Victoria may not be too far away from its own Hay on Wye.

Currently boasting five bookshops for its 1000 residents, the picturesque Gold Rush town of Clunes is aiming for double the number within a year, says local resident Graeme Johnston. ‘It's our intention to be recognised as Australia's first book town,' he told WBN.

The ambition got a boost over the weekend, with 10-12,000 people attending the town's second annual book fair, compared to 6000 last year. Novelists John Marsden, Melissa Lucashenko and Alexis Wright and poet Anthony Lawrence all spoke at the event, which featured ‘plenty of food, wine, music, all those sorts of things.'

‘It went very well. We had over fifty booksellers here and a lot of good feedback about the feel of the day,' said Johnston. ‘We're becoming internationally recognised as a book location.'

For more information about the Clunes ‘book town' initiative, visit the website at www.clunes.org/booktown.

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker