Thanks to Talei Howell-Price for this article which is from Joondalup Arts in Focus

Artist in Focus
Dave Goddard Railway Yards The July issue of Arts in Focus features:Name: David Goddard
Country: Australia
Birth Place: Narrogin, Western Australia
Medium: LiteratureCan you tell us a little bit about your most recent work and what is coming up? My most recent novel is called The WILUNA Solution. It, like the previous novel, Hiding Place, draws on experiences through the people I’ve met and worked with and the places I’ve been. I went to Wiluna in 2010 to work with the school on community engagement. As I did, I learned much of the history of the town, both the Aboriginal (Martu – pronounced Mardu) and the non-Aboriginal histories. Each of my novels is my attempt to present Aboriginal cultures and peoples in a positive light from a non-Indigenous perspective. I’ve done this because of the positive experiences I have had in coming to know and work with Aboriginal people. There are two stories currently for sale and one soon to be published: Hiding Place (published 2013) set in and around Alice Springs; The WILUNA Solution (to be launched July 2015) set in Kalgoorlie and in and around Wiluna; and Turn on a Light (aiming to publish late 2015) set in a fictional Aboriginal community to the north-west of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, near Ora Banda.

What is your favourite medium and why… My favourite art form is music. I am keen on music from the sixties and seventies, involving people like Gordon Lightfoot, the Seekers, Jimmy Buffett, Neil Diamond and Jim Croce for example, among many others. I spent time as a performer (twelve-string guitar and singing), working in taverns and night clubs in Perth as well as touring in Asia with a West Australian group called the Iron State Trio which won the inaugural Perth’s New Faces. In later years, through experiences with my sons’ music, I have come to appreciate heavy metal, progressive rock, and the divergent formats of even these genres as well as easy listening as a complete contrast.

Do you think you influenced your children to pursue a career in the arts? Let me start with the fact that Karen, the boys’ mother, is a speech and drama teacher, a producer of plays, a good adapter of stories for performances by young people, an accomplished pianist and a former physical education teacher. My background was as a physical education teacher who happened to teach himself the guitar, and later a researcher who learned to write formal reports. Karen and I believe the greatest influences we have had over the careers that Paul and Drew have undertaken (Paul as an actor and voice-over specialist and Drew as a drummer, guitarist and member of ARIA award winning progressive rock group Karnivool) are:

  1. The context of their childhoods, which involved all the things Karen and I loved: sport, music, and drama. It seemed natural for the two of them to pursue careers in one of those areas.
  2. Our acceptance of the directions they took and our encouragement of them to keep going.