stored Lady Williams apples and nuts.

Other jobs         

Broad beans don’t set seed in hot weather: mulch them thickly now to keep the soil cool. If they start getting spots on their leaves you probably have a potash deficiency: throw wood ash on the plot, for next year. Let excess or old broad beans dry in the pod – then keep them to add to soups and stews later.

Chop up vegies gone-to-seed and stew them into a rich vegetable stock – either have it for lunch or freeze it. A friend grates them, adds wheat germ, and bakes them into crisp dog biscuits, or boils them, chops them, and adds them to the dog food. The dog is happy with more to eat but won’t grow fat: added veg is excellent for most dogs but do check online or with a vet about what your breed of dog can eat. Individual dogs can be allergic to some foods, too.

Plant passionfruit vines and chokos now, before it gets too hot – though they can be planted at any time as long as they are well established by winter and kept mulched and watered.

Mulch strawberries and rhubarb now and cut off any rhubarb heads going to seed. Mulching now prevents leaf disease later.

Many vegetables, like carrots and celery, which have gone to seed can be eaten simply by peeling away the tough outer membrane: the centres will be soft and sweet.

Plant green-manure crops that can be slashed and ready for January plantings of winter vegetables: broad beans (cut them at flowering, don’t wait for pods to set) or sunflowers, buckwheat or even radish if you pull them out before the bulbs form.

Evergreen fruit trees can still be planted now but if it’s hot, trees can be sheltered in hessian shelters for a few weeks. Don’t be tempted by leftover bare-rooted trees in nurseries, even if they are cheap – they may not shoot, or their new roots will break off when you plant them. Trees which are badly set back when young don’t recover for years.

Buy young chooks now: they’ll lay through to next spring. If you don’t raise your own chickens, try buying black, white, and red ones alternately, to ‘colour code’ each year – or leave different colour roosters with the females each season.

If your chooks aren’t laying well, check their water: fresh, running water means more eggs. Hens won’t lay in very hot weather either: scatter branches over the chook run for some shade, and plant some trees, preferably trees like mulberries, tree lucerne or avocados which can provide chook food.

Chooks are paranoid creatures. They can be scared of anything that flies over them and anything that chases them – from kids to foxes. Scared chooks don’t lay well. Once, chooks were jungle birds, living in the broken light of the undergrowth.

If you want secure, non-paranoid chooks, stick branches, old corn stalks, etc. over their run so that the light below is shifting and semi-shaded. They’ll feel less vulnerable, no matter what is around.

Pests:    No matter what pests are bugging you, try not to do anything about it for at least another two weeks – see if natural predators won’t start doing the job for you.

A FEW RECIPES

Smashed Lemon Potatoes

Currently my favourite recipe. Cooking potatoes twice almost doubles their resistant starch, plus makes them more delicious.

Ingredients

 12 low carb potatoes

6 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of two fat lemons

Salt

A scatter of fresh thyme or oregano or don’t bother if you’re in a hurry.

Method

• Boil the spuds in their skins. You can now keep them in the fridge for a day or to till needed. Place spuds in a baking tray. Smash each one with your fist or hammer – they should be smashed, not mashed, with uneven edges poking up everywhere.

• Use a pastry brush or your fingers to smooth olive oil all over their tops, especially the really high, thin bits. Scatter on lemon juice, then salt to taste and herbs.

• Brown in the oven at 200C – 250C. It will take about 15- 20 minutes depending on your oven and the size of the spuds. They are ready when brown and crunchy on top.

• They are far more wonderful than this simple recipe deserves.

The Best Possible Easy and Actually Good For You Chocolate Cake

I’m serious. Cut down the sugar and you have a meal in a large slice of cake. Cocoa is high in flavonoids and other Very Good Things, and even banana haters won’t guess the ingredients.

Ingredients

 2 cups brown sugar, or much less: it can be made sugarless and still be good, especially topped with yoghurt

2.5 cups flour

1 cup cocoa powder

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 very ripe or even black skinned bananas you’ve kept frozen for banana bread

4 big eggs

Just under a cup of extra virgin olive oil

1.5 cups hot water

Method

• Turn the oven on NOW to 200 C. This is important for texture as the cake is heavy if put in a cold oven.

• Line one very big or two small cake tins with baking paper, or use nonstick ones

• Mix everything except the bicarb, baking powder and water in one big bowl till you can no longer see the lumps of banana. Quickly mix in the baking powder and bicarb, then also quickly, add a third of the water – not all or the flour may cook. Mix gently, then add another third, mix and the last third. Pour AT ONCE into the tins.

• Bake at 200C for 20 minutes for smaller tins, to 30 minutes for a larger one. Cooking times will vary a bit due to the varying size of bananas and ovens. The cake is done when you can press it in the middle with your finger and it stays firm. Do not overcook.

• Leave it to cook and firm up in the tin. It will crumble or break when hot.

• Ice when cool.

• Eat within five days if kept in a cool corner of the kitchen.

Icing (not really needed)

Use your favourite or 1 cup cream cheese mixed with 4 tablespoons melted chocolate for decadence.