I Had a Father in Karratha
By (Author) Annette Trevitt
Upswell Publishing
Upswell Publishing
4th April 2023
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Relationships and families: advice and issues
Local and family history, nostalgia
Biography and non-fiction prose
Paperback
208
Width 150mm, Height 210mm, Spine 25mm
418g
I Had a Father in Karratha tracks a daughter's epic undertaking to honour her father while cleaning up his mess and, ultimately, laying him to rest. This is a fly-in fly-out marathon about commitment, responsibility, doggedness and love. What happens when your father dies and he's in the Pilbara, 4500 kms away What happens when your father dies and you fly across to lay him at rest and find his estate is a spectacular mess of hoarded junk, bank debts, lost paperwork and rundown properties in a mining town gone bust What happens when your father dies and you are the oldest child and the sole executor of his will I Had a Father in Karratha tracks Annette Trevitt's two-and-a-half-year epic undertaking of cleaning up her father's mess in Karratha, Western Australia. A fly-in fly-out marathon as she holds together her life with her teenage son in Melbourne. Written in passages of reflective prose and text messages, what unfolds is an intimate story of being a daughter of a runaway father - a father who bolted when the going got tough. Trevitt's attention to reality is as relentless as the paperwork, the corporate sloth and greed she faces at every turn. Nothing is straightforward other than the humour and openness she brings to every absurd and maddening situation from one end of the country to the other. This is a story of commitment, responsibility, doggedness and love.
Annette Trevitt is a short story writer and tertiary teacher. She has lived in NSW, Sydney, and London, and completed her Graduate Diploma in Animation at VCA, Melbourne. Her short stories have been published in literary journals and broadcast on the BBC and the ABC.