Winners announced for John Gavin Writing Competition 2023

Stories telling different perspectives of the same hanging of a boy have won Fremantle’s third annual 2023 John Gavin Writing Competition.

A record number of about 100 entries to the Fremantle Volunteer Heritage Guides Association-organised competition were judged by WA author and Fogarty Literature Award winner Brooke Dunnell.

Entrants were asked to write about John Gavin, who may have been as young as 15 when he was the first European to be executed in WA at the Fremantle Roundhouse in 1844.

The winning entries - including how a gravedigger, the dead boy’s mother and his dog saw the hanging - were awarded at the City of Fremantle’s Walyalup Civic Centre on Sunday11/6.

Research by open category winner Emily Roberson, from Pinjarra, provided her with the inspiration to write from the grave diggers’ point of view in her entry Southern Dune.

“It was said Gavin was buried in the sand dunes, but its didn’t say where, so that’s where my fictional protagonist Thomas, the grave digger, came from, who was there at his final resting place,” she said.  

Gavin was a child when he was transported from the United Kingdom to the Swan River Colony and put into an apprenticeship as an alternative to prison.

He was convicted of the murder of his employee’s son, 18-year-old George Pollard, and hung three days later near the Roundhouse steps, before being buried in dunes.

A Roundhouse tour with the volunteers gave open category runner-up and WA Emerging Writers Program member Pip Brennan, from Coolbellup, the idea to write from the view of Gavin’s dead mother thinking about her son’s brief life in her entry A Mother’s Vigil.

“I kept thinking of her saying, ‘When I was alive, I believed in all sorts of things’,” Pip said.

The competition had more entries in the WA Schools category this year, after information from the volunteer association’s website became part of classroom studies acro0ss the State into the early history of the Swan River colony.

Ziva Taylor, from Gidgegannup, and Swan View’s Saoirse Farrell, both 14 and home schooled, respectively won and was second in the category.

Ziva chose to write about Gavin’s final day as viewed by a pet dog to “give another point of view”, while Saoirse explored another motive for the teenager to go to the gallows.

“It’s as if he didn’t really commit murder and took the blame for someone he loved,” she said.   

Manning Primary School’s Oliver Newman, 11, received the Young Writers Encouragement Award for his poem written from the view of murder victim George Pollard.

Image (L–R): 2023 John Gavin Writing Competition judge Brooke Donnell with winners Oliver Newman, Pip Brennan, Emily Robertson, Ziva Taylor and Saoirse Farrell.