A-Z SHORT STORIES

Weller was born in Cranbrook, Western Australia, and grew up on a farm called Woonenup in the southwest of that state. He was the youngest of four children but his siblings were much older. His mother was a journalist and his father was a farmer. At the age of 12, Weller's parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Perth. As a young child Weller was encouraged by his grandfather to write.

Weller states that he wrote his first book, The Day of the Dog, "within a period of six weeks in a spirit of anger after his release from Broome jail for what he regarded as a wrongful conviction." Weller's second novel, Land of the Golden Clouds was published in 1998.

Writing

The title story in the collection Going Home deals with the complexities of the Aboriginal identity in Australia. It is set in the 1980s and the protagonist has succeeded at university. He excels at sports, studies art and does paintings that are admired by the white community. But in achieving this acceptance he has turned his back on his home and his family. He feels white, but at the same time he is proud to be black. On his 21st birthday, nostalgia for his roots leads him to return to the camp of his birth, only to discover that his new "white" identity is invisible in the darkness of ignorance and prejudice. In contrast, another story in the collection, "Herbie", is about a white boy named Davey who witnesses the killing of an Aboriginal boy and though he is cruel to the boy and offers no resistance to the boys who eventually result in his death, the boy sympathises with Herbie's mother and shows remorse. In this story he portrays a boy who at the time has no empathy towards Herbie, an indigenous boy. It portrays bullying and brutal behaviour in a schoolyard with fatal consequences.

Recognition

The Day of the Dog, Weller's first novel, won the 1980 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the 1982 Prose Fiction award in the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, and was made into a film entitled Blackfellas, which won two AFI Awards in 1993.

The script Confessions of a Headhunter, which Weller co-wrote with Sally Riley, won the an award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, the Cinema Nova Award and the 2000 Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Short Fiction Film, and the 2001 Film Critics Circle of Australia award for Best Short Film.