John Vincent Bayley - papers, 1994?-1998

MLMSS 6929/Box 1
MLMSS 6929/Box 2X

fonds

1994? - 1998

403602

0.43 metres of textual material (1 box and 1 outsize box)

John Vincent Bayley was born on 13 January 1949. He has written several plays and has been a member of the South Australian Writers' Centre and the Australian Playwrights Centre. In the mid 1990s, Bayley and his friend Leon Carmen devised a plan to perpetrate a hoax on the literary community. Carmen wrote the novel My Own Sweet Time under the pseudonym Wanda Koolmatrie. Bayley acted as his agent, negotiating the publication of the book by Magabala Books, Broome, Western Australia. The book was subsequently included, with the works of many well known Australian writers, in an anthology of Australian autobiography, and was used as a text for the Higher School Certificate examination in New South Wales. It was short listed in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, and in April 1996 won the Nita May Dobbie Literary Award (for first published work of a female writer). At that time, Wanda Koolmatrie was thought to have been an Aboriginal woman from South Australia. It was later alleged that Bayley was fully aware of the criteria for the Nita May Dobbie Award when he allowed the book to be entered. He was charged by the New South Wales Police with making false and misleading statements with intent to obtain a financial advantage, but the case was eventually dismissed.

BOX 1 - LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS
My Own Sweet Time, by Wanda Koolmatrie (pseudonym for Leon Carmen), 1994? Ms. with alterations and deletions. One foolscap spiral bound journal, five quarto exercise books and loose sheets, totalling 542 pages.

Daylight Corroboree. A first hand account of the Wanda Koolmatrie affair, by John Bayley, 1998. Edited by Leon Carmen. Bound typescript.

Afterword for Daylight Corroboree, by Wanda Koolmatrie, 1998. Ms.

BOX 2X - LEGAL DOCUMENTS - RESTRICTED SENSITIVE
Brief of Evidence, 1997. NSW Police V John Bayley. In the 'Wanda' Case. Bound typescript and ms. with ms. annotations.

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Daylight Corroboree by John Bayley was published by Eidolon Books in 2004