Clunes International Book Town 2013

For the second year in a row my wife and I visited a town named Clunes, approx two hours north-west of Melbourne.  The town has now been recognised as an International Booktown, of which there are only 17 in the world.  The most famous of these is Hay-on-Wye in the UK.

As well as having many permanent book stores, once a year the town has a two day festival on the first weekend in May.  Last year over 18,000 visitors attended the festival, significantly increasing the town population from the usual 1,500.  And tens of book sellers from other parts of Victoria, including book stores I regulary visit here in Melbourne, also set up their stalls.

This year my parents visited the town with us, which meant there were even more eyes looking out for Bond books.  As usual I took plenty of photos, and I've included more than a handful below.

This was the Bound Words book stall.  The owner recognised me from my many visits to her Hampton store and told me she unfortunately had no Bonds with her.  So to the next book stall I went.

Not all books were second-hand.  This stall sold cheap remainder books which included almost the entire set of the There Is Only One Bond series published by Vintage.

A Punch & Judy show for the kids.  "He's behind you!  He's behind you!" and he'll scare the shit out of you for the rest of your life.

Clunes was used in many town scenes in the Heath Ledger film "Ned Kelly".  Unfortunately the film wasn't great so you probably didn't see it.

Once a busy goldfields town back in the 1800's, it's still possible to book a tour to pan for gold.

The closest I've found so far to a movie-tie-in for the latest Bond film !

Not all books made it to the book stalls for sale.  Maybe next year this one will be luckier.

Even the old mining school was chock full of books.

Poets reading their prose.

This was the only Bond book I purchased.  I already own the same cover however this was a better copy.

Overall it was a great day.  Thousands of second-hand books.  A few Bonds, almost all shown in the photos above.  And my wife and parents enjoyed a trip to the country.  It was great to spend some time together too, and I really appreciated their searching in an attempt to increase my collection.

And lastly, a couple more photos as we left the town to give an indication of how rural it is.

The train line does go to Melbourne, but this was the start of a long cargo train.  So we had to drive home instead.