International Booktown – Clunes

Clunes Booktown been and gone for another year.   

For our family it was a terrific weekend; we hung out with some of our littler members - and their parents –  in the kids’ areas. We all had a a hoot.  There was  much for O & J  to see, do and eat resulting in sticky sauced and  ice-creamed fingers and faces. I feared for the brand new book we had just purchased and had signed by both the author and illustrator, but then realised  books are fun too and should be ‘lived in’.

More about that book later.

What’s a Booktown?  Officially, it’s a town with lots of bookshops that has been listed with this organisation:  http://www.booktown.net :

A Book Town is a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated.  Most Book Towns have developed in villages of historic interest or of scenic beauty.

You’ll notice that Clunes is listed on booktown.net and is, in fact, Australia’s first and only International Booktown.

But, look out, there seems to be a breakaway ozzie crowd here: http://www.booktown.com.au/.  I would like to think there is room in the world for many towns with many second-hand books.  Hell, shouldn’t every town have lots of books?  The thing is, Clunes does do it extraordinarily well.

Clunes is a particularly beautiful town of extraordinarily significant historic interest. For me the attraction of Booktown is not so much the access to so many books rather than the opportunity to access them in such outstanding venues.   The built environment of Clunes is unique and although the encompassing region was denuded of indigenous vegetation by the very miners, farmers and businesses that exploited the goldrush  for those of us who are Australian born and bred, the European introduced re-growth is quite glorious and welcome during the Autumn and Summer.

 Our mate Robin Schmidt, the bookseller, declared ita successful event.  He always has plenty of  ‘secondhand, collectible books of interest’ available because he is always finding more so look him up at Huc and Gabet Books of Interest