2025 was always going to be a big year for High Country Words.
This year, Mansfield Readers and Writers Festival merged its competition with the local Bushy Tales contest to create High Country Words.
Entries were strong, the competition fierce, and the winners have now been announced.
Five writers have been awarded across five categories. Their works, along with those longlisted, will be published in the 2025 High Country Words Anthology, on sale at the festival in October and at Ink Bookstore.
The Courier spoke to this year’s winners about their interpretations of the theme Scrub.
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Open Short Story Prize: Dr Cassy Nunan
Dr Cassy Nunan won the Open Short Story Prize for The Carnivorous River, a Bush Gothic tale about a man’s attempts to wrangle a cod from the Murray River.
“The theme Scrub is very close to my heart,” Dr Nunan said.
“Much of my childhood was spent playing in the mystical bush near the farm my six siblings and I were raised on just south of Cobram.”
Her father, Des, was the inspiration.
“He was a deeply ethical man who respected the river.
"He valued our dependency on nature and its habitats.
"As a family, we cherished camping, swimming in, and fishing by the river.”
Nunan’s poetry chapbook This Life Takes Passengers was published by the Melbourne Poets Union, and her story To The Lighthouse won the Furphy Prize.
She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from La Trobe University and has completed an unpublished novel, Surface Tension.
Local Short Story Prize: Shaun McMahon
Mansfield Courier editor Shaun McMahon won the Local Short Story Prize with Leave, an unsettling tale of a man digging for gold near Gaffney’s Creek.
“I’m punching quality-wise alongside some amazingly talented writers in the Open Prize, and that’s particularly gratifying,” he said.
“Crime, thriller, and horror have always been my go-to, both in what I read and what I write.
"Leave is an atmospheric piece, part outback mystery, part slow-burn unease.
"It’s about a remote encounter that forces its characters into a moral crossroads.
"The idea came from two local moments: a yarn with Mansfield physio Chris Jacobs, who told me about a mate stumbling across some gold, and a drive out to Woods Point with Mayor Steve Rabie, who shared some history of Gaffney’s Creek along the way.”
McMahon’s first published work of fiction follows four years at the local paper and writing and hosting the podcasts True Blue Crime and Suburban Legends — all the while chipping away at a novel.
Judge’s view: Margaret Hickey
Author Margaret Hickey (Cutters End, Stone Town, Broken Bay) judged the short story section.
“It was such an honour to be asked to judge the competition,” she said.
“I immediately said yes, not only because I love Mansfield and the High Country, but because of the experience I’ve had at the festival before.
"As a writer, rural towns are my thing, so I was thrilled to judge a competition run from a rural town.”
Hickey said the entries reflected the festival’s standing.
“I’m the judge for a number of awards which are larger in scope, however I found the quality to be just as good.
"I particularly liked the theme of Scrub – it was a clever theme as it can be interpreted in so many different ways – and it was!
"The Carnivorous River was clever, hilarious and brilliantly rendered: the descriptions of place and people, and the growing reveal of what was actually happening was completely original – I loved it.
"Leave was wonderful.
"There was a definite gothic feel to it, the menace in the landscape, the attraction and repulsion of objects, the feeling that you are being watched – it’s a lesson in how to build tension.”
Bush Poetry Prize: David Judge
David Judge won the Bush Poetry Prize for Soul Search, after previously being shortlisted twice and longlisted five times.
“To have my poems included in the Scrub anthology is an honour,” he said.
“I have been writing traditional Australian rhyming verse for the past 10 years.
"With gradual improvement and an increased understanding of the genre, I started entering the many coveted Australian written poetry awards which provide important opportunities for poets to publicly present their endeavours.
"2025 has been a memorable year for me, having won the Man from Snowy River Festival's Silver Brumby Award, the Banjo Paterson Writing Award for Contemporary Poetry and of course this most recent award from Mansfield.”
Judge recently published A Sense of Place – A Septuagenarian’s Recollections in Rhyme, which will be available during the October festival.
Poetry Prize: Tim Loveday
Tim Loveday won the Poetry Prize for How to Skin a Rabbit, judged by poet Maria Takolander.
“It’s a gendered exploration of the labour of killing, and what it means, in terms of masculine constructions, for someone so young to suddenly come to terms with the sheer mechanics of another’s body,” Loveday said.
“The central images are taken from one summer weekend where my family visited my uncle’s farm on the far outskirts of Goulburn, NSW.”
Loveday is an award-winning poet, writer, and PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, researching satirical representations of the manosphere.
Local Bush Poetry Prize: Maree Mielnik
Mansfield Shire’s Maree Mielnik won the RB Sellars Local Bush Poetry Prize for Young Guns.
“It’s very satisfying to achieve a strong level of engagement with people through poetry,” she said.
“Young Guns is set in central Victoria near where I grew up.
"Think of flat, stony country with old mine shafts and scraggly vegetation.
"Tough country – scrub.
"So a remote setting towards the close of day, two people and a looming exchange inspired by family history.
"All will be revealed upon the release of the 2025 High Country Words Anthology…”
Festival president’s reflections
Dr Dani Netherclift, President of Mansfield Readers and Writers Festival, praised the poetry entries.
“How to Skin a Rabbit, with its deft near rhymes and alliteration, is a poetic meditation on the thin skin between life and death," she said.
"Its descriptions of the subtle language of movement and action enacted differently by men and women in the spheres of home and the land make it a delicately rendered triumph of observation and consideration.
"David Judge’s Soul Search is an evocation of lost days, changing places and times, with an eye cast toward what was good and whole in the past as well as the things a youthful eye was blind to that an older eye sees all too clearly.
"The poem has a beautiful rhythm and metre, resulting in the musicality of language that is so pleasing in the traditional bush poetry form.
"We also loved Maree Mielnik’s Young Guns with its dramatic scenes and colourful imagery, and we wanted its local writer to be recognised with a special commendation prize.”
