This weekend Townsville will host its first writer's festival: "Write up North". A must-see multi-media event called "Words on Water" accompanies the festival and although being produced in Townsville will involve much to do with Magnetic Island and, in fact, many Magnetic Islanders.

Words on Water emerged as what writer, Suzy Gilmour, describes as "A distance collaboration between three artists" including Suzy, who now lives on Magnetic; Glen O'Malley, a professional photographer from Woopen Creek near Innisfail and Colin Bright, a composer from Sydney.

But on Saturday these arts professionals will combine their talents with a colourful array of local performers including Island children from Magneticus Acrobatics, the combined Island and Townsville, Aquapella World Music Choir, who are Queensland State winners of ABC Classic FM's Choir of the Year Competition and the Woodenbong Fire Tribe.

According to Suzy Gilmour, "The idea was originally to produce an event on Magnetic but as the festival was in Townsville and the Port Park location was identified (faces towards Magnetic up Ross Creek) it seemed natural to make it about the connection between the two: the journey over water."

Locals involved with theatre will know Gilmour from the five years she was Artistic Director of La Luna Youth Theatre. With a background in devised and highly visual theatre and a history stretching back to script writing with the BBC she was a likely candidate to collaborate with Glen O'Malley whose camera has documented the peculiarities of north Queensland life for decades and whose previous involvement with collaborative performances such as Bonemap on Magnetic in 2000. Composer Colin Bright from Sydney brings an extra dimension with his is interest in working with writer's and poets and including samples of their voices into his "urban psychoscapes" which he says are, "about being aware of place - where you live and how you fit".

Townsville City Council, assisted by Festivals Australia Regional Residencies (an Australian Government program), commissioned the project. Townsville Mayor, Tony Mooney, said, "You can bring a rug and sit on the grass at Port Park for the performance, watched over by maritime navigation lights and looking down Ross Creek toward Magnetic Island.

"This sets the scene perfectly for the theme of the show, which is water. Water separates and joins islands and, in some ways, is living and forms people as well as lands."

Words on Water will mix vocal recordings, sound, lights, projected images, and fire sculptures and seems likely to push beyond the norms of family entertainment.

Given the enormity and pervasiveness of the theme many ideas intertwine in Words on Water. Suzi Gilmour comments, "The journey mutates into different things." Notes accompanying press material list some, including: The delight of seeing the sea for the first time through the eyes of children, who take a ferry to the island; water in forming an idyllic island paradise through a tele-marketing phone offer - a pseudo paradise(?);the monster from the deep - or is the monster within ourselves(?); H