Written by Dr Monika Schott Illustrated by Kymba Burrows

“As a parent, I wish I had this book many years ago…” Professor Pat McGorry AO, Orygen

"Your book is beautiful. So gentle and considerate, honest and touching. Very heartfelt..." Joanne

This is timely and compassionate story about a child and father setting out to build a cubbyhouse under streaming sunshine. Until clouds snake in on a hazing horizon… skies swell, a clouding storm brews and finally breaks and swirls into pouring rains and eventually subsides. All the while, the cubby grows wackier, with the rustiest of riches that rattle and rule! This is all a metaphor for the father’s mental ill health that gently aligns with the building of the cubby and changing emotions and weather.

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Dr Monika Schott

Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice

May 2023

An article about sewerage town communities in Australia and the UK and specifically, the community that grew on Melbourne’s Metropolitan Sewerage Farm. It highlights that sewerage town communities are inclusive and highly connected, and even the murk of mustarding waters devoid of air but teeming in critters that thrive in the souring stench, and the poor blighter disappearing within those waters of olive and brown, can be beautiful. Insights can be applied to any community and company town.

Dr Monika Schott

July 2022

Sewerage ghost towns. They exist. Just ask Sorrowing Father, Dear Daughter and Blackened boy, and Yankee doodle dandy that smiles with the eyes and his shadowy mate. They and other characters tell the untold and unique story of the community once living on a sewerage farm for around 100 years, alongside sewage lagoons and land and grass filtration paddocks watered 24 hours a day with Melbourne’s sewage. This is the literary nonfiction story about the community once living on Melbourne’s Metropolitan Sewerage Farm.

Learn more

Dr Monika Schott

TICCIH Bulletin 99

January 2023

Abandonment, scattered remains in knee-high weeds, a place that once thrived in human activity and was far grander than the relics left behind, where complete homes of yesterday rest buried deep beneath the earth. I’m in the top-end township of Melbourne’s Metropolitan Sewerage Farm (MSF). It’s one of four settlements that grew after the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) established the MSF in 1892, on 8000-plus hectares of land 30 kilometres from Melbourne on the city’s western outskirts.

Dr Monika Schott Noel Murphy

TICCIH Bulletin 101

August 2023

Australia hosts an inordinate number of ghost towns peppered over its plains, through its mountain ranges and across its desiccated deserts. Thousands of them. Bustling social communities full of families, workers, business, schools, sport and more have vanished to the inexorable march of progress, to market changes, technology and dwindling resources. What were once thriving places of enterprise and community, built on industries of farming, mining or in many cases gold, have quietly disappeared beneath the waters of history.

Edited by Dr Monika Schott

February 2023

Out on the Farm is a collection of memoirs giving a glimpse into the history, personalities and science of the State Research Farm in Werribee. Over 30 past residents, workers and families connected to the Farm wrote their own personal recollection of what it was like to live and work on the Farm, sharing photographs from their private collections.

Elle Murphy, Mitch Ribly and Dr Monika Schott

September 2022

A land faraway is a collaboration with singer-songwriters Elle Murphy, Mitch Ribly and Dr Monika Schott, for a life at honey speed on the Metropolitan Sewerage Farm.

Available on Spotify & iTunes.

February 2023

A documentary celebrating the century-plus social history of the State Research Farm in Werribee, its people and its extraordinary achievements. Listed on the State’s Heritage Register since 2001, the Farm was for many decades home and/or workplace to a small township of internationally-influential scientists, farming experts, workers and their families.

Dr Monika Schott, PhD Thesis, Deakin University, Melbourne

December 2019

This research uncovers new understandings of sewerage ghost towns, how their past communities flourished in the segregated margins of society, and what happens once these communities disband. It looks at communities once living on and beside sewerage works around the world.

Monika Schott PhD, Masters thesis, Victoria University 2006

This thesis explores factors that contribute to writing fiction that successfully engages adolescent boys, particularly those boys who are reluctant to read fiction.

Backpacker Press, USA 2016

This collection of stories written after the death of a parent, focuses not on grief, the sense of loss and terrible sadness, but rather the simpler things, about the intricate and universal workings of family — regrets, learning, problem solving, daily life, and most definitely, love.

Williamstown Literary Festival, Melbourne 2010

This anthology is an engaging and eclectic collection of 10 stories short-listed in the 2010 Ada Cambridge Prize for biographical short story. The prize is awarded annually in honour of pioneer novelist, poet and diarist, Ada Cambridge who lived in Williamstown.

Sea Change Publishing, Sydney 2005

We all remember those teachers who made a lasting impact by believing in us and showing us our true potential. This book is brimful with stories from the past, stories from the heart, all personal and deeply felt.

Leigh Cato (ed) Allen & Unwin, Melbourne 1995

This analysis offers a balanced account of how major Australian businesses, environmental groups and organisations are tackling environmental issues. The book outlines their philosophies, how they have instituted environmentally-friendly changes, and the success many have achieved by taking this approach.