Author and writer Rosalie Ham challenged the audience at the Rural Press Club of Victoria’s May lunch, to tell diverse stories about rural people and rural
communities.
Ham’s novel The Dressmaker, first published in 2000, was adapted to film last year to huge success. The award winning film adaptation, produced and directed
by Sue Maslin and Jocelyn Moorhouse, has taken Ham’s characters of Tilly, Teddy and Molly, in the small country town of Dungatar, to the world. Many
of the characters played on some of the stereotypes about small town living. It’s these stereotypes that Ham will work to debunk in her fourth novel,
that she’s currently working on. Set in a rural environment, with a focus on irrigation water, Ham’s fourth novel will feature well accomplished, sophisticated,
intelligent people that are also hard working, that just happen to live in the country.