Fiona’s Diary

‘It’s okay!’ I called up to Abbie, who was waiting patiently for me at the top of the steep stone steps. ‘You go ahead for a bit!’ ‘Okay!’ Only thirty minutes into our strenuous two hour walk, from Monterosso to Vernazza in Italy’s stunning Cinque Terra region, and already I was lagging behind my much…

Strength of Hope: A personal reflection by Fiona Harris It was in June of 2021, lockdown number five in Melbourne, when I got a call from Martin Hughes, my publisher at Affirm Press. ‘Would you be interested in writing the memoir of a ninety-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor named, Abram Goldberg?’ he asked down the phone. ‘I’d…

In Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, the eponymous hero sings about his ability to write his way out – out of poverty, out of strife, and subsequently into the history books. But during Victoria’s strict lockdown in 2020 (due to the Virus That Shall Not Be Named), I had to write my way in –…

We’ve been parents for sixteen years. More time than some. Much less than many others. We’d never dare call ourselves parenting experts, because parenting is far from an exact science and isn’t a skill you can master. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Parenting? I NAILED it.”? If you have, I’d be double checking with…

It goes without saying that when a family of four are locked in a house together for weeks on end it can create a fairly fraught atmosphere. There are obvious downsides to four humans over the age of twelve being in such close proximity to each other, especially for adults who aren’t used to being…

I always dreamed of being a writer. When I discovered Enid Blyton’s, The Enchanted Wood, as a very young girl, I was immediately hooked and began to eagerly devour every EB book I could get my hands on. As Enid’s magical tales and stories quickly faded into the background for most children upon reaching early…

A few weeks ago, the first four books in our series, The Super Moopers, were unleashed onto the world. Aimed at readers between five and eight years old, The Super Moopers are set in Moopertown, where everyone is special in their own special way. The books are illustrated by Scott Edgar and written by myself, and published under the new Bonnier imprint, Sally Rippin Presents.

For three years I was married to Paul Keating. Not the actual Placido Domingo of Australian politics…

When New Year’s Eve with the kids doesn’t quite turn out as planned…

We don’t really celebrate Halloween in our family, and by this I mean we don’t walk around to our neighbour’s houses, knocking on their doors and asking them for handfuls of jellybeans and jubes. But a few years ago, my seven-year-old daughter asked if we could play a game…

Four weeks after the birth of my first daughter, I returned to work performing in a television comedy show three days a week. At the time it seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan; in hindsight, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.

I was about eight years old when I realised that humans could actually survive until the age of forty; a revelation that was absolutely shocking to me. Who would even want to live that long? Surely the unfortunate folk who fell into this ancient age bracket were well past their use-by date and completely incapable of contributing to society in any kind of meaningful way.

There is no such thing as an off-limits area in a home that contains young children. A door could be locked and bolted 24/7 with a huge neon sign on it blinking “NO ENTRY” and it would mean absolutely nothing to the seven-year-old who is desperate to show you the cartwheel she has recently mastered, or the proud three-year-old who has just devoured an entire punnet of blueberries and wants to wipe the remnants of them on your white t-shirt

I like cleaning. Ok, that’s a lie…I LOVE cleaning. I love tidying and sorting my house on a regular basis and the feeling of satisfaction I get after a particularly productive spree. It’s not just my own home I enjoy giving a good spruce up to. I have been known to eagerly offer to clean friends’ houses’, and, more alarmingly, some of them have taken me up on it.

My daughter started back at school this week. It’s always an emotional time, the start of a new school year. It’s a time when we reflect on the fact that the little baby you vividly remember cradling in your arms as if it were only yesterday is suddenly a little person starting grade three and you wonder how the hell that happened.

I was recently asked to perform a show and to run some comedy workshops at my old high school. Apart from being a lot of fun and slightly surreal, this day also included catching up with my favourite all-time teacher, who, yes, is still there.

So here we are smack bang in the middle of yet another festive season where I find myself running around like a headless chook, trying to make sure I catch up with every person I have ever known since birth, buying presents for at least half of those people and feeding about a quarter of them.

Mother’s Day is around the corner and, as I wait with baited breath to receive the obligatory homemade bookmark and jar of potpourri from my two daughters, it’s a perfect time to reflect on my own mum.

When I was asked to write the “write tools” piece for Damon Youngs “darkly wise, rudely great” blog, I had to think hard about which of my all-important and indispensable writing tools is the most crucial to my process as a writer.

My daughter’s school recently had their annual Book Fair Parade…

My father and I have absolutely nothing in common. He is team manager at the Melbourne football club and I work in the arts.

“Bye, Dad! See you tomorrow!” Abbie shouted to her father as we drove away from the house and headed towards the Hume. Trying to explain the concept of time to my four-year-old is impossible at the best of times, and even if it wasn’t, I didn’t have the heart to remind her that she wouldn’t be seeing her dad tomorrow or for the next seven weeks.

I’m writing this week’s blog from the desk of a person I’ve never met, in an office I don’t work in, wearing clothes that aren’t mine. No, I’m not Frank Abagnale on the run from Tom Hanks. I’m on the set of a TV series I’m working on.

There is one moment from my childhood that stays with me to this day. It was the early eighties and the one night when our usually drab school hall was transformed by a magical mirror ball that twirled and twinkled above a colourful kaleidoscope of purple velvet cords, silver satin dresses with ruffled sleeves and patterned knitwear of all varieties; the St. Leo’s Primary School Grade Six Disco was in full swing.