A plaque honouring Olga Masters was unveiled by Mal Dibden on the wall of Well Thumbed Books, Cobargo, on the Saturday of the Olga Masters Festival.
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It read: Olga Masters 1919-1986. The short stories and novels of Olga Masters have inspired readers the world over. Her acclaimed literary career began here in Cobargo.
“The first time I heard of Olga Masters was while I was milking the cows and I heard on the radio of a female author who had won a literary award for a story set in the Far South Coast about rural family life,” Mr Dibden said.
“I was immediately interested and bought Loving Daughters, set in Wyndham.
“The story was so real and her characters can be recognised in any rural community.
“Over the last six months or so we have been having monthly meetings at Well Thumbed Books with Mary Williams.
“Mary, a talented lady, has been picking out phrases and paragraphs that have shown how completely Olga can paint the picture.
“Her characters are life size.
“Even when they say very little you know what they are thinking.
“You know these people.
“She was an acute observer of human nature, and had the skill to write it down so simply and powerfully.
“When I read one of Olga’s books, every page is a story and joy.”
Mr Dibden said his mother‘s family lived on a dairy property near Wyndham.
About 20 years ago he met with a cousin of his mother’s who had also lived as a child in Wyndham and he told Mr Dibden that “the kids had free range over hundreds of acres of farmland and forest”.
“On hot days the creek down the hill was the favourite fun place,” Mr Dibden said.
“A cavalcade of kids of all age, and dogs head that way.
“The dogs were a motley collection of fox terriers, greyhounds, bitzers, cattle dogs and curly-haired red retriever dogs, all running up and down in the shallows and testing the depths of the deeper holes.
“One day a young girl about six or eight got out of her depth and could have possibly drowned – however a red retriever dog plunged in and supported her and helped her to the edge of the creek.
“My mother’s cousin told me that the young girl was Olga Lawler whose family lived up the hill near the Pambula/Wyndham road.
“So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if ever you see a curly haired red retriever dog these days raise your hat to it!
“And raise your hat to Olga Masters whose books are wonderful stories of small town life from the 1880s to the 1980s.”
