Author Talk - Alex Nicol - Pickle Bottle Hill

Join us for an Author Talk at Albury LibraryMuseum.
We will be hosting Alex Nicol, author of Pickle Bottle Hill.

Alex Nicol is a writer and broadcaster who worked for twenty years with the ABC. During that time, he produced and presented the national radio program All Ways On Sunday and was executive producer of a mid-morning radio current affairs program. He has travelled extensively through regional Australia.

With a family background history of theatre work, he has written extensively for the theatre. His work has been produced in London, Off Off Broadway and in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. His full-length play, Three Toe Scratch was short-listed for the Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White Award and others have won the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Wal Cherry Award and a special award at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester’s International Playwriting Competition.

A collection of reminiscences of the people and stories he collected during his time as presenter of All Ways On Sunday was published by Allen and Unwin under the title Old Days Old ways.

Pickle Bottle Hill is a work of fiction set in the Palmer River Goldfield in far North Queensland in 1874 and again in 1995.
At its heart it is a love story set against the politics of Chinese/ European relationships.
Chinese on the Palmer River were unlike Chinese miners on other Australian fields. They were, for the most part, indentured and were supported by tongs.
A significant amount of the gold they mined found its way back to China (as much as 1000 ozs. A month for three years from one tong). They were in the majority on the field and, given the isolation of the filed the question is, why didn’t they stay?