Saturday, December 25, 2021


 

The Personal Story behind the Ozone Café

The old black & white photographs might reveal a little of the setting of my 2nd novel The Ozone Café.  The literary world often states for writers, “write what you know”. I have used my hometown in the setting of the novel, however the names have been changed to protect…yes no novelist wants to be sued or face undue litigation esp. when one writes about a corrupt shire. It was common knowledge in the area, that because the Ozone Café sat on prime property (a stone’s throw from the beach), it attracted the moguls and thus disappeared through dubious means.


Ettalong was and has always been a small community lifestyle: a population of less than 5,000, an older community with shopfronts like the cake shop, chemist, newsagents, banks and supermarket. It hasn’t changed in 50 years. There’s fishing, prawning, oysters in the myriad of waterways that is known as Broken Bay which sprawls to Gosford and is known as the Brisbane Water District. What has replaced the café is a very large monolith resort-type building that I understand is not liked nor valued by the locals. Well, it’s a holiday venue for the “rich”.


I went to Ettalong Primary, and then later attended Gosford High School. As a teenager and even younger I frequented the café with girlfriends, esp.one in particular named, Heather. We would have a milkshake, buy lollies, click on the jukebox and if we had any money left we’d slide a twenty shilling piece into one of the pinball machines. Looking back, it was actually a challenge to enter the Ozone café as it was daily occupied by Bodgies and Widgies. They were the rock-n-roll gangs of the sixties, rather harmless, but I guess it was the leather jackets, the chewing gum and sneers that made you feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the café was so close to the beach, that after a swim that being hungry we often bought an icy-pole or ice-cream. So, my local teenage haunt was a vivid memory that I would never forget.

When my younger brother, still living in the area, told me that the Ozone had been pulled down, I wanted to write the story of life inside its walls and its ultimate destruction.

The Ozone Café, with three separate owners therefore, is the nemesis of my story and its demise through council corruption.

0 comments:

Bounty

Bounty
Prose Poetry

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett
A Family Saga

The Ozone Cafe

The Ozone Cafe
White Collar Crime

The Last Asbestos Town

The Last Asbestos Town
Available from Amazon

Evangelyne

Evangelyne
Published by Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne

of Arc & Shadow

of Arc & Shadow
Published by Sunline Press, WA

Blog Archive

Powered by Blogger.

Search This Blog

Flickr Images

MBA (Wrtg) ECowan

My Photo
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Helen Hagemann holds an MA in Writing from Edith Cowan University, has three poetry books: Evangelyne & Other Poems published by Australian Poetry, Melbourne (2009) and of Arc & Shadow published by Sunline Press, Perth (2013). Bounty: prose poetry is published by Oz.one Publishing in 2024. She has three novels published The Last Asbestos Town (2020), The Ozone Café (2021) and The Five Lives of Ms Bennett a result of her Masters degree at ECU (2006), is published by Oz.one Publishing (2023).

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan
Author & Poet

INSTAGRAM

Popular Posts