Gabriel Gaté and Boroondara Libraries

"Public libraries give a chance to everybody to enrich their life with the pleasures of books, words and images."

Merci, Regards, Gabriel Gaté

Gabriel Gaté is a chef with an international reputation as a cookery author, television presenter and cookery teacher.

Visit his website here.

Australia Day Holiday.

All five library branches will be closed on Australia Day, Wednesday 26 January.

Normal hours will resume on Thursday 27 January.

Remember that our virtual library is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Click here to access our online catalogue.

Via our webpage you can check our opening hours, renew your library items, place reservations, book a pc, and more, much, more.

David Metzenthen and Libraries

“Open books in an open library open minds in a community open to education and imagination – one hundred and fifty years of library service is a priceless gift of enduring benefit

Thank you to all.’’

David Metzenthen is a local author and one of Australia's top writers for young people. His novels have been universally acclaimed and many have won prizes.

Find out more about David Metzenthen here

or here

Inga Clendinnen and Boroondara Libraries

"When I was small I thought that books were strangely-constructed magic boxes secreted in odd, below-eye-level places (an old bird-cage, the potato basket) where people under three feet in height could discover them and remove them to the placid silence of under-the-dining-room-table for close consultation.

Thus my artful mother secured her undisturbed afternoons.

Later I would find whole wallfuls of those magic boxes and exactly the same sense of luxurious isolation in the private pools of light in the Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria.

Nowadays my favourite library is the Kew branch of Boorondara : a scatter of computer-yoked adolescents, but mainly old greyheads and wildly bobbing younger ones joyfully pillaging bright shelves, and decamping with armfuls of magic boxes, every one of them holding a world.

Bravo, Boorondara, and happy 150th birthday! "

Dr. Inga Clendinnen (AO) is is an Australian author and historian, anthropologist and academic.

She is a regular borrower from Boroondara Libraries.

Carole Wilkinson and Kew Library

Anyone who says people don’t read as much as they used to hasn’t been in a public library lately. They are busy, vibrant, multi-functional places.

Kew Library Recollection

"I started going to the Kew Library about 20 years ago. It isn’t my local library, and that was back in the days when you usually had to prove you lived or worked in the area to join a public library. Kew Library, however, had a specialist Genealogy section, and people out of the area were permitted to join. Being a keen family historian, I joined up. The great thing was, that all the books usually reserved as reference books at the State Library or the Genealogical Society Library were borrowable at Kew, which was great for me as I had a small child and couldn’t study the books in the library.

While I was there, my daughter, Lili, climbed on the big bear, I borrowed books for myself, and for her. So it wasn’t unusual for me to emerge with a stack of books.

Once I became a writer, I need books for research and I’ve borrowed books from Kew on many diverse subjects such as Ned Kelly, the Olympic Games and Russian folk tales.

Through inter-library loans, Kew Library has also been my gateway to books in libraries in other suburbs, other states and even other countries. Nowadays, you can join any public library, but Kew is still my borrowing library of choice."

Carole Wilkinson is an award-winning author of books for children. She has a longstanding fascination with dragons and is interested in the history of everything.

Carmel Bird and Balwyn Library

"For a long time I lived within a few minutes' walk from the Balwyn branch of the Boroondara Library, on Whitehorse Road. Many years ago my publisher had asked me to write a book about how to write fiction, and the deadline was looming. I wanted to construct the book with a short story at the end, while the chapters leading up to this would refer to the issues involved in writing that story. I wanted the discussion of writing the story to be authentic in the sense that I wanted to be really writing it at the same time as I was commenting on it. I had absolutely no idea what the story would be about.

I booked a small room high above Weir street in the Balwyn Library for a few days. With just notebook and pen and portable typewriter I sat there looking down into the gum trees, and onto the road, and at the medical centre across the street. Beneath and behind me was the weight and inspiration of rows and rows of shelves of books. I seemed to be floating above the books, and looking lordly down on the world outside.

I observed the arrival of a red car at the medical centre, and suddenly there was my story. The title of the story is simply 'The Man in the Red Car' and the book is 'Not Now Jack - I'm Writing a Novel'.

The Balwyn Library is deeply implicated in the very fabric of the book, and I recall the experience with great affection and a kind of wonder."

Carmel Bird is a primarily a writer of fiction. Her first collection of short stories was published in 1983, since when she has published novels, essays, anthologies, and also books on how to write.

Visit her website at : http://www.carmelbird.com/