Audrey Skips

By Andrea Rowe & Lisa Coutts

Reviewed by Dimity Powell

Unless you are familiar with Melbourne’s skyline and Australia’s recent past, you may not be acquainted with The Skipping Girl, aka Audrey. Audrey Skips is a beguiling picture book that changes all that. Based on Australia’s first sequenced animated neon sign Audrey Skips escorts readers through a fascinating tribute to a treasured landmark, thanks to the animated rhyming text of Andrea Rowe and the exquisite illustrations of Lisa Coutts.

Audrey first sprang into life atop the Malt Vinegar factory in Abbotsford in 1936. Her role was simple, to promote Skipping Girl vinegar. This she did with clockwork appeal and tireless vigor. Bedecked in her vibrant red dress, Audrey skipped and flipped, twirled and glowed rivalling the pinks and oranges of Melbourne’s sunsets with her neon bloom.

Spirited verse sets this scene vividly as Audrey becomes a silent yet reliable fixature of the city’s skyline. Over the years, Audrey becomes the backdrop to city life, an impartial observer to its inhabitants’ highs and lows, worries and triumphs, all the while turning her rope with assured regularity. Until changing times and adverse events suck the hope from the city’s dwellers, draining the colour from their lives and eventually, diminishing Audrey’s light.

In the late 1960s, Audrey’s factory pedestal in demolished rendering her unseen and almost forgotten until time, patience and incredible community kindness rallied to reinstate a cherished icon. In 2012 Audrey entered a new and wondrous era – solar power! She can now skip indefinitely off grid. Hurrah.

This charming recount of a special slice of contemporary history makes for intriguing classroom discussions because history is indisputedly linked with consequence and outcome and endurance. Audrey herself represents the kind of hope that humans are naturally drawn to, like moths to a neon light. Hope shines. Colour delights. Symbolisim, even if it did begin as marketing strategy, provides connection. It is thanks to community connection and fundraising that Audrey even exists today. Proof that when we work together to restore joy, retain things that matter to us, anything is possible.

Audrey Skips is a picture book to snuggle up with and absorb gently as Coutt’s charcoally smudgey drawings suggest. Despite the many night time settings, pops of bright colour burst through sombre tones and grey days, so that readers never feel they have to surrender hope for Audrey or the city.

Just as her namesakes of vinegar and mustard are warming with plenty of bite and wonder, so to is this beautiful keepsake honouring a very special, beloved little girl.

Midnight Sun Publishing 2026

Andrea Rowe

Lisa Coutts

Dimity Powell is an Australian author and reviewer whose books include Oswald Messweather, and At the End of Holyrood Lane. Her latest book is The Boy Who  Lost His Laugh.