Because it is a small festival in a small town, there is more congeniality apparent than at many larger festivals where audiences seem more distanced. This was illustrated a few years back when the American poet, Mary Jo Salter, was at the festival and gave a reading of heart-breaking beauty in a session with Tim Winton. The following morning she went to purchase some film at a chemist’s but the woman at the checkout wouldn’t let her buy it. ‘I was at your reading yesterday,’ she said, ‘and you made me cry. Here, take it, it’s yours. ‘Such friendliness tends to be a feature among the writers as well. There is a camaraderie that usually develops among the writers who gather each year, for they spend a lot of time with one another in convivial circumstances – eating and drinking and attending readings together. It’s a pleasant change from the more fraught circumstances that can attend larger conferences and festivals, where the atmosphere seems competitive and the writers wary.

The central event each year is the award ceremony for the Philip Hodgins Medal. It is usually combined with a gala dinner, but this year the organising committee decided to scale back the festivities and re-emphasise the literary underpinnings. This included a finely nuanced talk by the poet Brendan Ryan, focusing on what he called ‘vulnerable landscapes’ in the work of Hodgins. Cash aside, sensitive critical attention is the best tribute a writer can be paid. The Hodgins Medal is awarded for distinguished literary accomplishment (carrying the additional tribute of $3,000) and the judge, Jan Owen, chose Carmel Bird as this year’s recipient. The actual medal is designed and made each year by Jim Curry, a local artist. Handsome as it is, everyone is more eager to see what the container for it will be. This year Curry whimsically constructed a miniature water-tank stand to hold the medal. Like other tanks in the Mallee these days, this one was perfectly dry.

The following day saw what many attendees considered the highlight of the festival: an interview with Robert Dessaix, conducted by James Griffin of ABC TV’s The Last Word. Dessaix has a marvellous ability to turn his life inside out, so an audience gets a sense of what it feels like to be Robert Dessaix. There is a generosity at work here, along with a curious mixture of sophistication and vulnerability. For instance, in answer to a question about the consequences of being an adopted child, Dessaix said he is without a strong sense of either courage or shame because he grew up with a weak sense of family. Griffin adeptly drew Dessaix out, but once Dessaix is out there’s no stopping the effervescence.

Other sessions that day included a conversation with the screenwriter Andrew Knight, who co-wrote the television series SeaChange, and one of the actors from that programme, Kevin Harrington. If there was any doubt of just how appealing SeaChange was, the cross-section of people attending made clear that fans extended from teenagers to pensioners. The session afforded an American the rare opportunity to hear an unguarded critique of his country’s dominance in popular culture by the very people at whom it is aimed. The day ended with a panel of food writers, chaired by the irrepressible Stefano who peeled away the skin of mere amiability to reveal some genuine differences between the writers Elizabeth Cheong, Matthew Evans, Donna Hay, and the wine expert Tim White (of the fine nose and sharp tongue).

The venue for Sunday’s events was the garden of a private home whose grounds were graced with lovely trees and flowers. Novelist Michael Meehan and short story writer Kerry Conway talked with James Griffin about their experience growing up and living in the Mallee. Meehan gracefully developed his notion that the Mallee was the perfect place for a writer to be raised in, both for what it had and for what it lacked, since absence can be as crucial to the imagination as presences. Conway spoke beautifully about the trials and joys of farming in the Mallee. A short story writer of clear-eyed sensitivity, her own story held the audience rapt. As Meehan and Conway demonstrated, in regional festivals like Mildura’s, writers can have a powerful effect when they render back to people an image of their own landscape.

Peter Timms took up the topic ‘What Use Is Nature?’. Speaking in a controversial mode, he dissected current attitudes towards the environment, arguing at one point for the utilitarian necessity of seeing ourselves as separate from nature in order to care for it properly. Where as in the previous session one felt an easy flow between speaker and audience, here there was more resistance. But writers need to function as both switches and capacitors in the electrical system of thought.

The final session was devoted to poetry. Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Jan Owen, and I read poems that exemplified the sorts of places poetry can take us to. In Wallace-Crabbe’s work these places are often regions where the play of language turns into celebrations of life. Owen, a traveller of the world – both inwardly and outwardly – takes us along and opens our eyes to what she sees so vividly. My contribution included a poem about Wisconsin by the American poet John Koethe and three poems, by way of memorial, for the late Melbourne poet and artist Dennis Nicholson. There, in the afternoon shade, was much warmth.

The one writer we didn’t hear from over the weekend was Christos Tsiolkas, whose session, ‘Tough Questions’, took place the following day at the local TAFE. But Tsiolkas, with his ready wit and infectious laugh, was very much in evidence at various sessions – as were many other writers. Because Mildura is a writers’ festival, in the sense that it exists for the writers as much as for the attendees, authors are conscious of the opportunity to speak to one another. Unlike larger festivals, there are no concurrent sessions at Mildura, so everyone has the chance to hear everyone else. It’s like the difference between a smorgasbord, where one simply eats, and a fine restaurant – like Stefano’s – where one dines.