Launch of Salt River Road a cause for community celebration as Molly Schmidt returns home

It was a cool Djilba/First Spring evening in Kinjarling/Albany when Albany-born journalist and debut author, Molly Schmidt launched her Hungerford award-winning novel Salt River Road.

At the town hall, in front of 130 special guests including local Noongar elders, friends, family and literary enthusiasts, Molly — seated opposite me on the town hall stage — serenely laid bare her personal journey that led to the now-published debut.

When Molly was 10 she and her mother Jenny tragically lost Molly’s father, Gavin Schmidt, to cancer.

As a way of dealing with the grief of this loss, Molly, who had always been a writer, created the sibling characters of Rose and Frank Tetley.

Her imagined tale of these two siblings stayed with Molly until at 16 she began fleshing out the rest of the Tetley family and Salt River Road started to take rudimentary shape.

Much later, while studying journalism and creative writing at university, Molly realised her manuscript wasn’t only a story about family grief but was also about places that she knew as a child with her father in the Great Southern.

Molly knew she wanted to include First Nations characters and their knowledge of country but wondered how she could ethically do so.

And so began her thesis project.

Supervised by Professor Kim Scott, Molly researched how non-indigenous authors can write First Nations characters without appropriating their culture and stories.

Now based in Fremantle and working as a journalist for the ABC, Molly spent several years travelling between the big smoke and Kinjarling/Albany consulting with Goreng and Menang elders, including Uncle Lester Coyne and Aunty Averil Dean, working towards completing her thesis project.

On the night of Molly’s book launch, looking out over the crowded town hall from the stage, it was clear this book meant a lot to many of the faces looking back up at me.

Noongar elders who had kindly given Molly their time, wisdom and knowledge, community members who had known and fondly remembered Molly’s dad, Gavin, the friends and family who had watch Molly grow up to be the debut author who sat before them now.

Salt River Road is a moving debut that beautifully discusses the many facets of grief while respectfully representing all that Molly learnt from her time with local elders.

It is a story that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

Billie-Jo Whitbread is the events co-ordinator and box office manager at Paperbark Merchants in Albany