Being a local Footscray historian, Carmel Taig is forever ferreting about for stories that provide fresh insights into our district’s past.
“Essentially, I’m interested in the roles very ordinary folk perform in monumental dramas,” said Taig, a retired teacher who is Footscray born and bred.
“What better example than Bill Doherty, aka the Fighting Quarryman?”
Doherty or Doc as he was known, is the subject of Taig’s latest book ‘A Brick In The Ocean’ which will be launched at the Footscray City Rowing Club on Sunday, October 12.
It’s Taig’s third book, following the Yarraville Federation Project in 2001 and The Giant by the River, a history of the Yarraville Sugar Works, released in 2014.
While those two are works of history, Taig’s new book on the Fighting Quarryman is actually fiction.
She explained how the change in style came about.
“Like many an ageing champ, Doc released his memoirs in 1931.
“The Days of the Giants stands up as a good read, but it isn’t the whole story. Conveniently, the retired pug skipped all mention of his wife and children.
“It’s that omission that spurred me to write A Brick in the Ocean, and to appoint, as narrator, his daughter Bea.
“At one stage, she asks her mother “Are all families the same? You know broken somehow?”
So began Taig’s challenge of interweaving domestic scenarios spun from her imagination with facts about Footscray in 1915, derived from newspapers of the day.
The end result is a book that will soon be available at The Sun Bookstore in Yarraville.
