MONSTER

As I write this, Australia is on fire. My family had to evacuate from our Blackheath, Blue Mountains home just before Christmas.

 

In a long string of unfortunate events, we were left without a working car and it was safer for us to leave with the great fire they call The Monster having entered the Grose Valley frighteningly close to our house.

Locals being advised by our incredible RFS as the fire approached

 

The Fire Captain at the local station said at an information evening we attended that he’s never seen a fire like this in his decades of fighting fires. The size of two trees combined, it crowns in places and it doesn’t obey the ‘normal’ rules of any fire. A fire christened The Monster by locals.

 

Like countless others we were packed and prepared to go for days. When you live in bushfire country you prepare early with a suitcase by the door. My daughter’s clothes took up half the suitcase. My own packing (somewhat less glamorous than Joan Didion’s famed packing list):

 

Tarot Cards,

Reiki Symbols

A notebook, pens

Books – The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton (review to come), The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Initiated by Amanda Yates Garcia

Photographs of baby Daisy

Ancestor photos

My mother’s wedding ring

Family documents such as Daisy’s medical folders, passports

Daisy’s diabetic equipment and medication

Sunhat

Cosmetics

Toiletries

Bach Flower Essences

Change of clothes for a couple of days

Hanako mist spray

Letters my father wrote to me before he died

The dog’s supplies and lead

The dog carrier

A lock of my father’s hair cut from his head when he died

 

Christmas plans had to be abandoned. We became addicted checkers of the Fires Near Me app and worried over elderly neighbours and our home.

We felt heartbroken for those who lost their homes. We wept over images of children whose heroic firefighting fathers had died.

 

We are enraged by a Prime Minister who chose to holiday in Hawaii with his family, and only returned because of public pressure. Then he partied on New Year’s Eve with fireworks in polluted Sydney skies and hosted a garden party with cricketers as people died and Australia was ablaze. The Emergency Minister, David Elliot, also shockingly chose his family holiday during this time of severe crisis. I’ve avoided ever posting anything political before but their actions went beyond political. This country will not forget easily the betrayal of the climate-change denying Liberal Party.

LISMORE ROSE our adopted Koala from the incredible Koala Hospital Port Macquarie

Heartbreakingly, our already fragile Koala population was decimated at the time of writing by thirty per cent. And a HORRENDOUS over a BILLION animals killed. 28 people have died. Over 2000 houses destroyed. An area four times the size of the Amazon Rainforest burnt.

The heavy plume of smoke choking Sydney for weeks caused record spikes in hospital admissions. When I travelled down to Sydney with my daughter, I was shocked by how polluted the air was. Sydneysiders in facemasks. An oppressive feeling in city streets. It felt as if I’d entered a science fiction novel, so terribly wrong and tilted.

Brighton Le Sands

Near where we were staying, the beach was packed with thankfully no smoke in the air. We walked the beach twice daily, feeling like aliens in this culture of bronzed people on jet-skis.

 

 

Women in hijabs ran on beaches with their small children. Palm trees waved their fronds against an unnatural salmon-coloured sky. We collected bag after bag of plastic and rubbish, hoping it would inspire others to do the same.

At night I listened to hoons in their cars. I constantly checked the Fires Near Me app before falling into a restless sleep. I would wake at 3am and check the app again to see if the flames had reached our street.

 

It was not the Christmas we had planned but we had a roof over our heads and a beach a short walk away.

I followed images of exhausted RFS service people. Blackened faces, their endurance stretched to the limit. Unforgettable images of wild koalas allowing Firies to give them water. A devastated farmer forced to shoot his scorched stock. A kangaroo found in a swimming pool, desperate for water. A Firie describing koalas screaming as their trees burned. Friends on social media begged for people not to share images of burnt koalas but I couldn’t let those last screams go unheard. I couldn’t look away.

 

The Firies, who sacrificed employment to fight fires unpaid. Several lost their own home while they fought to save a stranger’s. Some even had to take out loans to cover their mortgages. I marvelled over the goodness and the valiant nobility of these warriors who face fires bigger than two tall trees.

Australia feels tilted, shaking. White ash blazing us into a scorching and volatile dead world. It feels as if a doorway has closed.

broken koala image via #kassiissac

 

 

CHANGE

2018 has been a year of transformation. Although it has had its
challenges, it has also been a year of stronger focus for me. One of the really
wonderful happenings is that I have just signed with agent/director Oli Munson
at A.M. Heath literary agency in London.
I could not have envisaged a better agency to
represent me, with its  prestigious pedigree and the fact it is celebrating its
centenary next year.  A.M. Heath has been one of the UK’s top agencies since
1919. Its esteemed catalogue of authors include George Orwell, Shirley Jackson,
Joan Aiken and Noel Streatfeild, along with present-day luminaries such as
Hilary  Mantel and Maggie O’Farrell. I feel really honoured to be a part of such
an impressive agency.  For years UK friends have asked when my books will
be published there. Hopefully that day will be soon!
The leaves are turning to golden autumn colours in the upper mountains in
Australia. Because of the delayed summer heat, the trees have been slower to
turn colour this year and aren’t as stunning in their display. The streets
aren’t as choked with the tourists who arrive annually to photograph the trees.
When I’m watching the sulphur-crested cockatoos cracking their seeds among the
golden russet leaves, London seems another world. It has been roughly a year
since we were in the UK and we all miss it. My daughter can’t wait to grow up
and move either to London or New York!

Everything changes. Children grow up. Good news turns to bad and bad to
good. The merciless summer yields to transitional, mellow autumn. We make new
connections, but lose treasured friends. One thing that stays consistent in my
life is writing. I am roughly half-way through the first draft of my new crime
novel.
In other good news my writer partner David
Levell has just completed his latest non-fiction book. It is gripping,
intelligent and with its original research, a fabulous read (totally unbiased
opinion). I’m  always in awe of how David can take really dense historical
material and transform it into a page-turning read. It is his gift.
Wishing you peace, resilience and dreams come true.

 

A Fever Dream

I see a lot of movies at  Mount Vic Flicks; it was my favourite cinema long before I moved permanently to the mountains. When I was an art-student and David worked in television production, we rented a flat in Glebe (Sydney) near the Valhalla cinema (originally known as The Astor), and often popped across the road to enjoy art-house films. It always saddened me to  witness Sydney losing its grand old cinemas as they were taken over for development.
image via TripAdvisor

image via TripAdvisor

Over twenty years ago I first visited Mount Vic Flicks with friends and I’d never forgotten the atmospheric interior, the piano player and the experience of going to the pictures in such a nostalgic fashion. I used my memory of it for a scene in Currawong Manor when Ginger gives a talk at a special showing of a similar cinema in Mt Bellwood. It’s always a treat to take the train to the charming heritage-listed village Mount Victoria, to contemplate my current book, write in the local park and then see a movie at Mount Vic Flicks.
The cinema, built in 1934, is a unique theatre experience, a time slip leaving more modern cinemas for dead. When we first moved up, my daughter was amazed to see kangaroos near the theatre.  The soup-in-a-mug and bread roll deal is wildly popular in the chilly mountains. There is an eclectic offering of films, and at times, theatre organist Wendy Hambly plays for cinema-goers.
The proprietors, Adam Cousins and Kirsten Mulholland (who fell in love with the cinema at 18, vowing to buy it if it ever came on the market), took over the cinema from owners who had it for 27 years.
motherwall
One of the films I saw recently at Mount Vic was mother! which I’ve been thinking about since. For some reason, despite its weirdness, or perhaps, because of it – it’s a film that still absorbs me.
mother! – with its lower-case title,  is a psychological thriller/horror directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and one of my favourite actors, Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s a synthesis of Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and any David Lynch movie in its dreamlike, hallucinatory, disjointed sequences.
In the opening scene is a burnt-out devastated house and a crystal. The house morphs into a beautiful octagonal house where we see a radiant young woman (Lawrence) who appears to have formed magically in the bed. Her husband, a writer (Javier Bardem) struggles with writer’s block.
Uninvited Guest 2 arrives

Uninvited Guest 2 arrives

The couple’s idyllic Instagram country home is disrupted by the arrival of two uninvited guests who arrive separately. We never find out the names of the couple (played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer). The Writer (Him) invites the male to stay against his lover’s (Mother’s) permission.
In the toilet, Mother sees a big red organ like a pulsating jellyfish.  Man, the first guest, is peculiar and ill and has coughing fits. Him is eager for Man to stay because he discovers Man is a big fan of his work. Mother captures a glimpse of a terrible wound under his ribs. Him chastises Mother for looking at the wound.
MP mother!
Shortly afterwards, Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) turns up, giving arch life advice to Mother on how to keep her older poet husband sexually satisfied.  At times Woman appears to be sinister but Michelle Pfeiffer said in an interview that she saw Woman as being like an angel to wake up Mother. I loved her performance in mother! she gave such an edge to the part and was genuinely chilling. Her reptilian gaze and sensual beauty is perfect for the surreal Woman.
mother-poster
Him never permits anyone to enter his writing space, or touch the precious crystal that we see in the opening credits. Woman disobeys this rule, and breaks the crystal. Woman and Man are banished from the house.  But their two sons arrive and a violent fight ensues between the pair and one of them is brutally killed by the other.
The movie continues to escalate into an increasing dream like pattern with more uninvited guests arriving for different reasons and refusing to behave normally.
200px-Yellowwp_med
Throughout the chaos, Mother continues to drink from a strange yellow potion that is open to interpretation of what it is, or does to her. Some viewers think it could represent Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. about a hysterical woman whose husband drives her slowly insane.
At different times, Mother touches the wall of the house. The house is a watching, living entity that she communicates with. Bloodstains appear on the floor.
Just like a dream, there is a strange logic to all the weirdness and watching the movie, you have to accept that nothing will make coherent sense. The film is filled with metaphors and symbols for those who want to analyse it, although the director has warned against overanalysing. He calls mother! a Fever Dream.
I had already read about the gruesome scene towards the end as events escalate in the house, and so I had my eyes shut for that bit. These scenes go on for twenty-five minutes gradually becoming more horrific and nightmarish. Suffice to say, there is riot police, Molotov cocktails and people being randomly shot at point blank range in the head but that’s all tame compared to the gruesome ritual that is enacted. I shut my eyes just after the shooting, although my imagination was on fire with the sound-effects.
 I had originally thought mother! was a metaphor for the creative process, but its also a call to arms environmentally.
THE GIVING TREE
Aronofsky has cited the children’s book The Giving Tree as one of the inspirations for mother!
Another inspiration he cites is Hindu religion and the concept of universes being destroyed and starting again.
Aronofsky quotes Hubert Selbert Jr: ‘You have to look into darkness to see the Light.’
He wanted to channel all his anger and rage about what he was seeing on the planet, and he wrote the first draft of the script in five days. It poured out of him. He has described it as a snapshot of a world threatened by overpopulation, climate change, poisonous politics and war. It’s a tale of a woman who is ‘asked to give and give and give until she can give nothing more.’
Reviews have been mixed: The National Review called it Torture Porn and the vilest movie ever released by a Hollywood Studio, warning the following groups of people to avoid it: pregnant women, those with nervous constitutions or heart conditions and anyone who happens to be burdened with good taste.
hinduism1
Matthew Norma, in London’s Evening Standard said, ‘You may Love it, or hate it, or both but you cannot ignore it and will not forget it.
It was booed at the Venice Film Festival. While some praise it as a masterpiece.
Michelle Pfeiffer said when she first received the script she thought it was the weirdest thing she had ever read. It is certainly one of the more unusual films I’ve seen but it has stayed with me long after I viewed it.
Aronofsky is an environmentalist who originally studied as a field biologist in Kenya and Alaska.  As shattering as mother! is,  the real-life horrors happening to Mother our Earth make it look tame in comparison.

Celebration of the Flowers

The haunting notes of bagpipes sounded through the mist as Blackheath’s annual Rhododendron Parade began.
IMG_7255
I love this Celebration of the Flowers, featuring rhododendron and spring flowers seen in dazzling displays around the village and the Rhododendron Gardens. The festival is the longest continually running festival in the Southern Hemisphere.
LRPG5396
There is a Poet’s Breakfast in the iconic New Ivanhoe pub, woodchopping, a reptile display, jazz music, classic cars, an art show and free entry to the swimming pool for those hardy enough to take advantage.
KBKI0355
The local churches hold flower displays and a shuttle bus transports visitors from the train station to the Campbell Rhododendron Gardens to enjoy a Devonshire tea while seeing the gardens blazing with colour.
TOBX7025
Whether swaying along to the Hokey Pokey, or hearing the plaintive strains of Amazing Grace, the crowd was enthralled by he pipes and drums of the Lithgow Highland Pipe band as they played in the misty park. The popular pipe band was founded in 1913, when a small group of Scottish immigrants banded together to enjoy the music they loved.
The parade features the local dog walking group, schools, Rural Fire Service volunteers, the Blackheath Theatre Group, steampunks and a vast range of exotic characters who form the vibrant, eclectic community of Blackheath.
Celebration of the flowers in St Aidan's Church

Celebration of the flowers in St Aidan’s Church

And, of course, the Rhododendron Princess was crowned.
Monique Alison the Rhododendron Princess for 2018

Monique Alison the Rhododendron Princess for 2018

The mist and rain showers added to the atmosphere. Living above the clouds in the upper mountains means we enjoy plenty of misty days – my favourite weather for writing or just curling up with a book.
Rhododendron is a Greek word meaning Rose Tree.