Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her? Readers twist the knife

We asked readers to come up with a final chapter of our thrilling summer novel, to be judged by Tom Keneally. The result? Moral squalor and lots of laughs.

 

We have always known how much the readers of The Weekend Australian loved to read a good story. Turns out, they also like to write one.

Hundreds took up the challenge to write a new ending for entries for the newspaper’s summer novel, “Oh Matilda, Who Bloody Killed Her?”

Plenty of the entries were smart, and plenty were funny. Some were acerbic, and some too rude to publish. We wish we could give all of them a prize. Instead, we today salute the best of the bunch, as judged by Booker Prize winner Tom Keneally.

Our very funny winning entry was written by SH (Simon) Cobcroft, of Canberra. His contribution appears today.

It stars with our protagonist, John McCredden, lying naked in the Qantas lounge. With pillow-as-figleaf, he finds himself being moved along by a Qantas flight attendant.

Keneally chose the winner from a shortlist of three finalists.

“All three had the stuff of writing with apparent ease: a sense of place, a knowledge of the text to the point where they began their conclusive passages, and the capacity for berserk whimsy that had characterised Oh Matilda,” Keneally says in his judge’s comments.

But Cobcroft’s account of McCredden’s behaviour at the Logies took his “alcoholic awfulness to a point beyond even the moral squalor of his appearances in the authorised text,” Keneally says.

OH MATILDA: THE PEOPLE’S ENDING

“And so SH — I don’t know if the author is male or female; it’s the biggest mystery since the Bronte sisters called themselves Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell — takes the prize.”

It’s a great entry, but to be honest, so many were so good.

Reader Phillip Brophy, for example, managed to introduce Donald Trump to the narrative, and a fleet of Black Hawks.

“I have never written prose and reckon my final chapter is pretty much galloping nonsense. I don’t know quite where it came from. I sat down after golf and starting writing,” he says.

However, as he himself admitted: “I’m a couple of days late I concede and may have missed the boat.”

Yes, despite how much we loved it, we couldn’t consider the entry, because it was late, mate!

The editors also liked Trish Morey’s contribution. She introduced Godot, Beckett, and the Oscars. Not to be outdone, Tarquin Scott introduced a .357 Magnum once owned by Morgan Freeman to the plot.

Also impressive: BA Culvenor, who came up with a nice plot twist for detectives who wanted to solve the case: the University of Northernmost Australia (UNA) had apparently planted small trail cameras on the island, to track “recovery of small native marsupials post-rat eradication.”

Then we had Karen Johanson — not her real name, apparently — who wrote to say: “I just read the invitation to write the last chapter. I am interested but not read any chapters. Busy. This has to be in by next Wednesday? Not more than 1200 words I believe? Better get cracking.”

And you know, her chapter wasn’t at all bad. She has a body being recovered from a billabong, and it’s an assumed a drowning.

“Hard to say though, it had been there some time. Thought to be the swagman. He went missing before the shearing season finished. At the time, no one thought anything about it, nothing unusual,” she writes.

But then, it wasn’t a swagman. It was Matilda.

The editors also enjoyed Michael Doyle’s amusing entry, which ends in Citizen Kane fashion, with these words:

“Hang on … he’s saying something …”

“What?”

“I think … Rosebud? No … no … It was … Rupert.”

Very cheeky Michael!

Mark Worthing of Hahndorf, South Australia, raised a few chuckles when he introduced Katherine McKenna, Senior Detective with Queensland Police, who so badly wants to be lead investigator in a celebrity murder.

“But as her team’s seaplane arrived, another was docking at the jetty, the markings of one of the big commercial television stations emblazoned across its sides. Stepping out of the plane was Gary Jubelin, lately billed as ‘one of Australia’s most celebrated detectives’.

“Bloody hell!” Katherine said. “We haven’t even begun the official investigation and they’ve got Jubelin out here doing one of his true crime podcasts.”

“Matilda’s murder was reported three days ago,” Jubelin says. “I thought you’d have finished your work with the crime scene by now. Besides, the station wants to move into real-time crime solving rather than just cold cases.”

Elizabeth Jobson, who wrote her final chapter before Keneally’s was published, also had Jubelin showing up in the Pandanus Lounge, and “prowling around the island, taking notes”.

Malcolm Scoggins made a brilliant contribution, with a reference to the pandemic unfolding on the mainland, with this introduction: “Bert and Maureen sat slumped on the sofa, watching the evening news. They were depressed. Someone 300km away and who didn’t even know he had COVID, tested positive, so they were back in lockdown.

“Both had been comfort eating during previous lockdowns, and both had become podgy.”

A story about the mass murder on the island comes on the TV, and Bert thinks: “It served the B-listers right. If they were in lockdown, why should celebrities be free to come and go as they wished?

“Maureen had read something about them in a tabloid … She really liked John McCredden and Maya Churchill. Bert had never heard of them and really couldn’t care less.”

Then we had Susan Wood, who had the killer wondering which media outlet might want to help her tell her story: Woman’s Day, “or should she try for something a little more up-market, say, Australian Story?”

Divakar Rao, formerly a high school science teacher from Geraldton, had McCredden in a frisky mood, popping a few Viagra in his pocket, only to end up cold and limp.

And we can’t go without saluting Sue Theobold whose final chapter simply read: “And thank you everyone … THAT’S A WRAP!”

Thank you everyone. We really had a ball. We hope you did, too. That is a wrap.

the story all over again at ohmatilda.com.au

If you’re using our mobile app, swipe to Summer Novel to read from the beginning. Caroline Overington’s hilarious first chapter is there plus Tom Keneally’s epic finale.
We’ve prepared a handy chapter-by-chapter cheat sheet to help you catch up on the plot