Hope Vale artist and author Wanda Gibson has won a prestigious literature award with her first book, Three Dresses. Photo: Supplied.
The beautiful tale of a Hope Vale Elder’s life growing up and her message to the younger generation has taken the top prize in one of Australia’s biggest literary awards.
Nukgal Wurra author and artist Wanda Gibson’s first book, Three Dresses, was announced as the winner of the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature category of the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards earlier this month, making history as the first children’s book to claim the prize since the award’s establishment in 1985.
“I’m still trying to get my head around it at the moment,” the debut author said.
Growing up on the Hope Vale mission, Ms Gibson said her family did not have much, but cherished what they did have, and that gratitude was the message she hoped to share with the younger generation.
“In our time, we didn’t have bikes or phones or TVs or all those kinds of things,” she said.
“Nowadays, kids, they get everything what they want, but the most important thing is, be thankful with what you got.”
Ms Gibson said the book, which also won the $25,000 Children’s Literature prize at the awards, was based on her fond memories of receiving three dresses at Christmas each year.
“We didn’t have money, we lived on rations, and those three little dresses were very precious to me,” she said.
“One particular dress I got at Christmas, it was a little blue dress with yellow flowers, and it fitted me really well, and I cherished it.
“That’s why even today, I don’t throw clothes away or anything, I’ll wear it until it’s all in threads.”
She said the three dresses also reminded her of her family holidays to the beach.
“We used to go to the beach on holidays, and our mum told us to get three dresses – one to wear, one to spare, and one to wash,” she said.
“We rolled it up like a little swag, so we can carry it on our backs when we walk to the beach camp.
“The two days we spent down there, it was beautiful.”
Ms Gibson is an established First Nations artist, but said she had no plans of adding author to her resume before two people from the literary world noticed her work.
“They seen my prints and what I write about it, and when they read it, they said to themselves, that would be good for a child’s storybook,” she explained.
“They called me one day and told me about it, and I didn’t know what to say to them at first, then I told them that I had a little script written on paper, just mucking around writing stories.
“They asked me to read it to them, so I read it to them, and they said that’s the kind of thing we want, so that’s how it all started.”
Hope Vale artist and author Wanda Gibson with family members Alice-Lee Walker, Chuva May, Presaiah Ross and Anna Ludwick wearing dresses printed with the first painting of Three Dresses. Photo: Supplied.
