Albany’s Molly Schmidt wins Hungerford Award for novel that explores grief and honours local Noongar culture

Although she is only in her 20s, Albany-raised author and journalist Molly Schmidt has been working on her debut novel for more than a decade. Over that time, Schmidt took the scribbled beginnings of a story she wrote as a grieving teenager and transformed them into a completed novel, along the way finishing an honours thesis and years of consultation with local Noongar elders that fed into its development. The resulting manuscript, a book titled Salt River Road, won the prestigious 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award on October 20, earning Schmidt $15,000 in prize money and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. The novel follows two teenagers as they learn to cope after losing their mother to cancer, and draws on Schmidt’s personal experiences. “It’s a coming-of-age story, set in the 70s, in the Great Southern, mainly between Albany and Tenterden,” Schmidt said. “It follows the story of two teenage siblings, Rose and Frank, who are coming to terms with the loss of their mother to terminal cancer. “And then there’s a parallel narrative that weaves through the book too, that honours the Menang and Goreng Noongar people in the area.” The narrative is deeply personal for Schmidt, who explored the grief she felt as a child after losing her father to cancer, resulting in what she describes as partly “a work of therapy”. “When I was 16 and first scribbling down the characters, it was definitely just teenage me making sense of what had happened,” she said. “The real heart of it is about overcoming loss and grief, and that was something that I know quite well.” Schmidt spent her early years on a farm in Lower Kalgan where her parents rented a house near the river. That was where her “fascination” with telling stories began, fostered by her parents who were “both massive storytellers”. “Being an only kid and growing up out of town, I feel like that was something that became quite important because I was always roaming around the sheep farm and just making up stories in my head,” Schmidt said. “And I think that was where the storytelling thing kind of came from, and it’s always been quite grounded in Albany as a place for me.” When she was 10, Schmidt and her family moved to Perth for her father’s cancer treatment, and stayed there for several years after he died, before moving back to Albany. After finishing high school at Great Southern Grammar, Schmidt continued developing her passion for storytelling by studying creative writing and journalism at Curtin University. She went on to work as a radio producer at the ABC in both Albany and Perth, while writing the book in her spare time. She decided to set the story in Tenterden, as she had always been intrigued with the small town during visits as she passed through. “I only based it there because I would do the drive from Albany to Perth and I always wondered what happened there, so I made it up,” she said. “And then once I realised that I actually wanted to finish the book, I started spending more time just driving around the streets and talking to the owners at the general store.” Other local sites feature in the novel, including the jetty at Emu Point and the Stirling Range. As she was working on the book, Schmidt said she eventually “hit a bit of a blank” on how to continue developing the narrative. “The story wasn’t really progressing anywhere, so I didn’t touch it for quite a few years,” Schmidt said. “I was working in journalism, and was really privileged to get to work with some really brave and remarkable Noongar people in Perth through storytelling, and it made me realise that I had completely omitted the Noongar community in Albany from the book that I was writing.” Schmidt decided to return to Curtin in 2020, studying a creative writing honours thesis that focused on how non-Indigenous writers like herself could “write in a way that’s inclusive of the Noongar people”. Her project supervisor — two-time Miles Franklin award-winner, university professor and Noongar man, Kim Scott — devised a list of local Menang and Goreng elders for her to consult with, covering a range of family groups across the Great Southern. Over two years, Schmidt spent hours with Lester Coyne, Averil Dean, Carol Pettersen, Ezzard Flowers and Glen Colbung, who helped her devise the best practice for her to include Noongar stories into her narrative. She also plans to consult with another elder, Elaine Miniter, before the book is published. Over “so many cups of tea and pieces of cake”, Schmidt said she was able to develop a “scope” of what would be appropriate for her to include, as well as uncovering an additional layer to add to the story. “Initially, I just asked them if I’m writing a book that’s set in the Great Southern, should I be including Noongar characters or not, and what are your thoughts?,” she said. “And if they said no, I really wanted to stick to that, too, I just really wanted their honest guidance. “They said that in this case, they’d love to be included, and to make sure that local fiction does mention their community.” Schmidt has weaved a parallel narrative throughout Salt River Road “that honours the Menang and Goreng Noongar people”. “Two Indigenous elders guide Rose and Frank through their grief, and they create a really special friendship that ties the whole story together,” she said. As she worked with them, the elders shared their own stories of the land she was writing about and Schmidt was keen to include their historical perspectives. “One of the things they said to me was that for the Great Southern area, they feel like the Noongar community are never really represented or honoured as having been the people who cleared that land for farming,” she said. “So I’ve included that as part of one of the narratives in my book...one of the characters is sort of telling Rose and Frank, the protagonists, about growing up, clearing the land and camping on farming properties, which is an experience that a lot of the elders actually had that I spoke to.” The process of working with the elders helped Schmidt refine her novel as she drafted it. “We’d sit back down and read through different scenes, and they’d pick things out and say they liked this and they didn’t like that,” she said. “It was very collaborative.” The final novel weaves what Schmidt said were the two things she cares about most — exploring grief and telling the real stories of the local Noongar people. “It gives voice to the truth of the story of losing a parent to a terminal illness,” she said. “I’d never read a story that really talked about what that looked like, so that was a big part of it for me, both remembering Dad, but also processing some of the horror of losing him. “And then also, once I started learning from the elders, it was exciting to see that I could make a book that would hopefully contribute to reconciliation. “That was the way we started talking about it — how can a book actually help reconcile relationships.” It was while Schmidt was back in Albany earlier this year for a stint at the local ABC office that she decided to enter her manuscript into the Hungerford Award. “We were in the middle of unpacking boxes and I just on a whim applied,” she said. “I really, really, really didn’t expect it and I was shocked and over the moon when I was longlisted, let alone shortlisted, let alone winning.” The award is judged anonymously every two years and goes to an emerging WA writer for their first full-length unpublished work of fiction or narrative non-fiction with the chosen book published by Fremantle Press. Schmidt said having such a personal novel published locally, in the city she now calls home, was the “icing on the cake” of the whole experience. “I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t know this was going to happen, that’s for sure,” she said. Schmidt’s debut novel Salt River Road will be published by Fremantle Press in November 2023.