Writing a review of The Love Contract by Steph Vizard and researching the Banjo Prize, which the novel won in 2022. According to HarperCollins, the Banjo Prize was launched in 2018 “in a quest to find Australia’s next great storyteller” and focused on adult commercial fiction. Then it was replaced in 2024 by The Australian Prize for Fiction, which “builds on the legacy of the Vogel’s Award, previously sponsored by The Australian, Allen & Unwin, and Vogel’s”.
According to Allen & Unwin, the Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers started in 1980 “when Niels Stevns, the visionary behind Vogel’s bread in Australia, collaborated with The Australian’s literary editor, Peter Ward, to create a cultural prize”. More importantly: “Stevns, a Danish immigrant, sought to give back to his adopted country and chose literature, along with classic music, as his way of doing so.”
I have read some of the past winners of The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers, including Hsu-Ming Teo’s Love and Vertigo (1999) and Christine Piper’s After Darkness (2014). But what draws my attention is Stevns, who introduced Vogel’s bread – invented by Swiss herbalist and naturopath Alfred Vogel – to Australia. According to Vogels.com.nz, Vogel’s bread was first made “in 1967 in a small bakery owned by Hans Klisser, in Farmhouse Lane, Auckland”. But Duncan Macleod makes this claim in his blog Postkiwi.com:
“In the 1940s, Max Reizenstein, a German Jewish refugee to New Zealand, established a small bakery in Ponsonby, Auckland. He provided his combination of barley, oats and rye as an alternative to the only choices available at the time, white and brown. The bakery was purchased by one of his employees, Johan Klisser, a Dutch war orphan who expanded the business and made Vogel’s bread a household name in New Zealand.”
Apparently all the Kiwis out there love Vogel’s bread and cannot have enough of it! Here is a testimony on Vogel’s official website: “Vogel’s is New Zealand epitomised in a loaf of bread, simple, reliable, honest, unassuming and consistent.” Also according to Macleod, the aforementioned Stevns “introduced Vogel’s bread to Australia after taking a sick relative to meet Swiss naturopath Dr Alfred Vogel”.
Back to The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers: An 2023 article from The Australian quoted Alan Stevns, Niels’ son: “We’re in this to honour the country that gave us a chance when we needed one, by doing something culturally important… From the family’s point of view, this is our way of contributing to Australian life, and we want to encourage young writers to make their contribution.”
It reminds me of a story I didn’t get to tell while researching and writing about the Anne Frank travelling exhibition “Let Me Be Myself”, which has been touring Australia since 2013. Back in March 2024 I merely wrote: “I want to write [about] little things that have moved me, reminding me that there are so many people out there doing what they can for their communities and their names are never mentioned, their contribution continuing to be quiet, passionate and selfless simply because it is the right thing to do.”
Among these people are those from the company Two Men with a Truck, whose founder Richard Kuipers arrived in Australia in the 1970s as a young Dutch backpacker. He found a job in Sydney as a “waiter, barman and Jack of all trades”, then “bought a beaten-up little truck and started doing a few deliveries for the furniture shop owner up the road”. Today, the family-owned business boasts 85 trucks and 150 employees, carrying out over 12,000 moves across Australia each year.
As a major sponsor, the company transports the Anne Frank travelling exhibition between museums, libraries, community centres, etc, throughout regional and metropolitan Australia. In an interview, Kuipers describes the efforts as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility program aiming to support local charities and initiatives. “We help charities out with delivering furniture and sponsor the refuge centre with delivery once a week – we provide a truck, and we do our best. So, for example, when the floods were on, we helped flood victims; we sponsored kids’ soccer teams and school events. We [are] also onboard at the Anne Frank travelling exhibition – being Dutch, Anne Frank is important to us, and we do part of the transport to take it from one place to the other.”
Kuipers also saw the company’s involvement in helping to tour the exhibition as “an opportunity to explore Australia’s significance in the Holocaust and history of World War II”. In his words: “The life and diary of Anne Frank is not only an important part of Dutch history – it’s an important part of world history. What we often don’t realise is Australia has its own pieces of Jewish and World War II history, including stories of tragedy, survival and heroism.” Thus the company has produced four documentary-style videos and stories that explore some of these Australian perspectives in modern history.
In March 2024, I wrote: “I guess that is what legacy means. The impact of one young life on so many individuals and communities for generations to come.” Back then, I couldn’t imagine that one day in the foreseeable future, I would have a chance to revisit these words and think about all those people who have contributed to the Anne Frank travelling exhibition not just in Australia but across the world. People who have volunteered to help, people who have visited the exhibition, people who have expressed their feelings about Anne Frank’s life and story in writing and via other forms of art – how many stories are there to tell? Perhaps we will never know.
(Image credit: @vogelsnz)
(Day 63 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 