Meeting Maureen
I first met Maureen O’Keefe in 2009 at a community writer’s event in Tennant Creek; a remote town in the outback of Northern Territory. She was shy at first but, slowly, we built up a friendship over the years. She’d make me laugh so hard that once I had to find a safe place to pull over and stop as I drove down to Alice Springs, a 500km trip from Tennant, to catch a flight to a writers’ festival in Sydney.
During my nine years in Tennant I mentored Maureen as she wrote up a series of engaging and hilarious tales from her time growing up in the bush. She’s now a published author of a children’s book called, Mum’s Elephant. I interviewed Maureen for a series of mini stories on Territorians called Why I Love the Territory. Her passion for place and storytelling comes through.
