Knowing how libraries have improved so many Australians’ lives, the State Library of NSW recently invited people to share their personal experiences of libraries. As part of its 200th anniversary celebration, the library also commissioned photographers to capture images and stories from library fans across NSW.
We share stories from three well-known Aussie faces, Nagi Maehashi, Annabel Crabb and Liz Eliss. These are extracts from The Library That Made Me: 200 Years of the State Library of NSW.
Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats
I grew up in Lane Cove, Sydney, one of three children. Lane Cove Public School was literally across the road from the Lane Cove Library. Both my parents worked, and it was always a struggle for them to pay for after-school care for the three of us. So, the moment we were old enough, they pulled us out of childcare and told us to go to the library after school.
But the thing is, it became cool! All these kids stopped going to after-school care, and we would hang out in front of the library for a while, and then hang out inside. It’s daggy, but I guess for our parents it was free childcare. We’d go to the milk bar and get a white paper bag of mixed lollies filled with as many freckles and caramel drops as 30 cents would buy, then we would go and hang out at the library. I did that every day with my friends from Grade Four until I went to high school.
I remember The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix were really in, as well as The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Sweet Valley High – all those series from my childhood. We couldn’t afford to buy them, so we would go in and borrow them, read them, and talk about them. And take them home… The first cookbook I borrowed from the library was probably by Maggie Beer because I had a massive soft spot for Maggie. I would have loved for her to be my grandmother.
Nagi’s most memorable reads
Ever since I can remember, I’ve obsessively tried to collect the vintage Australian Women’s Weekly books – the thin ones you used to buy from the newsagent. My favourite cookbook of all time is the Australian Women’s Weekly Best Ever Recipes, first published in the 1980s. It was quite far ahead of its time, the green one with the chicken on the cover with piped potato around it. To this day, if I’m stuck for an idea, especially with baking, I’ll always get inspiration from it. When I was doing my last cookbook, Tonight, I was thinking, ‘What did I used to make?’ And flicking through, I remembered those cinnamon buns, one of the first things I ever made, almost folded pikelets brushed with butter and topped with cinnamon and sugar.
That’s what gave me the idea for a cinnamon tea cake for my book. I think of my website, RecipeTin Eats, as a digital library, a digital recipe book. The name comes from those tins that people used to put recipe cards in – something like a card catalogue in a library.
Reading cookbooks is pleasurable for me. I read recipes like most people read novels, front to back. I’ll sit at the hairdresser not flicking through a magazine but reading new cookbooks.
I have a theory that when Yotam Ottolenghi came on the scene with his book, Jerusalem, one of the reasons it was so huge was because the stories in it were so good, really well written. Everyone was on this wave of Ottolenghi madness, but for me it was the stories.
I encourage people to borrow cookbooks from their library. It’s ironic because I’m a cookbook author, but I would buy so many cookbooks and use just one recipe, so I started borrowing them instead. Then I’ll buy the ones that I use multiple recipes from. It’s a great way to discover gems. I’ve got some recipes on my website that come from some obscure cookbook or other I’ve borrowed from the library. I’ve found one recipe, tried it, loved it, shared it. Cookbooks are expensive, and they take up room, which is why I’m so flattered when people buy mine. I still have my Lane Cove library card.
Annabel Crabb, journalist and TV presenter
When you grow up in a regional pocket, libraries are not to be assumed. The nearest town to the Adelaide Plains sheep and grain farm where I grew up wasn’t really big enough for a library, and so we did what country folk often do: we improvised.
My mother is a lifelong reader, as was her mother. And something of a book stockpiler, so we had a decent if eclectic supply of children’s books (Lewis Carroll, Arthur Ransome, Charles and Mary Lamb’s child-friendly adaptations of Shakespeare) along with a range of adult books that made little sense to me. But the State Library of South Australia, bless them, offered a remote lending service. And once a month, we’d head to the train station just on the outskirts of Two Wells and pick up a package of books.
The rules were that children’s books were selected at random. Adults could specify topics of interest. So every month, you just… got what you got. Honestly? There’s a lot to be said for this method of book selection. Many’s the time I curled my lip when the package was undone, only to find – my initial impressions having been worn down by boredom or lack of alternatives – that I was actually more interested in corals, or dinosaurs, or irrigation, than I realised.
Every month the books would be repacked and popped on the train, in exchange for a new batch. I wonder, now, how many families around South Australia the library was nourishing in this way.
The train stopped stopping at my town by the time I reached adolescence, so the books stopped coming; a tiny, forgettable crenellation of disappointment. But a pattern was established. I’ve always been a random reader. A carrion feeder, happy to prop myself up with whatever arrives in the mail, or presents itself on an op-shop shelf.
I augmented my remote-lending discoveries with acquisitive rampages at country fairs and gala days, where 50 cents would get you 10 back issues of Reader’s Digest.
My primary school library was small, but useful and friendly. I also turned to the public library at Munno Para (now known as the Playford Library), a half-hour drive from our place, where every week or two I’d sweep a pile of novels off the shelf and stolidly chew through them, horribly conscious of my inability to tell the difference between good writing and bad writing.
Gradually, I started to work it out. And I clearly recall the moment I finished a library book (Frank Moorhouse) and knew simultaneously that it was a genuinely terrific book, and also that I knew exactly why.
The State Library of NSW is my adoptive library now; lucky me. And when I was 37, I had one of the most magical invitations of my life: to launch Cold Light, the third volume in Frank Moorhouse’s magnificent Edith Campbell Berry trilogy, in the peerlessly beautiful Friends Room at the State Library of NSW. I’d never met Frank before then, though I’d read almost everything he’d ever written. It was more than two decades since a book of his had led me to that small epiphany by way of the Munno Para Library, and I was grateful for the opportunity to thank him.
To which I would add, now, a general note of thanks to every librarian I have ever been blessed to meet. Librarians, you are the switchboard operators who dash about plugging human brains into things that delight and surprise them. I see how you thrive on human curiosity like oxygen; the care you take with your work, your determination that attention must be paid, that things must not be forgotten.
Thank you to whichever librarian it was who packed those parcels of books and made sure they made the train to Two Wells. I’ll never know who you are, but you taught me to be curious. The greatest gift of all.
Liz Ellis, TV host and retired netballer
Growing up, my two loves were netball and reading. Mum played netball, and I loved watching her get engrossed in the contest on the court every Saturday – passing, catching, defending, reading play. So naturally netball became my passion. Netball was where I learned not only physical literacy, but also the value of teamwork, resilience and communication.
Dad read voraciously, and I loved seeing him, at the end of a full day’s physical labouring at the factory where he worked, sitting quietly, engrossed in anything from Ion Idriess to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. So of course reading became my passion. Reading was where I learned not only scholarly literacy, but also the value of ideas, imagination and critical thinking.
My two favourite places were the local netball courts and the local library. The former afforded me a place to be loud, competitive and physical. The latter was where I could be quiet, thoughtful and still. The library was the contemplative yin to netball’s active yang. I spent an inordinate amount of time in Hawkesbury Library in my home town of Windsor, NSW. I loved going there with my little sister after a day at school, and spending what seemed like hours roaming the shelves to choose a pile of books to take home and devour. Mum worked at the local council offices next to the library, so we would often walk over after school and while away the time until Mum finished work by reading, getting shooshed and chasing each other down information rabbit holes in the myriad encyclopaedias on offer.
While the library was by no means large, for a kid growing up in Western Sydney in the ’70s and ’80s – before the internet – my local library was my gateway to the world. I read everything from Edgar Allan Poe to Louisa May Alcott, Spike Milligan to Carl Sagan. Eventually the library purchased some computers for public use, and it was there that the digital world opened up for me.
Liz’s most memorable reads
Spending time there with the freedom to explore the world has left me with the permanent feeling that libraries are magical places, where adventure lurks on every shelf and keyboard.
It also made me determined to grow my own personal library. As a kid, I constantly requested books for my birthday, and the biggest item in my bedroom was a bookcase. I loved waking up in the morning looking at the spines of books and being thrilled by the stories that were constantly at my fingertips. This passion has continued into my adult life, and now I live in a home littered with books.
In a changing world, the local library is a constant friend. Sure, it has evolved over the years to be more interactive and fun, with a greater variety of audio and digital resources. But the magic of books on the shelves, containing adventures waiting to be had, sits at the heart of these important places.
Submit your own story
The Library That Made Me celebrates the power of libraries across Australia. The State Library of NSW invites you to share a story about your own local library, and the role it plays in your life. You can share your story and be published on the State Library of NSW website.
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