Melina Marchetta, author, 54: Q&A

Author Melina Marchetta on inspiration in suburbia, adopting a daughter on her own, and her new novel.

Inspiration: Melina Marchetta. Picture: Steve Baccon

Sydney’s inner west is a vibrant presence in your first novel, Looking for Alibrandi (1992) and your latest, The Place on Dalhousie. What’s special about it? It’s more than the fact I was raised in Concord – initially all I wanted was to get away from there. There’s a warmth and lack of pretension in this area, even where there are pockets with lots of money. There are a lot of people in their front yards, calling out to each other… and I also love that it’s very multi-generational. That teaches us a lot about life, and there are a lot of stories there.

Dalhousie is a street in Haberfield, which was Sydney’s first “planned garden suburb”. They didn’t plan on tomato bushes in the front yard… There’s always been a bit of a division between the local historical society and the Italians. I hear a few murmurings of racism when people talk about what some Italians have done to the Federation houses. But they’ve also brought so much depth and warmth to the place.

And pastries… I remember when I introduced my Anglo world to Pasticceria Papa’s cheesecake about 20 years ago – people would drive from other suburbs just to get it. And you have to go to the IGA; you take a number at the deli and sit there with the little old women in black. The number is a good thing, because otherwise they would shove in front of you. It’s their right!

Has community always been important to you? Growing up, my community was my extended Italian family. We were together every Sunday – about 50 of us. I’ve always lived in Sydney but moved around a bit; when my daughter came along I wanted us to be that little bit closer to my parents, so now I live in the next suburb.

You adopted your daughter, now seven, on your own five years ago. Why? I felt that I was meant to raise a child; when it didn’t work out biologically or through a relationship I just thought, “There are other options out there.” If there’s one thing teaching high school for 10 years taught me, it was that I could care for other people’s children. And you’ve got a lot of time to come to terms with that, because adoption is such a long process.

Research for the new novel included interviewing people in their 20s. What did you want to know? There are characters in it who belong to previous novels and have been with their partners since school. It reflects an interesting thing about the area I live in: the number of people I meet who say they’ve been with their partner since they were teenagers, and it shocks me. And they have really great relationships. I just really wanted to know what made them last. The key seemed to be that they allowed each other to have their own friends.

When you left school at 15, was there a plan? I just didn’t have the confidence to do Year 11 and 12, and I was a very young 15. My mother said, “Well, you have to go to business college”. I used to like writing but I had very bad handwriting – I could never read back what I had done. Learning to type really changed my life. All of a sudden I’m in typing class writing a story about a girl… it was the first version of Josephine from Looking for Alibrandi.

The Place on Dalhousie (Viking, $32.99) is out now.