More than 17 years ago, the central Victorian town of Clunes was presented with the idea of either becoming home to its own saleyards or a dormitory suburb of Ballarat.
“We didn’t want either option to happen,” resident Tess Brady says. “We knew if we didn’t take the bull by the horns something was going to happen to us.”
They decided to create an annual event that would put the village of 1,700 people on the map but wasn’t “just another wine and cheese festival”. Having attended a Booktown festival in England, Brady felt the event could be easily replicated in her home town.
“I kept looking at the community and seeing books everywhere,” Brady says.
“The Clunes agricultural show wasn’t just about fairy floss and kids’ rides, it was about sharing the knowledge of farming. Wesley college [which has a campus in Clunes] is about books and learning. And the Clunes Museum is all about telling the important story of gold.
“So you could start to see this undercurrent of books and learning. Books are our raison d’etre.”
A book town is a rural village with a concentration of secondhand and rare bookshops; the concept was launched in the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales in 1961. There are now 20 book towns recognised by the International Organisation of Book Towns.
Clunes launched its Booktown festival in 2007, transitioning the main street into a book fossicker’s paradise. For the rest of the year there are just two brick-and-mortar bookshops in the town, and three more based locally which operate online.
But for one weekend in autumn, there are more than 90 sellers.
Brady says the festival has stood the test of time because of the sense of connection festivalgoers build with the rural town.
“I always find time to go hunting through the stalls and find things I didn’t know I was looking for,” Brady says. “It’s always fascinating to me, and I come home with the most unusual things.”
Regional book festivals ‘a different beast’
There are more than 15 festivals in regional Victoria celebrating literature and storytelling.
Sue Beal, the chief executive officer of Creative Clunes, attributes the growth in regional festivals for writers and creatives to the movement of “cultural activists” from the city to the country.
“But it should be remembered that regional communities have long and proud traditions of making their own art, entertainment, culture – it’s just never been noticed by the mainstream,” she says.
“What’s clearly growing is the number of self-published authors eager for the chance to front potential readers.”
Tim Jarvis, the president of Book People, the national peak body for booksellers, says the “large contingent of the arts-inclined” seeking a tree change in response to the cost of living has resulted in more cultural events popping up in the regions.
“A big-city literary festival is a very expensive affair, where regional festivals tend to be volunteer-organised, volunteer-run and operate on a shoestring budget. There’s something nimble and pleasingly idiosyncratic about such arrangements. And they can still attract big names.
“A regional festival is quite a different beast … a more boutique, more intimate affair where you’re getting together, building your relationships with people you know and getting to know other people.”
Jacqui Horwood, a author, moved from Melbourne to Clunes with her partner in 2022. She now serves on the Creative Clunes board and is set to present at Clunes Booktown this year.
“Books and arts are in the lifeblood of Clunes,” she says. “There are so many creative people living in the Goldfields area.”
Australian book sales were down 3% in 2023, according to Nielsen BookScan, but the decline is on the back of a pandemic boom in book sales. Horwood says people realised “how much books and reading meant to them” during the lengthy lockdowns.
“The act of reading means making time to slow down and ignore everything that is going on around you,” she says.
Brady says despite the growing popularity of other forms of media, the celebration of physical books at the annual Booktown festival has not dimmed.
“I write books, I have books and I read books,” she says. “They’re an enormous part of my life. There’s something quite nice about taking a book out and reading it on a train or a cafe and something quite comforting having them around.
“I don’t think my bookshelf would look quite the same with Kindles.”
