Current members
Edie Eicas
Member since July 2013
Growing up with parents who navigated through eight languages made it important to me to master one. The dictionary, a mine of words, led to further reading and finally to fiction and poetry.
How do you tell a story in a few well-chosen words? Can those words be music to the ears? How does story and sentence structure lead to ambivalence and to open-ended meanings? What messages are embedded in the text? So many questions and so much to play with.
Don Sinnott
Coordinator since February 2023
Member since July 2013
Writing was for me an essential tool of trade during a professional career in government, engineering research, industry, academia and management. Each of the sectors in which I practised had its own lexicon and rules of expression and my writing had to be applicable to the target audience (which is a universal rule, of course).
Now, as a retiree, I can choose my audience and style. I’ve written and had published a biography of two figures significant in SA, ghost written a biography of a Sudanese refugee and produced some limited distribution historical reviews.
Currently, I’m tackling a novel—who knows how that will go? But, most of all, I’m enjoying myself interacting with members of the wonderful Burnside Writers’ Group as we share our work and expand our skill sets.
Georgette Gerdes
Member since 2016
Write whatever you like! – Seamus Heaney
I am interested in art, war, koalas, death, fluffy dogs, Celtic mythology, politics, trees, autism, disorders of the mind, recalcitrant children, old age, trauma, alcoholism, Irish culture, myths/legends/history, inequality, mortality, inhumanity, music and nature.
I draw on personal experience as an Irish traditional musician, mother and retired GP. I am a devotee of writing poetry and prose with an emphasis on the human condition.
Finally, I am published in BWGs’ four anthologies and the Frances Folk Festival poetry anthology.
Artwork by: Marc Chagall, Anna Munch
Nell Holland
Member since 2016
Who I am and my writing is affected by life’s experiences and there are three main influences.
Grandmothers who showed how to survive whatever life throws at you, and in the process revealed stories to remember.
A mother with a love of books and writing, and an infectious sense of the ridiculous. She encouraged me to find humour in insurmountable situations. Her laughter echoes in my heart.
And a teacher who revealed the beauty of words and the depths to be found in literary classics. Miss Carr will never know how she compelled indifferent students to be more than they imagined possible.
Life has shown pathways unimaginable to the child I once was. I’ve been given adventures and memories more enduring than wealth.
I write for pleasure and am delighted if my words please.
Anne McKenzie
Member since 2016
Reading and writing are my two passions in life. Food is a close third!
I read widely and that reading inspires my writing. I enjoy writing poetry, prose pieces, short stories and memoir, frequently drawing on my work as a child protection social worker and on my personal and family history.
I grew up in Western Australia, living in both Perth and rural areas. My home is now South Australia where I have lived for more than forty years
The Burnside Writers’ Group has offered me support, encouragement and constructive feedback and helped me grow as a writer.
Roger Monk
Member since 2016
I am a former banker, academic, organisational psychologist and riesling maker.
Now a published crime writer, behaviourist, book editor and riesling drinker.
Robert Schmidt
Member since 2016
I joined Burnside Writers Group in 2015. At that time, I had only been writing three years.
I enjoy modern music and my reading interests have always been autobiographies—especially of a musical nature. I have books from poet-turned-singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen through to the 1980s Australian group ‘The Go Betweens’. I like to know what makes them tick which gets interesting with someone like Tom Waits.
I also have interests in sporting icons and entrepreneurs. The latter includes those like James Packer, Alan Bond and Rupert Murdoch. My personal sporting interests has included marathon running.
My own personal writing style is typically about those everyday annoying things that happen to us all. I have my own way of looking at these and try to emphasise the irony and humour in these events. I am pleased when I get a chuckle from my readers.
David Hope
Member 2017-2021, September 2022-
I was born in Sunderland UK and brought up in Edinburgh, emigrating to Australia with my family at 16. Although I was a teenager in the 60s I was a fairly naïve one when I arrived in Australia.
I have had a long career in the public sector as an employee and a consultant across Australia and in Asia.
Along the way, I have lectured part-time at Flinders University in Financial Management and Risk Management in the Masters of Public Policy. I served in the Army Reserve in Adelaide, Canberra and Darwin.
I have two wonderful children, Cameron and Bronwyn, from a previous marriage. My partner Jennifer and I live in Beaumont and we enjoy many visits from Jennifer’s fantastic daughters Emeshe, Ari and Noni.
My past writing has largely been technical papers and manuals but I am currently writing a book on the River Murray, its people and places.
Karen Agutter
Member 2017-2019, 2021
I have always been an avid reader and a passionate learner and after twenty years of working as a nurse I decided it was time for a change of career. Inspired by fifteen years of living in Europe and the UK I headed off to university to study history and languages. I loved studying so much that I finished up with two PhDs and was fortunate to go on to teach and to be involved in some wonderful research projects. Today I work as a professional historian and am widely published in Australian and migration history.
Burnside Writing Group offers me the chance to mix with, and learn from, a diverse group of people who are equally as passionate about expanding their knowledge, reading, and perfecting their skills as writers.
Lawrie Stanford
Past Coordinator
Member since 2018
My writing dwells on the idiosyncrasies, peculiarities and vagaries of everyday human behaviour—presented with tongue-in-cheek, whimsy and humour. I hope the reader can relax and have a laugh with me—especially if they recognise themselves in the writing.
The Burnside Writers Group is a positive, supportive group of people who enjoy each other’s company. Experimentation and diversity are encouraged and hence, improvement and growth in our writing.
Rossana Mora
Member 2018-2019, 2021-
Writing has been my passion since I was 11 years old. I kept a journal since that time but I destroyed it some years ago when I moved from my home country to Australia. Tearing out the pages of my journal, containing the thoughts and feelings of my life, was a challenge but I felt I needed to do it to make the dramatic transition in my life complete.
Today, writing in English has opened a new chapter in my life and joining the Burnside Writers Group has enriched my experience plentifully. The group has given me the precious opportunity for my writing to be improved and for my stories to be shared. I cherish that dearly.
I hope you enjoy my stories.
Fran Collins
Member since February 2021
My current journey into fiction writing is relatively recent. My prior writing was associated with a lifelong career in teaching and training in public health and education. I’ve always been a gypsy and have worked and played in most states and territories of Australia and I have also ventured on a ten year journey in South East Asia, teaching and training Thai educators.
All was not work, however. I discovered my passion for oral story-telling to adults. This genre of story-telling is based on my lived experience and is performative in nature.
While I am still excited by performance story-telling, narrative fiction is a different but natural progression as a form of expression and I look forward to learning, experimenting with, and honing my story-telling in narrative with this group.
Jean Stewart
Member since March 2023
I remember scribbling short stories as a child. Adulthood, particularly when I emigrated to Australia from South Africa in 1980, meant shelving creative writing to focus on life’s practicalities – earning a living! Moving towards retirement I decided to have a go at a short story competition. Inclusion in a published anthology pushed me to achieve a goal of having a short story compilation published by the time I turned 70 (book came out in 2021).
My encouragement has come from my mother, excellent high school teachers, and later in Australia a supportive partner plus a ferocious editor. Short story writers such as Elizabeth Strout and Maeve Binchy have influenced.
Through membership of the Burnside Writers’ Group I am learning to stretch myself by trying other genres, although my default will always be short story fiction.
Mandy Stirling
Member since March 2023
I have recently moved to Adelaide from the UK where I spent my professional working life working initially as a Paediatric Nurse in London and Glasgow before going onto train and work as a Parent Infant Psychotherapist and worked in Bristol. This work gave me the very privileged position of being able to listen to hundreds of families tell me their stories. These were all fascinating and at times complicated. My writing experience extended to writing these stories in the form of records, reports, assessment, formulations and academic papers. I have always yearned to be able to write creatively using my imagination. I can now gain help from the tremendous collective experience of the incredible members of the Burnside Writers Group to help me achieve this. I hope that one day I will feel able to write stories inspired by my personal and professional experiences.
Burnside Writers’ Group Founders
Helen Anderson
Helen was a talented watercolourist, garden designer and travel scrapbooker. She was also writing her husband’s biography when she realised how invaluable it could be for fellow writers to be supported in their writing quests. She approached the Burnside Council with the idea and the group began meeting, first in the library, then in the Community Centre.
Helen greatly influenced the ethos of respect for one another and nurturing, which persists today in the group, and created the environment for writers to meet for encouragement and inspiration.
Sadly, Helen’s plans to write her husband’s story were never completed. He died suddenly and her energy for writing the story suffered. In time, she may have recovered her energy for this task, but fate had its own plans and Helen died in September 2020.
Helen’s legacy to us lives on through the Burnside Writers’ Group.
The image is Helen’s favourite flower, the Peace Rose
Iris Rowe
Growing up with five siblings on the isolated, rural coastal property on Kangaroo Island when the world was struggling to rise again after the devastating effects of the Great World Depression, and then during and after World War 2, I learned true values in life.
In many ways, my childhood years were idyllic, equipping me for my future career in nursing, marriage and a family.
Writing and storytelling has always fascinated me.
In 2013, I was invited to help form the Burnside Writers’ Group. The group has flourished as members joined from all walks of life, participating with enthusiasm, pride and respect. Being part of this group of writers, has been inspirational, motivating and rewarding.
After retiring from the writers’ group during 2020, I continue writing my stories. As I write, the colourful tapestry of my family history is being woven together.
Past Members
Our membership changes over time: some move on, others join. The following former members have agreed to be remembered as former members by having their photos and bios retained on the site, along with any written contributions they posted.
Maarten van de Loo
Member between 2016 and February 2021
Maarten WAS born in 1930, and after completing military training in 1952, undertook agricultural science study and subsequently worked in various facets of the agrochemical industry. This included as a researcher, regulator, importer and state manager.
In retirement, Maarten continued to be productive in a range of charity organisations. In addition, he was encouraged by others to write down his formative experiences over the four years as a teenager in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) where he was incarcerated in Japanese prison camps. His story is chronicled in the book ‘The Search For My Father: ex-POW 2226 Remembers’.
Maarten found the experience of writing to be fulfilling and enjoyed contributing his writing through the Burnside Writers Group until ill-health intervened. He died in September 2023.
Sharon Apold
Member 2020-2021
Gail Orr
Member 2017 – June 2021
Burnside Writers Group 