The Wheeler Centre programme officially began on Saturday night with 'A Gala Night of Storytelling' at the Melbourne Town Hall. The Wheeler Centre grew out of Melbourne's successful application to become a UNESCO City of Literature and a Victorian Government initiative to support writing and ideas in our city.

So there was quite a buzz surrounding the first event, in which twelve of Australia’s favourite writers reflected on storytelling and the tales that have been passed down to them through the generations. And it was quite an experience. Each writer stepped up, without fanfare, to the microphone and related their story to a capacity crowd of approximately 2000 people.

Some, like Shane Maloney, had the crowd laughing out loud, with his forebears total lack of stories to tell. John Safran, with a similar sense of humour, related how his father's cheeky inquisitiveness, brought out the same in his son and Judith Lucy was in fine form with her tale of family secrets, intertwined with a fan letter about a woman's determination to have a life well lived.

Tara June Winch held us enthrall with a story at once profoundly beautiful and sad, of a note written to her by her grandmother on a scrap of paper and cherished for life; the words: I love you. David Malouf recalled how his mother's stories of wealth and privilege in England sat uneasily with her early impoverished life in Australia, and how there are many stories within a family that remain unsaid. Alexis Wright, bravely beginning her tale with a call for 'treaty now', also spoke of the unspoken, of memories stolen, but woven with childhood glimpses of love of family and country.

Christos Tsiolkas and Cate Kennedy both had stories of strong and beloved grandparents, whose love did not necessarily reveal itself all that clearly to a young child. Christos with warmth and humour describing his Greek grandmother's desire to teach the young city boy how to kill and cook a chicken. Cate, in a lively vernacular, described her grandfather's wonderous collection of 'stuff' that enthralled the young girl as much as his hard-drinking and blokiness kept her at bay.

John Marsden told a thought-provoking tale about a recent experience with a young man that caused him to deliberate on the nature of manhood and how young boys lack a decent rite of passage. Alex Miller retold a tale handed down to him, about how the things we value most, are often of the least value to anyone else. And, in perhaps my favourite tale, Chloe Hooper relayed Aesop's fable of the sun and the wind, reflecting on the nature of stories, and how they are perhaps not necessarily as wise or as fair as they seem.

And finally, Paul Kelly, in his much-loved medium of music, sang a tale of love between a favourite aunt and her American husband and the love story that may never have been, but for one fateful moment in Italy.

As I listened to these stories, so varied, and yet, in many ways, so universal, my mind wandered to my own stories: those that are etched in my memory from continual retelling by parents and grandparents, aunts and older cousins; of stories that were being told around the Christmas table just a few months ago, captivating my young niece and nephew; the secret stories I have only discovered as an adult about thwarted love, mental illness, damaged men on opposite sides of war. And I looked around me at all those 1600 people, wondering about their memories too, imagining all those stories floating above and around us in that beautiful vaulted hall and grateful that storytelling remains as important to us now as it has ever been.