As a writer of fiction, with many tales set in the past, Millthorpe writer Kim Kelly was fascinated by the parallels between the current COVID pandemic and those that have happened in years long gone.
From the Bubonic Plague to the Spanish Flu, and even the Hong Kong flu in the 1960's, Australia has had its fair share of society disrupting diseases wash up on our island's shores.
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For Ms Kelly the events of early 2020 sparked a family memory that smouldered away for a while before it grew and finally engulfed her.
"When we were in the midst of COVID I was a bit bemused and freaked out not only by the lockdowns, but by all the panicking and hoarding that was going on," she said.
"So I began to wonder how did we cope in the past when we had pandemics?"
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With many of her stories set in Australia's colourful past, Ms Kelly has researched events such as the Spanish Flu at length and found that the reactions by individuals and government were strikingly similar.
Fed by the fear of a pandemic such as what had overtaken India, it was the reaction of Sydney City Council at the time that Ms Kelly has utilised to bring about a fictional tale based on real family members.
"People pulled really closely together during the Spanish Flu, particularly in regional areas," she said. "Then I remembered my grandmother telling me about how her brothers, during an outbreak of the Bubonic plague in the early 1900's, were rat catchers."
"Sydney council were very quick to react and closed the borders and improved sanitation by killing the rats," she said.
They had a very swift reaction where they closed borders and improved sanitation by killing the rats.
- Kim Kelly.
With a bounty of tuppence a rat paid to residents in the poorer parts of Sydney, and rat catchers employed by the council, the story evolved thanks to Ms Kelly's appropriation of an Irish relative who became the fictional character Patrick O'Reilly.
"O'Reilly was from Tralee in Ireland who fell in love with Rosie Hughes and needed a job to keep her," Ms Kelly said. "The parish priest found him a job on council as a rat catcher but the problem was that he quite liked rats and found it difficult to kill them,"
This Saturday, as part of the Blayney Anglican Parish Book Fair, Ms Kelly will be discussing her book The Rat Catcher and other aspects of writing in the Blayney Anglican Church at 10am.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
