A somewhat belated final de-brief from the Going West Festival last weekend I'm afraid, blame the end of term and three coughing kids. God, the coughing, the coughing... that way lies madness. Anyway - so I missed the morning sessions on the Sunday (Bob Harvey talking to Martin Edmond about painter Dean Buchanan; Joan Druett on her latest in the Wiki Coffin series; and 'The Meat of the Matter' - about the new book of essays on the role of the public intellectual in NZ) but made it up there for lunch, and the afternoon session which began with 'Bird's Eye View'.

Waitakere Arts Laureate Geoff Moon is a legendary bird-photographer and naturalist whose pictures of birds from the 1950s through to the present day have influenced ornithologists on a global scale. He was interviewed by equally legendary Steve Braunias, who is known for journalistic outrageous naughtiness, (also possibly on a global scale if he could wangle it), and for his latest book How to watch a bird (AWA Press). Steve has recently been bitten by the bird bug and rumour has it he was bowled over by the opportunity to interview this amazing nonegenarian.

This was a funny and charming session – Steve drew the best from the spry but slightly frail Geoff with warmth and wit, and Geoff told some great stories – being electrocuted by a 40lb flash unit whilst up a tree; setting up sacrificial goldfish in a pond so he could get the world’s first real photo of a wild kingfisher in mid-catch (someone had previously faked it with tame kingfishers in a studio); how a poodle had eaten his hearing aid (this from Steve); how to get night shots of moreporks when you’re using quarter-inch glass plate negatives; and how mynah birds can count: if two of you go into a hide, the mynahs have to see two coming out or they stay well clear – Geoff sorted that out by having the other person leave holding a raincoat on a stick, and lo, the mynahs came back.

Next up was Gregory O’Brien with his Nest of Singing Birds session. Greg has put together yet another incredibly important and beautiful archive – this time of the School Journal, which had its 100th anniversary this year (who remembers The Donkey’s Egg and Sweet Porridge?). He had with him some of the original artists and writers of the Journal – Vanya Lowry, who was the art editor from 1972-75; John Parker, whose writings and poetry still grace its pages; as does the work of Feana Tu-akoi. In the short time Greg had, the audience was given a snapshot of the golden era of the School Journal – Post-War, when NZ was breaking its bonds with Britain and commissioning NZ artists to do the job that only British ones had had in previous years. The names are extraordinary – legendary editor Russell Clarke asked for work from the likes of Frank Sargeson, Rita Angus, Janet Frame, Ruth Dallas, Maurice Duggan, Anne and Colin McCahon, Doris Lusk, Ans Westra, Gil Hanly, Marti Friedlander and Gordon Walters – as Dick Frizell said later, ‘the School Journal is the unauthorised history of NZ art’.

It was pretty loose back in the 70s when Vanya Lowry was running the art department – she said she had to measure the text against the art so that it finished straight, but was crap at maths, so often had a space to fill. This she usually did with a bit of poetry, and indeed, she had one of her own to hand:

To a badger
It’s hard to find a word
that rhymes with badger
I’ll bet you hadn’t
thought of that – hadger.

John Parker said he loved the journal because it would take a wide range of stuff – plays, poetry, fiction, science. But nowadays, it’s apparently incredibly PC and quite limiting because of this obsession with safety and morality. Feana said if she was writing a story about football she’d put something in about a boy ‘scratching behind his shin pad’ – just to show he was wearing safety gear, but she mentioned interestingly that if NZ wouldn’t take a story because it wasn’t safe enough she could always sell it to the New South Wales school journal. Greg bemoaned the fact that for reasons such as this, old versions of the Journal would not be able to be reprinted, even though some of them, such as the Maori Journal in 1968, edited by Mervyn Taylor and featuring Alastair Campbell are still so ‘alive’. Greg encourages collecting the journals, to save them from disappearing.

There was a great quote from James K Baxter about the journal that Greg read out and I must quote here: "It's not just a job. Not just a way of getting by. It's more than that. We're the fire-bringers! Like Martin Luther. Can't you see what I'm getting at? All this monotony – semicolons even – committees at your elbow – piles of waste paper – that's only the outward shell of what we're doing. Somewhere a child picks up a bulletin – reads about – Gambia! – and suddenly his world is enlarged… All over the country. Knowledge. Just like the replacing of the kerosene lamp by the electric light." A sacred charge indeed. Nowadays the journal still has some fantastic work, but not by some of our best and most brilliant artists and writers. This now seems silly – why should we not be exposing our children to the best we can offer?

A little afternoon delight was provided next by Ray McVinnie, Paula Morris, Peter Calder and Alessandra Zecchini, who all have food in common. Except Paula, who was there to provide a witty counterpoint to all the foodie chat, which she did admirably. Gentle banter, recipes, Alessandra calling Ray McVinnie simply 'Vinnie' (when he pulled her up, asking plaintively, 'why do all Italians call me Vinnie?' she replied without missing a beat 'Well-a, ees jus so much nicer, you know...' Peter Calder loves Shona Koea's Marmalade Loaf recipe, but insists you should only bake it for half the time it says in the book.

The final session I saw (and I only saw the second half) was James McNeish, who was discussing his latest book The Sixth Man (Random House) with David Baragwanath. This is a biography of Paddy Costello, who was considered to be one of the greatest minds of his generation. Many people thought him a spy – James McNeish most vehemently does not, and spends most of his book disputing the claim. I was astonished at the huge, dark underbelly of espionage that this session exposed – so much spying and counter spying that goes on in the world, and some of it, rather glamourously, involving lil’ old New Zealand. A fair part of this latter part of the session was spent in talking about a review of the book by one Graham Hunt, about whose views James was dismissive, even disparaging about to say the least. Right at the end of the session there was just time for a couple of questions. A large-ish bloke stood up and said “I’m Graham Hunt, and it’s been really interesting listening to you…” The crowd went wild.

It was a great moment to end my weekend, being, quite sickeningly, unable to attend the final Blerta revival, which apparently went completely off. There were people dancing on the chairs till very late, especially Gregory O’Brien I heard… Another superb festival out West. If you haven’t been here and done, make a note of it next year. It really shouldn’t be missed.