The Story Teller

Story: April Spadina  |  Photo: Cody Fox

In an age when conversations are had by text and email, Maryborough creative Ian Brown embraces the art of talking, with passion and fervour. Affectionately known as The Maryborough Storyteller, Ian’s love of history and culture has carved a lifetime of curiosity and the desire to explore and share his discoveries.  
Ian has a connection to Maryborough that goes deeper than simply being an inhabitant. It’s a connection to the landscape and the fractured history of the Original Inhabitants that stirs his essence right to the core, almost as if he is part of the earth he walks on in a literal sense. He feels an energy from the Mary River and its surrounding landscape that is tangled in his veins, and an incredible urge to tell the stories of those who cannot, and as an artist he knows that it’s part of his makeup to gravitate towards injustice with a need to rectify wrongdoings. 

For many years, Ian has told the stories of others, and now it’s time to share his own story. For the past year he has been consumed in the writing of a memoir titled “Golden Child” an account of his own life, interwoven with pivotal moments of history that have left their mark on Ian’s soul.  

As a small child, Ian lay in the deep grass by the trickling stream of Ululah Lagoon. He was consumed by how perfectly wonderful the world was, intensely enthralled by the beauty of his surroundings, and it was in that moment that he had an epiphany. Eight year old Ian had realised there was something very fractured in the world that he didn’t understand, and from that moment on he has searched for answers to the world’s questions.

Now as he sits overlooking the beautiful river and walks the land he feels deep-rooted connection to, Ian Brown is still that small child, full of wonderment and curiosity. He is a poet in the fields of Elysium, forever the performer,
the eternal Story Teller.

The creation of this story and photography was funded by Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF), a partnership between the Queensland Government and Fraser Coast Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.