Wakefield Press

Dr Ruth Bacchus ran a restaurant in a NSW country village before becoming a student and university medallist at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst. Her PhD explored ways for Western feminism to view satis (Hindu women who burn on the funeral pyres of their husbands). She now teaches literature, creative writing and politics at CSU. Her research interests are in the area of learning and teaching. She is an enthusiastic, though somewhat unmethodical, gardener.

Dr Barbara Hill is a Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst where she has dedicated her career to social justice and reconciliation through learning and teaching. Since 1993 she has taught subjects in English literature, Australian literature, existential literature, creative writing, sociology and professional writing. Her other areas of interest include Australian female authors; particularly the work of Dorothy Hewitt, Thea Astley, Marion Halligan and Kate Llewellyn. She also writes fiction and poetry.

Wakefield Press

16 Rose Street

Mile End

South Australia 5031

www.wakefieldpress.com.au

First published 2015

This edition published 2015

Copyright © Kate Llewellyn, 2015

All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

Edited by Margot Lloyd, Wakefield Press

Cover designed by Liz Nicholson, designBITE

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator:   Llewellyn, Kate, 1940–    , author.

Title:   First things first: selected letters of Kate Llewellyn:1977–2004 / edited by Ruth Bacchus and Barbara Hill.

ISBN:   978 1 74305 376 8 (ebook: epub).

Subjects:

Llewellyn, Kate, 1940– —Correspondence.

Women poets, Australian—20th century—Correspondence.

Authors, Australian—Correspondence

Other Creators/Contributors:

Bacchus, Ruth, 1963–    , editor.

Hill, Barbara, 1962–    , editor.

Dewey Number:   A821.3

Wakefield Press thanks Coriole Vineyards for their continued support.

Publication of this book was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Ann Plummer

whose many aerograms sent from the Pondicherry post office warmed our hearts

and to Laurel Mallard with our gratitude and love.

Contents

Foreword

BY MARION HALLIGAN

Preface

BY BARBARA HILL AND RUTH BACCHUS

1977–1983

1984–1989

1990–1992

1993–1998

1999–2004

List of recipients

Foreword

by Marion Halligan

You get a letter from Kate Llewellyn. In the letterbox, with stamps. It’s fat, because it’s long. Fat, because Kate’s wonderful scrawly loopy handwriting doesn’t allow many words to the page. Fat because it’s on gorgeous thick paper. And fat possibly because she has included some poems. The letter draws you into her thoughts, her life, her world. It tells you how much she loves you, without precisely using those words, rather, by shedding a kind of radiance on you. It’ll give you hours of pleasure, because even if she’s happened to type it, it will take a while to decipher it. She does remark that she’s always surprised that her writing is hard to read, as it’s so clear to her.

Well, these letters are no longer delivered by the postman, but they are alive on the page. They are full of energy, the words come out in a marvellous tumble, and with none of the banality so often evinced by poets writing prose. Her language is fresh, new-minted, the reader is amazed by its prodigal imagery, her words constantly offer new pictures, new concepts. She would agree with Socrates, it is examining her life that makes it worth living, and what she discovers is offered with such generosity we are constantly delighted. She writes with frankness, wisdom, self-knowledge, and occasionally a touch of malice, but always well deserved. She cops it from others, and occasionally sends a serve back. She goes to a government meeting and realises ‘how lucky I was not to have to work with idiots and bores and that the world is full and crammed and crawling with them. There is something about a dull bore which is withering and kills people slowly like a plant without water.’ She is funny and likes to gossip; her gossip is always elegant. And her whole concern is with writing and how it can be done, what it means, its pains and consolations. At the same time she is impassioned with visual arts and music. She talks about writing a poem about the death of a young woman whom she didn’t know, and what a delicate business it is. She wants a response ‘but not too much response … Just a quick stab to the lung and a quick withdrawal; clean, swift and well done without being bloody.’

Somebody asks her for a statement on her poetics. She chews her pen, and mutters poetics, poetics, in what might seem a characteristically flighty manner, but then she comes up with a most brilliant statement of her practice. I’d quote it here, but I think I should leave it to be come across as the letters are read. Flightiness is a default position, but it is always a kind of trick; in fact she is intellectually very serious and despite disclaimers a most clever observer of herself and others. She does not care for fools, especially when they are so often cruel, but she is good at working out how to escape their traps. She has led a rich life, not always easy, physically and especially emotionally hard sometimes, but with such grace, and so valiantly, that it could break your heart. Were you not laughing in amazement and admiration.

Preface

by Barbara Hill and Ruth Bacchus

‘I have a funny feeling that Jerry will walk in and find me scratching away—the sound of pen on paper is one of my favorite in the world and links us to centuries of people—just think—Dear John letters, marriage acceptances, letters home—novels, poems, letters from mothers in India to children in England (and all those other brutalities of Empire) and purchases of furniture for the newly built house or palace—or even a death sentence from a ruler—king Queen or Dictator—scratch, scratch—and all was done. The accomplishment of the pen.’

(From a letter to Barbara Hill and Ruth Bacchus, Woonona, 7 October 2007).

As we might expect of one of Australia’s most distinguished poets and best-loved prose writers, Kate Llewellyn writes wonderful letters—lively and rich, full of marvellous, slightly aslant observations and striking insights. Often hilarious, they reveal that Kate’s life, like many of her books, defies convention.

Kate writes across many genres: poetry (she has published six books of poetry and co-edited The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets), travel writing (Lilies, Feathers & Frangipani; Angels and Dark Madonnas; and Gorillas, Tea and Coffee), essays (The Floral Mother and Other Essays), autobiography (The Dressmaker’s Daughter), and a hybrid blend she has made her own and perhaps pioneered in Australian women’s writing—a sensuous and sensual journal, studded with poetry, laced with recipes, and concerned with ‘the weather, domesticity, love, art, gardening, the names of plants, a woman’s simple daily tasks and her heart’s thoughts’ (from a letter to Bob Boynes and Mandy Martin, 20 July 1987, referring to her work on The Waterlily).

Letters of course traverse the country between the personal and the public, and while these books have made many readers feel they know Kate, her personal letters reveal even more of her emotions and thoughts—or reveal them more directly. The letters, though, are not simply substitutes for face-to-face conversation, but literary works in their own right. They are a treasure trove of philosophical speculation and personal reflection on a vast range of subjects from gardens and gardening, cooking and other domestic matters, to poetry and politics. Often hilarious, sometimes scandalous, they express Kate’s passionate responses to a world that could entrance her with its beauty and infuriate her with its injustices and stupidities, her love of the natural world, her intense interest in everything from art to insects, from sex to the best way to blet a medlar.

Kate corresponded with a range of people—personal friends and family, of course, along with other writers and people interested in Australian books and writing. Her letters are affectionate, as well as informative, always expressing great interest in the wellbeing and doings of their recipients. Deeply intimate, as marked by the character of her interlocutor as of Kate herself, the letters also provide a trenchant social commentary on the decades over which they were written.

Kate often communicates with us (the editors of this collection) by email now, and indeed the art of letter-writing may soon be almost lost in favour of faster and perhaps more ephemeral technologies of communication. Yet there is still something special about the personal concreteness of a letter—fat with the promise of news and gossip (perhaps even scandal), addressed in a familiar hand—Kate’s bold angular scrawl that covers most of an envelope—to be torn open with eager anticipation and savoured quietly or passed between recipients. With this collection of vibrant, bold, sometimes risky personal letters, readers will be a part of such pleasures.

The letters in this book represent only a small part of the much larger collection of Kate’s letters held at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. The ADFA collection is comprehensive and her personal letters are contained in a sub-series of her correspondence from 1957–2001. In all there are over one hundred folders containing over two thousand letters, all of them either handwritten or typed (with a usually quirky typewriter). There are also some postcards, cards and faxes. Many are undated, and we have approximated dates where necessary here. We have tried to remain faithful to the way the letters were written, in some cases complete with abbreviations and techniques like underlining, capital letters and her prodigious use of symbols such as ‘SP?’ but we have, in some cases, edited material to make it more readable. We have focused on letters written since 1979, when Kate left the Women’s Advisory Unit of the South Australian Premier’s Department to write full-time, since these give a sense of Kate’s developing friendships and associations and also of her development as a writer and the attention she gives to her craft. Although allowed to read any letters held in the ADFA collection, we have tried in our selection to concentrate on those letters that bear some relation to Kate’s writerly concerns or illuminate her role as one of Australia’s finest and most prolific writers.

We would like to thank the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) for access to the collection of letters and correspondence of Kate Llewellyn and acknowledge the fact that collections such as these are an indispensable and invaluable asset in the understanding of literary production and the lives of Australian writers. In particular we would like to express our gratitude to Whilga Edwards and Rose Bowman for their generosity and assistance in our time of research. Their professionalism and expertise in managing and cataloguing the collection made a difficult task easier.

This book would not have been possible without the expertise of Laurel Mallard who not only deciphered some very difficult original letters but also typed them for this project. We would also like to thank Wendy McBeath for her careful reading of the manuscript and her suggestions and advice.

Finally we would like to thank Kate Llewellyn for allowing us access to her correspondence and trusting us with the contents of her life.

1977–1983

16 Swift Avenue,

Dulwich, SA 5065

Saturday 22nd January 1977

Dearest Susan[1] & Andrew,[2]

1 Susan Hampton, author and co-editor with Kate Llewellyn of The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (1986).

2 Andrew McDonald, poet, and editor of documentaries for SBS and reviews for ABC radio.

I have mislaid your two poems and I am having a big clean up today to find them to read to Thomas[3] too.

3 Thomas Robertson, poet and academic.

I’ve just got off the phone half an hour ago from you A. and giggling and chuckling away to myself with Bliss (my cat). I decided I cannot go to sleep with so many things I want to say to you two on my mind so, in spite of having packed Amanda off home saying I’m exhausted, I realise I’m not. How lovely to talk to you A.—it is a surprise to me to see for the first time the difference between talking and writing as being more real to talk. I’ve always felt the opposite, hence my letters, journals etc., have tired postmen and made the P.M.G. self-satisfied. Suddenly I realised it would be a pain to write and more unreal to do so than to talk. However—

Susan, I read ‘Stockton’, ‘Lily Calahan’ & ‘Doo(n)side Medea’ and ‘To Whom it May Concern’ at a CAE last night and I did it quite well frankly. You wouldn’t have been ashamed. I really enjoyed myself and the audience loved them! Will you tell Colleen for me?—also, they are going to get Hags, Rags and Scriptures into their library, they said (i.e. the lecturer). Since I’ve been back I’ve read your folder of ‘train reading’ which I was very glad to have. (I’d accidentally locked it in my case). I particularly liked ‘Hydra’ though I don’t understand it I admit but I think it’s a riddle and a beautiful one. Thank you very much for them all—I love ‘Stockton’ and the others I read (at the CAE) too.

I have been very busy since I got back (with my usual indulgences)—lunch with Thomas and writing—off the afternoon. He suggested Spiro’s for lunch. Yesterday we went to the Bistro by the River and watched the wind turn the water to warm toffee in an ugly way and I laughed and nearly lost a tooth, i.e. made it loose. It was a great shock as it is one of three current nightmares I have—and in a typically indulgent way I’ll now tell you the other two—the first is to do with losing my bouquet at my wedding and/or not having the correct dress for my wedding with my mother very upset. The second is to do with toilets. So I drank up and after Thomas left rode fast to my dentist who put a splint on it and referred me to someone who he says may be able to do a bone graft. Oh Jesus, I meant to join dental benefits. Well I just tell you this as it’s preying on my mind and I quake and drink up.

Actually, that’s another thing I am not at all pleased with the amount I’m drinking and plan to cut down shortly.

Julia,[4] Wendy[5] & I went to the Film Festival on Saturday night and saw Iphigenia made by the man who made Zorba. I loved it and drenched my shirt collar (as it’s not the sort of thing to sniff or blow your nose at). Next day I read it. What speeches—I cried again. No wonder I spent four happy years with Classical Studies. Though it’s funny how little I know even so as I can hardly work out who Zeus is. Speaking of that, I saw some beautiful pots in the Melbourne Gallery of 4th & 5th Century Greeks. In their collection are some 2nd Century Greek pots made in Italy and the difference says it all—they are so ugly. Four pots say a book about a civilisation.

4 Julia Britten, playwright, now deceased.

5 Wendy Badge, university friend, later changed her name to Wendy McBeath.

There was a show of Pre-Raphaelites on but I felt irritated and bored although I tried to get a thrill. Frankly I go less and less for those fellows—their lush dreams can have all the ideology they like behind them—I reckon as far as paintings go, they’re a wank. Thomas is hot for the Pre R’s and most 19th C painting interests him and it’s getting rediscovered (I mean popular) now but those P.R.s are getting too much air time in my opinion.

I am enclosing an article by a friend of mine Anna Gibbs[6] on Margaret Atwood in case you’re interested. I chased a train in Melbourne as I thought I saw Anna on it, tottering in my heels after Anna, but when it stopped and I slumped onto the step she moved and it wasn’t her. Damn I said.

6 Dr Anna Gibbs, editor and academic.

Today I went to the lawyer who told me bad news about this house being over time for a property settlement. I had an hilarious (truly) two hours with him as I now refuse to get upset or scared and this old game has a court full of pot holes and our racquets barely a string left. Actually, though, the lawyer is a very ‘nice’ man—courteous, old fashioned (he’s about 110 going on 40) he is very interested (truly) in Jackie Onassis and her charisma and I feel embarrassed I tell you to think our futures are in such hands etc., etc., but he is as honest as he could sensibly be—he just let this thing go over time and now doesn’t want to go to court—he’ll certainly look a fool if he does. So we’ll bargain with Richard[7] now and I tell you I have a hard time keeping a straight face. I feel it will all turn out well in the end and as I only had 10 tons of worry to spend on it there’s not much left.

7 Richard Llewellyn, Kate’s estranged husband.

Julia is going to write a one-act play this week, she said tonight, on a man I knew who was in prison and me. Their relationship in letters just two chairs and good lighting (with bars making shadows).

Well, that’s the end of the phone call at last. My love to you both. I am sorry I missed you Susan when I rang. (I would have liked to hear your voice.)

Love from Kate.

P.S. No, I can’t do an essay on Ezra Pound, Sue. I never actually got the knack frankly and passed in a whirl of poems, no punctuation, afternoons in bed, dinners for thirteen, piles of dishes and a kitchen so full of people it was described by dear Wendy as ‘Grand Central fucking Station’.

Frankly, I believe God loves me and held my elbow in all exams and inspired me. I understood very little but always got pretty drunk before an exam, arrived half an hour late, slapped my friends on the back as I went in the last chair or two in the front after saying hello to them ‘How’s it going?’ which I discovered they dreaded as they knew it was against the rules and I always thought their glazed cooling looks were exam shock. So, Susan dear, I can’t even suggest anything suitable to say. Who is Ezra Pound, by the way? (Ha ha—only kidding).

I’ll send some photos for the Colo when I get them.

My love to you both.

Kate.

P.S. Dear Andrew & Susan. Take this in small doses. I’m sorry it’s so long. I could halve it and make it two letters but hope instead you will take it a page or so at a time. There’s nothing urgent in it. It could take a week. Love. Kate.

I won’t go into details, as you know them all too well. I saw a lovely house—oldest in Henley Beach with a ‘Sale’ sign up. It’s next to Julia and faces the beach with a bay window—seven rooms, cast iron verandah and I feel I could be happy there. A strong feeling came over me as I walked up the path. Like a prophecy being fulfilled. Tell Julia I went to see Richard to see if he’d get a move on re Dulwich and settlement and he’s not got the legal letter yet! God damn it! But he’s quite amenable to the idea of Dulwich being sold—don’t know how much he’d make me pay and where I’d get it but—Julia says if he won’t move, she’ll buy it for me and let it to me while I wait for the lawyers. What a woman. So it’s all for making more intensity I’m afraid.

I’ve enclosed a few poems. Love to you both. Kate.

201 Unley Road,

Unley SA

11th April 1978

Dear Ghilly,[8]

8 Ghillian Sullivan, friend, operatic soprano.

How lovely to have your letter! I’ll give it to Sylvia[9] to read as she’s asking after you. I was so glad you’re OK though it sounds complex. I was glad to hear from you. I felt rotten not having seen you or seen you off. It was an awful time. But there’s no reason you should apologise! I have so much to tell you. I have a JOB! A lovely one—doing public participation and publicity for a study for Unley Council. (I’ll enclose my first ever prose publication to show you a bit of what it’s about.) It’s on Unley Rd and I ride like a happy bird in the wind at 9 a.m. and ride up and down to the Council Chambers (nearby) and the butcher etc., and have lots to do and it’s complex, delicate, exacting, exciting and well paid! $210 a week and it’s for four months. When it’s over I may get another like it with the firm of consultants in this field who hired me. It came through the Commonwealth Employment Service and strangely enough, after ten years formal training, through the untrained area of my work i.e. conservation and public participation. A nice plus in a way after all the jobs I didn’t get which I was trained for and for which I longed and felt so sad and depressed not getting. It always got from 50 applicants to me and another and the other got it. I was very low and anxious (suicidal) and decided it was in my head (plus the money worries which were very real) and I decided to borrow $500 from Babs Pak Poy which she wanted to give me but I can now pay her back and then to readjust my mind. I did this and settled into the life of my usual indulgence minus the guilt and anxiety. No sooner had I done this and registered at the CES for a job than I had one! On the same day—Friday—I had a letter from Sydney Morning Herald saying of the three poems I’d sent them a few months ago, they accepted all 3 and were sending $150! Jesus I buckled at the knees and knelt on the kitchen floor. (I sent Rat, Rain, and Being Born Dying). H[10] and M[11] are OK but H is very much in love with Belinda aged 22, an art school graduate who is lovely in all ways but so taxing to this family as the balances are very wonky. Families are delicately balanced organisms and it takes only a little to stress them too much. This one was clanging around like a bell in a falling tower until I called in a friend who is a counsellor of delinquent boys and their parents and he performed miracles. No trouble since and he comes once a week for a talk. What a lovely man and how lucky I was! Belinda goes to Sydney next week to find work (I hope) and Hugh will have earlier nights and get to school a bit more. But it’s all OK now but his band (The Accountants) seem to come each weekend and stay up till 4 a.m. but that may not become a habit.

9 Sylvia Sharpe Appleby, anthropologist.

10 Hugh Llewellyn, Kate’s son, born in 1962.

11 Mary Llewellyn, Kate’s daughter, born in 1965.

Thomas is lovely as ever and we meet still for lunch at Spiro’s, a lovely Greek Restaurant or the Waverley Pub nearby (which I wrote about in a poem called Pub). It has lovely fresh GREEN vegetables and warmth and quietness and fish that is grilled and I’m sold. Thomas is as loving as ever and sometimes I feel he really does love me. I know I love him and need him and like so much his talk and ideas and the fact that I can say without retribution exactly what I think about him, his ideas, behaviour, talk or that of anyone else too. It’s so free and heady to me and I don’t think I’ll ever take it for granted.

I bought some Italian dark red boots for $190 with my poetry money as I was a bit nervous about work and my appearance but I don’t regret it although the others in the Study Group are all also new graduates and wear jeans but the Study Group leaders are City Planners and Psychologists etc., who are pretty straight so I try to steer a path between in dress and behaviour. I like them all and LOVE the job and pray I do it well.

I hope to God yr. O.K. with your married male, at least yr. sensible and sensitive to her feelings as well as you say so and as I’d know you are anyway and I hope you can deal with him without being too upset or oppressed yourself. I’m so glad to think of Simon[12] coming over I just hope to God he can and soon! Send me yr. phone no. so if I’m feeling passionate I can ring you (person to person).

12 Ghilly’s boyfriend at the time.

I bought a pale pinewood table or bench and 2 chairs of pine with acid green vinyl seats for the kitchen yesterday. They look lovely and H & M are so pleased with them and with me for having a job.

Philip[13] came to dinner and we ate slowly and happily and he talked later about his work at Flinders. He said when I rang after about two months that he’d been very hurt by my ignoring of him when Thomas came back from England and he felt sad and low and jealous and then read a Henry Lawson story about two brothers one of whom died trying to rescue the other in a mine disaster after not speaking from a quarrel years before. He decided he should talk to me and had re-thought his hurt and so was glad to come to dinner and I was glad to have him. He is a dear man and has many lovely unique qualities.

13 Philip Capon, restaurateur, and old friend from the Adult Matriculation School where Kate and he met as students in 1974.

I am sending your Graduation Ceremony list Gilly just to show you your name on it. Sylvia, Pam Lindsay, Rosemary Martin, Noel Usher and I were there in gowns and clean hair. It was quite pretty in the lovely tradition and the red gowns and the black floppy hats of some of the toffs looked so Thomas a’Becket and English Renaissance I loved it all and long live ceremony I breathed. We missed you and spoke of you fondly. Julia and Thomas had lunch with me at Chesser Cellar afterwards and Hugo came to my great surprise and he and John then went off with Sylvia and her mother and uncle and had lunch in the Bistro. Sylvia was very happy, I think it meant more to her and so it should in that she did better and worked harder and had less support than anyone I know.

I have been writing but a bit less as I feel poetry is a dying art form (if I face reality) and pop music has really taken over a vast area of what poetry once was. But poetry is still alive and well but not as well as I’d like it but then neither is opera I guess if we face facts (in ratio to each other’s effect and involvement in the community) and compared to a lot of pop and the ugliness of most TV and a lot of films, it’s probably not that different from the ugliness of the people’s art in the Industrial Revolution. Oh well, I’ll begin again and hope to get better at it. And I hope you get better at singing as I know you will (but for me it’s not at all certain). Your teacher sounds very brave and sensible and I do hope she really is and you certainly seem to have been both sensible and lucky. That’s a pretty good combination for success when you add your discipline and imagination to it. I do hope you don’t find me embarrassingly flattering, dear Gills. I want to encourage you and show you how I believe in you and that it all sounds very positive and progressive for your career.

Well, I send my love and congratulations. I’d love to come over and if I pay off my $1600 debts and get a job at the end of Aug. to earn my fare I may well do so as I certainly need to travel before I’m too set in my ways. Sylvia and Thomas send their love (Thomas actually said his ‘regards’) and I send my love.

Jill.[14]

14 Before she started writing, Kate was known by her second name, Jill, and many of these letters are signed off accordingly. When her work started being published, she reverted to her first given name, Kate.

16 Swift Avenue,

Dulwich, SA

14th June 1978

Dearest Ghilly,

Hardly a day passes that I don’t think of you. I miss you. I do hope your life is good in London and that your work goes well. Whenever I hear a lovely voice on the radio I think of you and wonder about you. I had dinner here on Saturday and 16 women who you know came. It was good and I felt very happy. Wendy Badge and I went painting walls next day at Deborah McCulloch’s[15] new cottage. I’ve been criticised lately by Kate Jennings and Sandra Grimes (Anthropologist) (who was pretty drunk to be fair) for being a bit loud. I take feminist criticism very seriously and welcome it yet I think that I am a tall wavy floppy tree and I refuse to be pruned. By that I mean, true enough, I’m loud and talkative but I don’t like the idea at all that we should all fit a mould of the appropriate set up by ideas which I think lack perspective in that they don’t take enough notice of individual differences. So I’m disregarding it with an effort.

15 Deborah McCulloch was adviser on women’s affairs to the Premier, Don Dunstan.

Sandra said it without any animosity and in almost a form of affection, and in her cups, but I felt it must be true to what she really thought. Also she said she finds my dinner parties ‘hard to handle’, meaning the big table and the dining room. But although we could, as I said, eat in the kitchen or on our laps in the living room, I don’t really see the need as some others literally find lap eating ‘hard to handle’ too. Also, this is the structure I have and I find it useful in many ways and see no reason not to use it unless it truly oppresses others. Radical feminism has an ugly glint whenever a hint of luxury or comfort arises. Yet I find pubs difficult as I said to Sandra and we all try and that is what is necessary and valuable. I’m all for generosity.

Thomas sends his warm regards, Ghilly.

Wendy is wonderful! Has a new full time job in the Public Service Board as an Equal Opportunity Officer. She’s gone up about three grades in the Public Service, and will get a decent salary. She’s been terribly poor for ages with her children and it’s good to think of her being comfortable at last.

My job is O.K. and I’m learning a lot but it’s taxing and strange and so often so profoundly involved with the trivial that I feel I’m in a Monty Python show and I laugh out loud. But I enjoy it and it’s good discipline and good money but I’d never want to live like this or at this pace. I haven’t written up my diary for a week.

I went to the Poets’ Union of Australia Conference in Melbourne two weeks ago on a long weekend to set it up and to get a constitution. It was heartening. I think Thomas will join it. It was cold and no one had thought of any food. I got a cold and many funny things happened which you’d have loved. I was made National Secretary. I told Pio, the wild poet who used to shout at Geoffrey Dutton during Writers’ Week speeches, to take his feet off the seats as I looked down and saw him sprawled. He asked why he should and I began to wonder myself. But remembering we were in the Trades Hall I said, ‘Because workers paid for them’ and he did.

I had a grand time and stayed with friends at Williamstown, Carillo Santner and Nancy Black, and played with their children with bikes on the beach and to top it off the Literature Board paid my train fare and $20 to read in Melbourne Town Hall on the Saturday night.

Thomas and I just had a pepper steak at home and he’s off to give a tute. He is a bit more optimistic about his work than he was and is writing an article on Walter Scott. It’s about the need to understand people from an historical and social point of view and is on Quentin Durward. Do you know the story? It relates medieval man with 19th C. man and tries to make an understanding of this contrast and dichotomy in the lives of people.

I love you Ghilly. Kate.

16 Swift Avenue,

Dulwich

29th June 1978

Dear Ghilly,

I do hope you have had two letters and a card I sent. Thomas says he doesn’t think it was a real address to which I was writing. Ruth[16] was at Julia’s birthday party two nights ago and she looked lovely. She and Thomas had a long talk by the fire and he said afterwards that he found her very beautiful and interesting. We all spoke fondly of you. Julia was happy and relaxed to my great joy and the house was full of flowers she’d been given. Her hair is cut fairly short and waves and falls and is younger and very flattering.

16 Ghilly’s mother.

Thomas and I had lunch at Chesser Cellar with Rob and Sue[17] last Friday and it was very happy and interesting. I told Rob you were my friend and he asked after you. Sue likes her job at Murray Park and has given me a subscription to a New York poetry magazine. I was touched and flattered really.

17 Dr Susan Sheridan, feminist, critic and academic. Rob was her partner.

My job is still good, a little frustrating but very good in that the people I work with are young graduates and we are in one big room and laugh a lot. I went to a public meeting one night recently with Stephen, a town planner who is one of my bosses, and I saw a Councillor and a few other men who made me realise just how lucky I was not to have to work with idiots and bores and that the world is full and crammed and crawling with them. There is something about a dull bore which is withering and kills people slowly like a plant without water.

Thomas is still lovely and we are happier than ever before. Our life is so good and he supports me so much and amazes me that he finds such pleasure in me. I can never quite understand it and wonder at it and at times lead him an awful dance. He said one day: ‘You are quite a handful.’ Frankly I think I am as good for him as he is for me and although a lot of people are puzzled by what we have in common, we seem to get endless ideas and amusement and laugh a lot too. I think you understand this well and that you and Simon have similar good things from each other.

Now I have something nice to tell you. The Australian has accepted two of my poems—one called ‘Finished’ and one called ‘The Teapot’. I got the cheque of $150 from the Sydney Morning Herald two days ago for three which I think I told you they accepted, so I am beginning to pay back some of my debts at last. This job ends in August. Wendy McBeath has a full time job, as I may have told you, in the Govt. and after all her years of poverty it’s just wonderful to see her. Pol magazine might do an article on Diana Boynes,[18] Dee Jones (Painter) Julia and me. My friend Jennifer Wallis rang from Sydney saying she was sick of doing articles and photographs of bloody men for Pol and decided that there were lots of interesting women around and that she should begin on them and in Adelaide for a start. I feel it’s a good idea as I get sick of famous Australian actresses or society art gallery owners who are always in magazines. It will encourage other women, I think, if they read about women who make things or write and are artists and lead good lives but aren’t rich and stereo beautiful nor 25 years old.

18 An Adelaide-based silver jeweller.

If you will tell me the date of the Australian’s photo of you, Gilly, I will send for it, as I badly want to pin it up.

Julia and I are going to La Traviata this week—it got quite a good review. Marilyn Richardson has the lead so it should be wonderful.

Mary is as sweet as ever and now has her hair in plaits and has a green and navy tartan pleated skirt for her school uniform and looks just lovely. We have a new small dog about the size of both my hands who is called Claudette and is an Australian silky haired terrier and who was given to us a week ago. We all love her. She is like a moving bundle of knotted yapping rags. I do hope you are well and happy dearest Gilly.

Love from Jill.

Dulwich.

Wednesday,

18th October 1978.

Dearest Susan & Andrew,

I’m sorry this is so near to the last one but I want you to know I can spell title. See title. I just remembered I spelt it wrongly in my haste last letter and meant to correct it and forgot and don’t want you to think besides not being able to spell rhythm or punctuate, I can’t spell title. I can say COLO too!

Oh how I miss you two. Last night Julia and I went to the Poets Union in the Botanic Hotel and it was lovely! Yes the only one (poetry reading) I’ve ever really enjoyed apart from the Poets Union in Sydney with you two. It was so balanced you see. No madmen—no drunks, a medium amount of people no queue to read (only about ten of us) and it ended at 10 p.m. I asked that the Union write to Peter Ward to see why he’s not published poetry in the Australian and to Helix to say it’s a bad thing to take our money ($3) and give no prize money at all and thus make $3,000 and not even publish a list of finalists (thirty of them) nor their work. They should have had the money equally divided between them if the judges thought no one was good enough to win. It’s hard enough not to win but to pay to lose and not even have another poet the winner is too hard and wrong beside. Julia read three poems and I read four hastily snatched from the pile as high as my bed I have to climb over whenever I get out that side. I want to send you one called ‘Flying’ if I can find it some time. We flew everywhere as children (in the desert town it was the best way) and the whole story is true and one which makes me laugh because it’s so terrible.

I’ll send the article I did for the women’s show with this letter as I’ve just received a copy in the post.

The rose is out by my window and its white petal balloons drift around the fence trying to decide where to land. In the end they have to break up to fall. At first they are a beautiful pale green and turn white as milk and then creamy. I’ll put one in this envelope.

Yesterday I went to a talk Thomas gave at lunchtime to the Philosophy Club on Art and Aesthetics. It was a twelve minute talk and then two others spoke and debated with the audience. It was interesting but heavy-handed as the other two didn’t know much about it and acted as if ‘What is Art’ is quite new and so we didn’t really get far but I felt very excited as I kept thinking we were about to. Also there were some smart people there who could have got it and let a few arrows hit near but one or two maddish types kept on and on. How often this happens.

Thomas has a very nice ability to think clearly and I only need to sit near and hear an idea being pulled out like a splinter from a thumb to get entranced. Often he is wrong and can see it at once when it’s shown to him and he says so at once and goes on with the meal and the talk without festering. He is for me a beautiful living example of what education can do—to make the idea the thing and its clarity and precision and audacity are the lines, which draw it pure as a lily.

Next day. I would sign this letter ‘unrestrained’. I did only want to correct the title and have a small letter. I’ve been looking for ‘Flying’—can’t find it—but found a few others which might interest and/or exhaust you. Don’t read them if you’re tired and I don’t mind a scrap. I am a merciless devil and am going to be quietly looking at the sky or ceiling and not write to you for at least two weeks. It’s a heavenly day at last and I’m about to ride to the river and have lunch with Thomas and Ianesco (Ian North)[19] who is the curator of paintings at the State Gallery and an old friend I love. You’ll meet him too when you come over.

19 Ian North, full-time author and artist, sometimes referred to here as Ianesco.

Love from Kate.

287 Esplanade,

Henley Beach.[20]

20 At Julia Britten’s house.

Easter Monday, 1979.

Dear Ghilly,

Thank you for the two postcards you sent! Congratulations for working at Glynbourne!!! How lovely! I knew you’d come to fruit. I’m at Julia’s for Easter and it’s quite hot—29 degrees yesterday. I have been making fruit cakes for a living, Gills, and it’s hard yakka. However—wait for it—I now have two jobs! At last—one in the Women’s Unit in the Premier’s Dept (1/2 time only) doing interviews with public servants on sexism in their jobs. I start tomorrow. I’ve waited 4 months for this job. The other is doing research for Derek Llewellyn-Jones on quotes for Literature on the Breast—anatomy, surgery, feeding, etc. and wants quotes to put in it to make it more lively. I went to dinner with him last Monday the 9th (my unlucky day usually) at Ayres House and he offered me the job as I took him a D.H. Lawrence poem for it was called ‘Song of a Man Who is Loved’. He liked it and offered me $1000 to do the job. I got the Unit job the same night and so I don’t feel the 9th is unlucky any more. I was so excited I nearly woke Mary at 3 a.m. and said, ‘We’re saved!’ But thought it’d be a bad memory for her later to think we were so broke. I took 3 baths instead and told her at 7 a.m. that I had two jobs and she said ‘Congratulations Mummy’. Julia and I are writing letters to the Editor, as we are sick of women being beaten up and killed and the chaps getting off.

Thomas is lovely as ever and we are happy and go through cycles of one loving more than the other which I think keeps this bike on the road.

I finally cracked Meanjin last week to my delight with a poem called ‘Poet’. I’ve written three short stories as I felt so few are interested in poetry that I’d better look for an audience elsewhere. If I get a chance I’ll photostat some new poems and a couple of stories and send them to you as I know you’ve always been so encouraging and interested in what I write.

Julia and I are doing a poetry reading at the Department of English at Adelaide University next Tuesday so it’ll be lovely to go back.

I’ve been reading all Violette Leduc’s books—do you know her?—

she’s marvellous—died in 1972 in France. I’m reading Mill on the Floss at last and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow—quite a contrast isn’t it?—and so The Mill seemed awfully close to home—being bankrupt with bailiffs, etc. I shudder and know fruit cakes aren’t the way. It goes on but will end soon, I hope.

B. is pregnant and R. has extended the Henley house with glass and pinewood and it’s lovely and I’d like to put a brick through the window when I think of my situation and Dulwich so in need of repairs. I’ll sell it, I think—pay him the $4000 I’ve offered to him for it and get a smaller house and go to the South of France with Julia in Sept. and come to see you and Greece and Paris. I do hope Simon is well and happy. Please give him my love.

Lots of love to you, dearest Gilly.

From Jill.

The Premier’s Department,

Women’s Unit

Tues. 24th April 1979.

Dear Ghilly,

Your long letter came yesterday. Thanking you! I am in the Women’s Unit working for Deborah McCulloch doing interviews with public servants on sexism in their jobs & seeing why only four women but hundreds of men are in the upper third of the P. Service and seeing what we can do about it. I love it! Last night I went to the University and heard Louis Simpson, a 55-year-old American poet read for a whole hour and then to dinner with him, Beate,[21] Andrew Taylor[22] and Thomas in Staff Club and then to Festival Bistro for drinks in a moonlight gum tree reflection of glass and river drowning waitresses as they walked on the water bringing more drinks through the tops of the trees.

21 Dr Beate Josephi, poet and historian.

22 Poet and academic.

I am wearing a black suspender belt and black seamed stockings in dark grey nylon! It’s a big kick and Thomas is rather keen so I am happy and nearly get off by myself in these new black patent five and a half-inch heeled sandals. Ha ha. I sure don’t look like a feminist from this Dept. Bib and brace overalls was what Wendy told me to wear half joking when I asked her. But I want to look like a Public Servant body and soul so they trust me and spill the beans to me in the interview.

I do hope your voice is O.K. now Gills! I was accepted by Rosemary Dobson for a book of four promising women poets to be published by Sisters a Melbourne Feminist Publishing House. She took 13 and said it should be a nice book. I pray it is! I’ll send you a copy if I can.

I ride to work in lovely autumn air through the park singing to the pink galahs, pigeons and magpies. It’s heaven! I went in a taxi to Port Adelaide yesterday to the dockyard to interview a man about apprentices which was lovely seeing the boats lying at peace in the water side by side like babies in a hospital after feeding time. It’s Anzac Day tomorrow and Julia and I are doing a reading at the Box Factory with Red Gum a folk band.

Love, Jill.

Dulwich.

Wednesday, 6th June 1979.

Dear S & A,

How lovely to have your letters and the story! Thomas read yours to me A, and I thought for a quarter page it was you Susan and suddenly I realised it was an English person and it must be you A. I was making a cup of tea for Thomas as Mary was waiting to be driven to swimming training by Thomas hence my haste to get it read by Thomas. I sat up A., and listened to ABC for your program but it’s next week they say.

God something funny happened last night with Friendly St. Poetry—it was my turn to be a main reader—they have two a night and six women had been to dinner with Mary and me and had a jolly time. What can the Gods be thinking of? They’re reduced to slapstick—upstairs on a creaking wooden floor was an old fashioned dance with a pianola, singing, an M.C. and then a melodrama acted and I was supposed to read and we could hear it all! I said at first I wouldn’t do it but thought then I’d better as my track record as a ‘touchy feminist’ at Friendly Street is not good and I’d look as if I was sulking. So I said I’d try and did for five minutes and gave up and said, ‘Let’s do something else’. It was hilarious—fifty people waiting and ‘The Pride of Erin’ rolling in the pianola upstairs. Some music wouldn’t be too hard but this was so satirical to work against.

Niffy sent a letter and photo and last night I found it after Thomas left and it cheered me like something holy. I woke up at 7 a.m., looked at the photo of Niff and Ant and wrote her eleven pages and took the photo to work and looked at its clean goodness and sweet humanity, as pure and simple as a 2nd century A.D. Italian plate portrait of a man and wife I have seen, such matched calm knowledge of each other & confidence of the shared past & face to the world proudly. Tears come to my eyes as I look at it. I’m having it framed in bamboo as that’s like Niff’s house. It’s like a pause in an exquisite dance.

Life is so calm now; I rarely get upset, seldom cry, don’t worry much, am even-tempered, love my job—applied for $5,000 loan, and feel chaos must be behind me now and I am certainly not going to make mountains out of molehills yet I treasure the ability to feel pain. My biggest problem is cynicism—I can’t believe in the big things still, p’raps more than ever, art and the human ability to see beauty and the kindness in us. Love, I don’t know about. When it so depends on need and is so evanescent, I mean you have to suspect something so changeable and yet it comes again doesn’t it? (This is mainly sexual love I’m talking about). So it must be real even though we can’t see it; it makes people ill when it goes and well when it is present. But what makes me suspect it when someone says it, is the fact of their need and mine. Is it the need that makes it so, or is it true and pure of itself, which I can’t really believe it often is. Rave on Kate.

My boss Deborah[23] left last week. There were four parties for her. I lasted only three and collapsed, couldn’t go to work, went back to bed and felt poisoned—I’d eaten fish at dinner and lay five hours calling, too ill to walk, and Alison[24] couldn’t hear me. I slept in between and Thomas arrived at 2 p.m. and gave me water and read Wallace Stevens to me for an hour. I was ill for two and a half days—it couldn’t be a hangover surely—I’ve always been able to walk—even on the Colo with Niffy—we got our Berocca Vit B’s down even though we couldn’t drink tea after the night you came down—do you remember? That was such a lovely day and night and maidenhair fern to you too.

23 Deborah McCulloch.

24 Alison Cooper, a potter, and Kate’s tenant at the time.

Love from Kate.

Friday. Well I’ve read your story Susan—it’s lovely! Very good I thought. Wish it were longer—that’s the trouble with us poets, words seem precious and we don’t squander them like the prose people can. We should use words more freely. I liked it very much! Love Kate.

Stirling,

South Australia.

Monday 18th June 1979.

Dearest Susan & Andrew,

Because it’s a long weekend, I’m by a big log fire in the hills with pine trees and gums outside the glass walls, rag rugs and leather chairs in my friend Wendy’s house with Mozart on and Wendy sleeping and her daughter Bella chopping wood and coming in to drink tea with me reading and writing. Rosellas and green parrots fly though the trees and a little bird acts like a fountain in the air, falling and twisting to rise and fall for pleasure and his joy. People wear hand knitted woollen jumpers and walk quietly over the pine needles like silent animals stalking to their cars to drive off with a quietly slaughtered deer. People are different here; quieter, less intense, all because, I think, the trees and hills muffle them and they resign themselves to being quieter as they’ve seen their parents try to win against the trees and cut and cut to no avail and now they value the trees more and are resigned and loving.

I have begun a longish poem—song—elegy—which a friend asked me to write as a memorial to a young youth worker who went to India, got a vile dysentery and died aged twenty-three. The mother and the friend want to have some work of art in her memory and although I fear it’s dangerous thing, I said I’d think about it. Of course the grief of these two women for another woman is immensely interesting for a start, but I didn’t know the dead girl and feel it’s foolish to try to write about her as a personality. Anyway I was reading the American Poetry Review (last issue) and a Spanish writer had a long poem in it and as I read, the rhythm and some lines came to me. I am affected by this poem of mine at any rate as I cry when I read what I write. Let’s hope others like it. I don’t know if it’s finished—it’s a delicate business knowing how little to say, and yet a fair bit needs to be said to get the reader/listener to break and soften and respond but not too much response, as I don’t like that. Just a quick stab to the lung and a quick withdrawal; clean, swift and well done without being bloody. I hope the latter doesn’t disgust you, it may and you may be right. All this is really about is how to be political without being hysterical, egotistic, and didactic and not promoting callousness. I think each time you hurt a reader you have the responsibility to allow them to be hurt again and not scarred or calloused.

G. Kinnell[25] was here and Thomas and I heard him read for an hour at the University and then joy oh joy we went to Andrew Taylor’s and had a drink with him and Jesus he sat next to me and asked me about my work in the Public Service on Affirmative Action, as he is going to live and work at Hawaii University with a big feminist and coloured population and he wants to know about how the University can get its members of staff more fairly represented from these people. Well, the next thing, the bit I really am glad about, is he asked me to send him the new draft of ‘Walking’!!!! Then we went to dinner at a lovely restaurant called Neddy’s and I only saw him as he was up the other end of the table. It was a lovely meal and a big fire and I felt happy all night. He has, I think, become the Bear.[26] To understand something so well one does have to become it I think. I worry we might kill him as we keep on saying, ‘Dance! Go and do it again!’ and the poor creature who has dazzled us keeps on until they fall down and we turn away derisively and eat some popcorn. It’s to dwarf the monsters in us that I think we create and love monsters and then try to kill them.

25 Galway Kinnell, American poet.

26 The title of a poem of his called The Bears.

I haven’t had the nerve to send the poem yet. I just put it in an envelope but have carried it round since and it’ll soon be too late as he’s off to New York to his family within the week for seven weeks.

Mary and I are going to France in five weeks. I can’t quite believe it but it seems true. The Bank Manager says I can have $5,000 and as Julia is in Venice from July till late August and my job finishes on 22nd June, I decided not to apply for the permanent job in the unit, as a series of coincidences—the Bank saying I can have another $5000 and a superb feminist lawyer applying for the job, all made me think fate was telling me something. Hugo will stay with R. and is a bit sad and Mary is very excited and will go for three to five months. First to London then Paris and then Venice. It’s eighteen kilometres from Nice and I reckon I could row a boat over to Rome it’s so close on a map. No further than the arc of my thumb and forefinger. I am very scared and worried and wonder if I’m mad but I feel I’d be mad not to go and this is such a chance and I call myself a writer and haven’t been out of the country for God’s sake! I’ll let Dulwich and sell it when I get back and pay the bank the overdraft and buy a smaller house. Well what do you think of that? I’ve enclosed a poem called ‘Portrait’ about my boss’s husband and old men in general and death and lust and Electra complexes and made from a portrait of a bloke on the back of the latest American Poetry Review. God that magazine heartens me! I understand the poems on the whole, and after the ‘American Model’ and feeling it was a bit pointless writing in my old fashioned way compared to Tranter and Co. I talked it out with Thomas and thought that each age needs to talk about the same things but can use images and ideas and forms relating to it and not be boring but be lively and useful and exciting and beautiful (hopefully). So I started again. What do you think about that?

Love from Kate.

Wednesday 20th

P.S. Thank you—I liked the ‘Lizard’ poem very much, A, it’s got a lovely peace to it.

C/- Ghilly Sullivan,

12 Coles Green Rd., London. NW2 7HA, UK.

September 5th, 1979.

Dearest Helen and Peter,[27]

27 Helen and Peter Goldsworthy. Peter Goldsworthy is an Australian author.

I hope you got cards from Paris and I hope this finds you even if they haven’t, and finds you well and even happy. Well that’s the first sentence over and it’s always the hardest after a silence I find. I came to York a medieval city with a great wall in good repair and a cathedral—early Gothic that we go to hear a choir at evensong tonight—so you see in England I do English things. In Paris I did French things—ate, drank, took lovers, saw Monets & Manets and great gardens and tiny cafes and buildings to break your heart so lovely that the rest of the world isn’t like it and slid up and down the Seine on a boat etc. etc. I was sorry to leave—except that an American (ironically) was my only bad experience and that made me not so sorry to go and I only wish, as I reeled out of his room on the Rue Racine at 3 a.m., I’d said, ‘You are a disgrace to your country.’ Oh well, all countries have them. Last night Stewart, Gilly’s Scottish baritone boyfriend, and I came up to London by train to hear her sing in The Elixir of Love. I like singing (listening I mean), but musicians on the whole are very boring at conversation. Don’t you think so? I would not expect it but at dinner last night with five I nearly fell off my chair to create a bit of excitement. I could swallow my face in boredom at times. It is Sunday and I just had the English breakfast. This is a very good time to pick up fellas as the setting is domestic, the day stretches ahead, and the blood sugar is rising and one might be a member of the family (as they have breakfast together—a most intimate meal)—and contrasted with that, if no-one speaks it is lonelier than other meals for all the above reasons, so I am a great breakfast chatterer. I find out a lot too—today I heard how I can get to the Lake District via Glasgow. Information is not to be sneezed at when travelling alone, being a certain age and a woman and not having a map. In fact for two weeks I had no map and a Welsh man took his only map off the Station wall for me to keep. Ah! The Welsh—but they are another matter! I went too far in Wales and ended up in Ireland as a consequence. Then, to get rid of an Englishman I stayed in Ireland. Personally, I think I was heading for America and only stopped myself in time and managed to in time. ‘No, no Kate,’ I said. ‘Not that way! Go East Old Woman.’ Food in England is a hard thing to bear. If vegetables were not tinned or deep fried and if potatoes were not re-cooked three times I’d be a nicer person. I ate steak tartare in Paris with Champagne to recover from the American—a woman needs her consolations and is lucky if she can provide them herself! François Couperin played Bach on the organ in the Church of St Severin at a free concert near my hotel. My feet and fate have taken me to lovely places and mostly generous people and with no timetables and few priorities, life is so simple that you can find Jane Austen’s tomb in Winchester Cathedral by simply walking and looking down. She was small. Discreet, even in her size.

Well, dear Helen and Peter, I think of you and hope you are alright and the writing also going well. If you wish, you can write a card to me at the address here on the back. Gilly is forwarding post. I wrote seventeen poems—one or two may be OK but it is a great relief to be working—seventeen in eighteen days is OK. A long long one (for me) I hope to enter in the Mattara.

Love from Kate. XX

PS I do hope you had a lovely time in Sydney! Did you get to have coffee at my local café, the Ashanti?

Henley Beach,

5th October 1979.

Dear Susan and Andrew,

Thank you for your letters to which I immediately replied in the enclosed poem. It is wonderful you won the prize Susan just terrific and so apt. When does our book come out[28] I wonder? I signed a copyright and responsibility type of document two days ago for them so I guess they’ll wait for that to be fixed up first. God I nearly gave up, too tired and discouraged and feeling that no one really cares or values poetry anymore and what’s the point and who are you talking to in the end and is it just a small talent in a dying art form and is it worth the danger and the madness and feeling the top of your head get as thin as an eggshell and your hands to shake. However, I think I’m just hooked and that’s all there is to it and even thinking all that will only lead to less writing but not to stop it.

28 Sisters Poets 1 (1979), edited by Rosemary Dobson.

R. has changed his mind again and at the airport in Adelaide when I got back I was told he says now I can have the house. I hardly care and just nodded but am now sitting under his signature (on the kitchen wall pinned up for all to see) and mine on a document my friend Patrick Pak Poy got us both to sign to say I’ll give him $7,000 which is an extra $3,000 and he will give me the house and Patrick is going to try to get it ended and to stick once and for all. I am very sick of it and wish to get off this stage. I feel like an old actress who has grown old in a role she no longer believes and goes through the motions wishing hard for a new part and knows her acting lacks conviction and is getting fucking sordid so she drinks a lot.

Mary and I have a lovely flat on the water front here and quite like it and go back to Dulwich late November and I may come to Sydney in a couple of weeks to stay while she goes to school and stays with friends.

Thomas has been having lunch with me and kind and good to me as usual. He has his problems I agree, but the great thing is that no matter how old and bad and cynical I feel he can make faith flicker in me again. He thinks it’s terrible that I stopped writing and that I didn’t believe I should any more which goes to show his faith. As soon as I get to Sydney I’ll ring you up and then … yum yum. It will depend on whether R. picks up the money from the bank which should be early next week or today and then I will have the deeds and it will surely be over and I can leave. Love from Kate.

Dulwich,

1st February 1980.

Dearest Ghilly,

I am worried that I haven’t heard from you? Are you busy/ill or have I hurt yr. feelings? I do hope yr. O.K. and also that I haven’t said anything hurtful in a letter. My house was auctioned 3 days ago and passed in at $59,500. So now the agents are waiting for better offers. I am not too worried fortunately as I feel it will sell and can wait a bit longer. Mary had a party last night here in the Gallery for 10 girls dressed up in fancy dress and playing blind man’s buff etc. It was entrancing to watch and Mary wore a 50s dress of mine—a daffodil yellow taffeta strapless number with a full skirt up to the knees in front and to the floor at the back with her hair in a knot.

I am off to Julia’s for the weekend … last weekend we had a house party there and Wendy and Christine Giles stayed with us and then 15 came to lunch next day (all women), it was lovely and we went out in a canoe. I haven’t seen Julia so relaxed; she loves good company but is too shy to get it for herself so I do for us both. Ruth is helping her get a play read by the Co. Ruth works for and had lunch with Julia last week.

I’ve been writing a lot and today wrote to Sisters to see if they’d consider a book of mine alone. Thomas is back from U.K. and is lively as ever. His Mother is suddenly senile and a great worry now—

she’s 89!

Writers’ Week starts 9th March and I am going to read in it. Four poets are coming to stay so I’ve begun baking and freezing so I have plenty of time to fool around. Thomas drove me to see my mother yesterday in great heat on that hellish ugly road. We had lunch with her. I rented a beach house at Aldinga for two weeks in Jan. and had friends to stay (Wendy and Co.). Mary was canoeing in the Australian Alps for two weeks and Thomas was in U.K. so I felt I’d better get up and do something or I’d get low. Wendy had a week in hospital in traction for her back so swam and exercised at Aldinga after that to get better. It’s very lonely there and the house was air-conditioned so we were able to bear a heat wave. How is Simon? What news of yr. work? What did they do to your front garden Gilly?

Love from Jill.

Dulwich,

26th Feb. 1 p.m. 1980.

Dearest Ghilly,

Yr. letter has just come to our delight. I am so glad all is well and yr. coming HOME! Hooray! Julia, Ruth and I are getting the sandwiches ready on the night of your recital for yr. party after it. Mary and I rode in the gate in 32 degrees heat to find yr. letter after we’d been to the dentist today. I’m waiting for settlement on my house and I sold it for $62,500 and settlement is April 17th. I’ve made an offer on the Blackburn St maisonettes for $42 thousand and wait to hear if it’s accepted. They’re very nice and just off Sth Terrace and the park and all done up and Victorian in style. I’ve been cooking and freezing food for Writers’ Week on March 9th–16th as 6 people are staying with me and Susan Higgins is having a big lunch for visiting writers on the 9th and I am helping her and reading in the tent that night and marching the day before as it’s International Women’s Day and then a concert after that and then at night the Women’s Dance and then Robyn Archer at 11.30 in her show but I’ve sold my ticket to the latter as I felt I’d never get through the weekend if I went and I’d have a tired voice for reading Sunday night the poems. Overland accepted a poem last week and New Poetry accepted several and will correct and republish those they ruined.

I’m glad you got some good crits Gilly and that the tour was a success. We are looking forward to your concert. Julia had us to stay the last 4 or 5 weekends with Wendy and Amanda and it’s been lovely with friends calling for lunch and swims. She’s too lonely and must let her flat for companionship inside the house. She was quite neglected and introverted last Sat. when we got there [and] I felt alarmed to see it. Within hours she was fine.

We are in a big lot of trouble Gilly with a woman called Diane P. who’s organised some Women Writers workshops for the Flinders in April and has a $2000 grant and is so mad, so ambitious, dangerous, lecherous to other women to the extent of letters to them saying what she’d like to do to them sexually—not even a man would do that—and getting publicity using our names to bring her ‘credit’—it is really the most worrying situation a woman has ever put me in. Thurs. is the first meeting of this committee at Julia’s and we all hope to outwit her and get the money back to the Arts Grants committee but I am fearful. Susan Higgins[29] and Julie Cook and Wendy, Julia, Helen Covernton and I are very alarmed at the use of our names. Wish us luck! She is très formidable, and très relentless and très ambitious and très cunning.

29 Now Professor Susan Sheridan.

We had big bushfires last week in 43 degrees heat (107 degrees) and the Adelaide Hills were burnt out—the army, police and fire brigades from Yorke Peninsula came and 40 houses were lost. It was a true disaster and Wendy’s house was ½ mile from it but saved and the fires travelled at 60 miles an hour!

Love from Jill and Amanda.

Dulwich.

Saturday, 22nd March 1980.

Dearest Susan and Andrew,

(I can’t find a pen and this may be easier for you.) S, how lovely it was to have you to stay at last. Life seemed dreary after that for a few days. However, Niffy[30] came to stay and things looked up. The Poets Union meeting adjourned on the Saturday you left and marched for Aboriginal land rights. I was made National Secretary as no one wanted the job, being sensible, but I hope to do it well. I am enrolling for a conference on Funding in Melbourne in April called Who Gets What and Why because I think it may be very useful to know and maybe get contacts with funding people so when I write to them they will know who I am and that I’m sensible.

30 Jennifer Wallis, photographer.

I hope the trip home on the train was bearable as I think it would probably have been rather a tough one, cold and long. Thank you both for all your help all week with the house and all the work I couldn’t have managed without you doing so much. I was so happy. Mary apologised to me later for being quiet as she said she was sorry she didn’t ever have any separate time with just you two, which she had wanted as it was always so busy, which I tell you only to show how fond she is of you both.

Tonight Nif and I are going to a party dance farewell for a woman at a local Primary School hall and I am wearing my wedding dress. Last night Mary and I had a big dress up of my 50s dance dresses with Nif. By the way guess who Ant[31] is having drinks with tonight in Hollywood … JONI Mitchell.

31 Anthony Wallis, anthropologist and entrepreneur.

I took your advice and wrote a note to Overland and withdrew the poem and hope to God they excuse me and thank you both for your help and advice over that little lot. I sent them ‘Rabbits’—‘Rabbits’ in exchange for ‘A Married Man’—which I thought apt enough.

By the way, if the Colette thing, Dressed as an Egg by Mabou Mines comes to Sydney, STAY AWAY. A Yank wank, vile and mad and an hour and a quarter for about $8 and not much to do with Colette as far as anyone there could tell. What a rip off. And, Thomas had given me tickets to the Peter Brook play in the stone quarry that night and I gave them away! Robyn Archer was on a late show and we had tickets for that and Nif and I really loved it—called Songs from Sideshow Alley. It’s very political and right on and funny too.

Thomas has moved house at last and called in yesterday quite worn out but cheerful and on Monday we are going to see the Wakefield Mystery Plays.

I am just about to have a cold coffee and wash the floor and am wearing my Hollywood shirt for it, so you can see the picture—‘filth’ and ‘glamour’—how decadent. No wonder Thomas loves me.

Do you want a recipe for the world’s nicest soup in my opinion? Watermelon and yogurt soup it’s called.

Here it is in case. 1. Grind to a paste walnuts, olive oil, garlic and vinegar. 2. Skin and chop cucumbers. 3. Mix yogurt with water to a soup consistency (4 to 1). 4. Combine 1, 2 and 3. 5. Cut melon balls and add. 6. Season with pepper and garnish with finely chopped mint.

Love from Kate. Love to Benny[32] please.

32 Susan’s son.

16 Swift Avenue,

Dulwich

7th May 1980

Dear S & A,

Here’s the card—lost your address S so can you get it to her A?

Moving into 25 Blackburn St. Adelaide on Saturday and packing and selling up—got $1,650 for old furniture yesterday. I flipped and went out and got $2,200 of modern. God I woke in fright at 5 a.m. sick at what I’d done but it’s lovely! It’s my symbol that I am not altogether sliding downhill into squalor and the grave. Good luck with the writing you two! I think of you daily.

Enclosed is one old and one new poem. ‘Wilderness’ is new and hopefully an improvement for me. Can you tell me why Tranter[33] and Nigel[34] sent me a book of post-modernist poems stapled all round all edges and when finally opened my ‘Pub’ was in it? Isn’t that strange to you as to me? Shouldn’t I say to them ‘Hey you guys can’t use my stuff without asking me, you know!’? Shall I soole the dog onto them or what or be grateful and excited I am there? I’m not very modern let alone post modern. I wish I knew these many things. Please write a card or three lines and tell me soon.

33 John Tranter, poet.

34 Nigel Roberts, poet.

Love Kate.

Letter 1. (written second though)

Monday.

Dear Susan & Andrew,

Your letter came today A., thank you! God never was one needed more—lawyers and angst had me eating my cheeks. I do like knowing what people are doing when they write and was so interested to see you at the table & all the music, A. Yes I do listen to classical music. In fact it’s all I really enjoy especially at bad times. e.g. I had it on from 5.30 p.m. last night till now—1 p.m. Such a feast now with FM here, I do bless it. It helps keep me from nightmares if I’m sleeping or awake. Frankly, I don’t like (i.e. understand and appreciate) big bands. That is big loud orchestral clang bangs. I’m sure I’m wrong in my ignorance. I listen to Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Handel, Telemann and Co. for preference and soothe my soul.

No, my silence in the spate of letters was not anger nor expectations but the feeling that I am too intimate and over-bearing, vulgar without enough reticence in fact. I do this, I know, when I meet people I am attracted to and with whom I feel great sympathy. Suddenly I treat them as if I had known them for years and it is difficult and strange and rather embarrassing to them I think. I have the feeling that we don’t need to go through the preliminary stages and leap in and yet forget to say that I am doing it and it’s very shocking for people who are sensitive and disciplined. So that’s why I stopped see. Take for example the 2nd letter enclosed. I wasn’t going to post it, as it is all I have said. But having yours today I feel I will now.

I am so looking forward to seeing you both. I must keep my head and think of all the people whose lives are a greater shambles than mine and who write and are creative and shoulder shrugging.

Hugo is in bed with yet another earache. His life is rhythmed by eardrum bursts. I do pray he will come to Sydney with me—he so needs a holiday and is such a dear. It’ll depend if he can afford it. Mary and her friend are coming.

I wrote a poem last night—about 5 a.m.—called ‘Tooth’. I will send it I think. I can’t comment decently on the two poems you sent, A., as I haven’t read them well enough yet. But I was very pleased you sent them. I was very interested in your personal quote (‘& an insistence on the “personalism” angle is part of the post modernists’ a(n) aesthetic’—I’ve just seen that is aesthetic)—I’m glad your writing is a bit hard to read as I’m so surprised mine is always so, as it’s so clear to me. Thomas’s is OK once you get the hang of it and is rather pretty while mine is mad. Well that sort of remark (i.e. re poetry) I seize on like a secret because I didn’t know that and I love to know these things and to learn and long to have people talk to me about such things. I spoke to Jen last night and we’re going to the Colo for Xmas day.

I am in my bedroom with a blowfly sounding summer and the radio with some just OK music and carnations Thomas gave me after he was in a bad mood last week. He is looking a hundred years old and working on an article on Scott[35] and marking exam papers and is full of guilt.

35 Sir Walter Scott.

We ate dinner in a gutter after the lawyers on Friday. We got in a traffic jam and no restaurants free nor parking to be found and so we took a chook and a flagon and couldn’t even find a park—and this our own town! Talk about incompetence driving with ineptitude. We just slumped and ate and drank—the pub didn’t even have paper cups—Thomas used an orange juice carton—I drank from the flagon. We went to visit an ex-student of his who writes art reviews and had a very happy time. I like it when people put literature and art together and find it weird when they don’t. Well enough—thank you for your letter it was lovely to hear and I will see and talk to you both soon soon soon Gods willing.

Kate.

25 Blackburn Street,

Adelaide.

25th May 1980.

Dearest Ghilly,

Thanks for yr. letter, which came today. I was so glad the Irish liked you & you’ve still got work at the place of barbwire and big dogs. Sylvia is back and is O.K. but having an affair with a married man and is rather upset and tense—his parents have just come out from U.K. to live here and he hasn’t told his wife. Isn’t it all so familiar?! Sylvia[36] and Helen [37] and 4 poets from F. Street poets + my publisher Graham Rowlands[38] came. It was a great night and apart from me setting fire to the stove with toffee in flames and ruining its glass top and flooding the blender with gelatin which leaked into the cooking books and engine you’d hardly know there’d been a party.

36 Sylvia Sharpe, anthropologist.

37 Helen Covernton, journalist.

38 Graham Rowlands, poet.

Sylvia & Wendy McBeath and Hugh and Amanda came to lunch here yesterday (Sunday). I lit a fire and it ended at midnight. I’m madly knitting Mary a lovely jumper in beige and blue and yellows and tan as we bought her one and it was $78 as it was hand done. She has a job at Bertie’s Pancake Kitchen and is glad to have it but it only pays $2.57 an hr! The Sisters Poets book is in its 3rd printing now which is great and Penguin wrote and asked if they can use my poem ‘The Aunts’. My book is due out in W. Week ’82 and is called Trader Kate and the Elephants and has a lovely cover of legs crossed most elegantly on a black cover with a red lipstick scrawled title. I may have told you all this I forget.

I haven’t had a letter from you (you mentioned in yrs you’d sent one after you left in Jan). The post may have lost it.

I went to a seminar in Melb. a month ago on poetry run by the Union and Ian Reid[39] and Anna Gibbs were there. Anna is publishing and editing a book of Aust. women’s short stories and has taken 2 of mine and I’m sending 2 more but it’s utter hell for me to write prose and I grind on with such agony and do it so wretchedly badly it hardly seems worth it just to learn and hope I can do it well one day. But I’ll keep on slowly. I’ve written new poems and they are better I think so I am glad and lucky to be able at least to do that. Love from Jill.

39 Professor Ian Reid, poet and retired academic.

25 Blackburn Street,

Adelaide.

Tuesday 15th July 1980.

Dearest Ghilly,

Ruth told me you are getting married! I went all weak at the knees with the surprise. I do hope you will be very very happy. I wish I could be in London with you and began to wrack my brains on how to do it. However I am still here with my house getting a bright daffodil yellow hall and wood fires burn all day and I have at last began to write poetry again. (Haven’t for 2 months!). I am going to apply for a Lit. Board Grant to go to USA to do workshops and to U.K. for same in ’81. Worth a try. I feel that I need so much to learn more and pit myself in amongst and against the best poets (not in competition but stimulation and contrast) which will teach me and test me and stretch me. I wrote a poem called ‘The Wilderness’ 8 weeks ago and it’s the best I can write just now and I’m entering it in the Arvon and London Observer Prize, 5,000 pounds to 100 pounds for a single poem!

I’ve just had a walk in the hills with Thomas overlooking his new house and looking to the sea and sunset. It was all pale and pink and faded like an old watercolour delicate grey silver and hazy it was lovely and unlike any view I’ve ever seen.

I feel I’ve not spoken about yr. wedding as I don’t know where it will be or any details and I know you will be busy with work and plans and poss. house hunting too! Did you get my first letter after you went home (apologising for my manners)?

Mary is skiing for a week in Vic. and gets home tomorrow—it’s quiet without her. Now the good news! I am writing for a new paper called the Adelaide Independent. I love it. I’m the art critic & just fly round and write on things I think are interesting and did 5 articles in 6 days last week and felt so stimulated and excited I was buzzing and happy & productive at last. Work one likes is wonderful. I pray the paper lasts—it’s a monthly at 50 cents a copy.

Hugo was 18 on Sunday & came to lunch and was very nice and actually had a walk in the park with me. I gave him a watch and he even rang up next day and thanked me for lunch. I wrote a poem about it, as it was so lovely and moving to me to be like friends.

I do hope you are happy Gilly and find a nice flat and that you have a lovely wedding day. Ruth was very nice and friendly at a reading of Julia’s play so I pray she’s forgiven me. I was so relieved for it to be all right.

Today I rode my bike to the Experimental Art Foundation and interviewed Noel Sheridan who runs it and spent the arvo reading its publications on post object art for my article on it.

Well dear Ghilly, lots of luck & love to you both from Jill.

Hopetoun Avenue,

Mosman. NSW.

13th January 1982.

Dear Helen and Peter,

Happy New Year! I have been here three weeks on holiday swimming from the rocks at the bottom of the garden and organising the poetry for the Sydney Festival (it was on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Hyde Park and went well—in fact I thought it was the best reading I’d heard). There is sea on three sides of the front room here and we eat and laugh while boats sail past. I have taken a house round the corner for a year at Balmoral Beach. It’s lovely with a pink verandah and pink hydrangeas, is wood, and I’m to share it with a philosopher at only $60 a week each. I’m going to let my house when I get back on the 25th January and Mary is going to school here for her matriculation. I can hardly believe it all—I decided as soon as I saw the house—it’s one minute from the beach and the cliffs and boats can be seen from the balcony. Oh la!

Niffy and I go up to the Colo River every few days and dig ditches to lay a pipeline to her shack. We swim and dig and swim and dig. At night six of us sit at a big table under the stars and have dinner by the river with candles till 12. Truly Paradise was like this.

Today I must correct three stories for the women’s anthology (Sybilla) coming out in May in Adelaide and it’s the first work I’ve done for ages. God send me an intelligent critic is what I pray and finally have one. Anna Gibbs is the editor of it and has taste, perception and tact. What luck.

I will come back for Writers’ Week and have all my friends who were to stay with me at a big house party at Julia’s at Henley. She is in India for a month.

Well now I have a new lover but these waits for blokes to ring are a damn nuisance. My patience is running thin and my body hot.

Niffy’s husband Anthony has offered me a day a week’s work in the Aboriginal Artists Agency he runs and I’ve said Yes. The original of this painting[40] is over the mantelpiece in this room. Patrick White’s choice of paintings from the State collection is very good—he knows a bit. The big old prizes Archibald, etc. are horrible—archaic and dreary—flogging horses who died fifty years ago—the smell is something awful!

40 On the postcard.

I still hope to edit the Friendly Street book with John Bray[41] if people will agree as I will be back in Nov. and could get it posted and it doesn’t need to be edited till Jan. 83.

41 Poet and judge.

We found an 1820 stone house in the Colo for Chris Mansell[42] to write in and showed it to her last Sunday and swam for three hrs with her long hair drifting like Ophelia. I wish I’d seen you before Xmas but I let time slide and cooked cakes instead.

42 Poet.

Love from Kate.

25 Blackburn Street,

Adelaide.

Tuesday 2nd February 1982.

Dearest Philippos,[43]

43 Philip Martin, poet, translator, broadcaster and academic. He died in 2005.

Here at last are the photos. (I lost the negative for six months.) I do hope you can come to Writers’ Week again. My book is launched on the 1st night and I hope you can …

Yesterday I read to a CAE class run by Graham Rowlands and came home feeling a bit demented. Do you ever feel that you’re among people of whom the only thing you can see you could agree on is that you both speak English? This always unnerves me and I struggle to find one thing where I feel the answer and understanding will come. But it doesn’t and the ground simply gets more and more mobile and I get more and more distraught and end up looking out the window. Graham has this effect and is very intelligent, serious and idealistic. So I came home and got into bed at 4 p.m. and read some Buddhist literature and calmed down.

I’ve been in Sydney for two weeks and saw dear Susan and Andrew and Chris Mansell and stayed at Mosman by the rocks and sea and swam there with Susan and talked about our stories and poems and how I love to do that with her. I went there to get over the grief of my affair with Thomas being over. In that lovely place I soon got well and came home only to find he’d changed his mind and began sending poems etc. in post. This was so disturbing and raked over the ashes till a coal or two appeared only to burn my skin again if I went near. So I didn’t and now it’s all stopped.

Mary and I have been at Henley Beach for a week as this house is so full of memories and sweet habit for me it helps to be away. We walk in the sun on the beach and eat looking at the sea and this always seems a luxury.

I had lunch with Geoffrey Dutton[44] a few days ago and he said Ian Reid had attacked him on the ABC for paying writers too much and being sexist in content of male writers in the Bulletin. I hope it doesn’t blow up to more than it really need be. Poor Geoffrey, the more you do the more you might. I wonder how your poems on your composer are getting on. Last time you said you’d been too worn out so I hope it’s better now.

44 Author, editor, poet, academic and farmer.

I sent a manuscript to UQP[45] last week (of poems) hoping they’ll use it for the offer they made for 1983. The Sydney Branch of the Union is closed and I’ve written to all Sydney members to tell them they’re now part of the National Body (the Branch can reform any time they feel they need it.) We are trying to get a State Publishing House funded for the 150th Anniversary of South Australia and have made a long submission. Also I asked for a big ($20,000) poetry prize along the lines of the Avon U.K. contest. So we may get one of these. Well dear Philippos, I do hope you are well and happy enough and that you like the photos. I’m enclosing a few poems too in case you may feel like reading them.

45 University of Queensland Press.

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach. 2088.

12th February 1982.

Dear Helen and Peter,

Now that I have a job one day a week at the Aboriginal Artists Agency, I can write to my friends when it’s not too busy. I can photostat my stories too so all in all it’s a good thing for me and I thank my stars to have it.

I’ll enclose a story with this in case you are interested. I put this one in as it’s about small children and medical matters so perhaps … Look, I can see what is happening to me. In this place formal language is used and it’s so mangled and wrenched out of shape and sense that I am affected myself.

I went on free tickets from the bloke I live with (share the house that is) last night to The Bartered Bride. We drank a lot of champagne and I cried at the opera when she cried ‘Oh how you have deceived me!’ I think it’s a good title for a book perhaps, as I like the irony. Then we went to Kings Cross and drank brandy and I felt very glad to be here.

Mary actually likes Mosman High School and although I was very worried about her changing schools for her Matriculation, it looks as though she may be able to fit into the new system and pass. She is ahead in some things she says, and behind in most. They do a two-year matriculation here, so she has missed a year and I am frantically re-reading Wuthering Heights to help her. God, it’s a marvellous book, I didn’t realise just how great it was until now.

I’m coming back about the 4th March to stay with Julia at Henley (down among the women Peter) and all the house guests I was to have are going to stay with her too. I will see you both then I hope.

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach. 2088.

15th February 1982.

Dear Peter,[46]

46 Peter Goldsworthy.

Enclosed is a copy of a letter from Judith Wright[47] and also a copy of her press statement. She wrote to me in February asking if the Poet’s Union planned to participate in the Commonwealth Games and other activities (from Sept 27th to Oct 3rd, ’82). She said she intended boycotting these events and asked if we would be interested in supporting her. I replied we would be interested and would like to see any printed statements she made and would then consider the matter. I am anxious not to involve the Union in supporting the possible violence which may occur but on the other hand feel it is important to support Aboriginal Land Rights and Aboriginal writers.

47 Poet.

Will you think this over and be ready to discuss it at the A.G.M. in Adelaide at the end of the Writers’ Week (13th March). If you cannot come, can you let me have your ideas on this?

Sincerely,

Kate Llewellyn.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

Thursday, 18th February, 1982.

Dear Herb,[48]

48 Herbert Bogart, Emeritus Professor of English, Adelaide University—from Kalamazoo, Michigan USA.

I’m waiting for Mary to wake up, as it’s three and a half minutes past seven the radio says and I want to type the talk for today. You have been on my pillow half the night talking to me. Last night I wrote up my diary and even laughed at some of the things. What a week—next time more peace. Yet I’d really thought we’d see so few people and only have the two lunches here and keep it simple. It was very very draining for you to meet so many people and now that can’t happen again.

I’ve re-written that rave of a talk now and hope to God they like what I’ve done. I expect a hard time in questions frankly.

Last night I had two queer dreams—in the first one the woman who is running the Festival said ‘Kate you realise don’t you, you have a terrible name as a writer!’ I said, ‘Is that so, who said so?’ and she named someone and I said, ‘Oh but she hates me.’ So I turned to Tom Shapcott[49] who was sitting at the table with us fondling Judith.[50] I asked Mary Beasley (the S.A. Public Service Commissioner) with nappy pin held between my teeth what she thought the future held for women writers and she said she had many ideas, but had no time to tell me as she had to listen to the Queen speak right then. I guess all this is fear of loss of power and ability. (I hadn’t done the blasted talk and I guess I was anxious.) Yet if I write when I’m drained, it’s slow and thick and I felt it’d be better to do it this morning.

49 Poet and then director of the Australian Literature Board at the Australia Council.

50 Judith Rodriguez, poet and Tom’s wife.

Have you had some rest? I think it takes some time to really rest & it’s easier for me as it’s so quiet here but I do hope you can.

You mentioned you have time to read a book now. Do you like Katherine Mansfield? I like her & Alice Munro who you probably know too—she’s Canadian. Perhaps you already have plenty to read but if you haven’t Rebecca West is someone I like—I admit I haven’t read her for years but she had a big effect on me when I was about 18. I told you about The Thinking Reed. It may not be easy to find in the library though. I think I’ll read it again and see if it still seems so lovely. All the other writers from USA are the men you know much better than I do—it’s not that I’m avoiding male writers dear you, it’s just that you’ve read them. I feel slightly silly writing to you about these things or anything really, I feel a bit awkward.

I really needed a rest from you & you I’m sure need a rest from me. I think each time we meet it will get easier as even this visit was not as intense and wild as when I stayed with you in Adelaide, for me at least. I have a strong feeling you don’t want to hear from me for a while and if that is true that’s perfectly O.K. and reasonable.

Love Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach. N.S.W.

19th February, 1982.

Dear Philippos,

I wrote to Judith Wright and said we’d support her in any statement she’d care to make in print regarding the Commonwealth Games. I said she might send me a copy and I’d reply supporting her on behalf of the Union. I hope this sounds reasonable to you. I feel at times like this calling meetings to dismiss this stuff is needless and wasteful—

I just act. Thanks for sending the letter. End of business.

Last night I went to see Joan Sutherland do Traviata in the Domain for the Sydney Festival. Attendants swept rain off stage with brooms and put plastic down for the orchestra to sit on. We sat on raincoats and she let out every stop and we watched grey clouds tear across the sky as if it were a film and what a lovely thing it all was—we yelled and clapped and whistled and threw streamers and flowers and Joan waved her closed black umbrella at us like everybody’s grandmother (she should have worn slippers) and took bow after bow and blew kisses and we went to Kings Cross and drank Irish whiskeys. Eat your heart out Glyndebourne, I say.

Love from Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

Monday, 22nd February, 1982.

Dear Herb,

Well that’s the weekend got through. I expect you got through it too. Susan Hampton came to lunch with her lover Jocelyn and we read each other’s new poems and Jocelyn read us some prose pieces she’s written on the hospital where she’s a social worker—they weren’t at all bad either. I wrote down Susan’s comments with her lying on the couch with the cat crouched on her back reading the A.P. Review and I wanted her to talk about a most weird set of poems in it. She is one of the best critics I know & a good writer too. I reviewed her book Costumes for Refractory Girl and she is reviewing my book for Meanjin. I know the word nepotism could rise up with fingers pointed but we are fair and tough and the boys have been doing this for years & often quite usefully. (Ian Reid always reviews Andrew Taylor’s books.)

Susan said (re review)—Oh I’d better not say here—it’s vulgar. Tell you later.

It’s raining—I can hardly see across the bay. The news has come on & it’s too terrible. I’ll write later. Love Kate.

(later)

Herb,

Here’s, more or less, what Susan said, not, you will understand as any bitterness or misery, because hardly anyone could be more interested or impressed with the American poets than we are, but for you to see as an American critic in case yr. interested (she was James Tulip’s[51] student & did her degree in that Dept.): ‘The trouble with these new American poets is they run off at the mouth. They can’t edit their stuff. Beyond New York, they don’t trust the intelligence of the reader. They lack a sense of irony. I get the feeling that out of Milwaukee & Connecticut there’s this compulsion to tell you every detail—it’s not that they’re doing it & are willing to let you make the connections between the images, they keep explaining everything. I mean there’s one line in this poem that isn’t needed but in this other one, half of it should go. They give you everything on a plate. They overcompensate.’

51 Academic.

And Jocelyn, who has lived all over the USA, added ‘They are the only race in the world that carries a suitcase full of vitamins just in case in the next town they can’t get any. They’re too verbal.’ (What’s that got to do with fear of loss of vitamins I wonder?). ‘The other side of that is that American men hug each other and try to make it with each other and that’s really a big plus.’ (She means I think ‘make’ in the sense of being friends.)

Do you think these comments are unfair?

Many thanks for the phone call reversal tonight. I see I am depressed and I think there’s nothing to be done about it so it’s best ignored, as it will pass.

Love, Kate.

I’ve written a poem called ‘Minutes’ today & on Saturday one for Hugh called ‘Funerals’ (a game he played with Mary) and one called ‘The Womb’, as I said, and one erotic one untitled that Susan kissed and one called ‘The Whales’ about us so I am, hopefully, usefully employed and the time is not wasted. Some days I don’t read the review books, as they are too grim. I am planning the talk on Ambition and Motive for 14th Oct. & got a telegram today asking me to chair a reading on 11th from 5.30–7.30 p.m. That is when you will still be here so I hope you will come if you’re interested. You would fly home Tuesday—there’s an early plane—or you could go Monday.

I have a title for the other poem the erotic one it’s ‘Dear You’. The ones I wrote in Adelaide weren’t much use—only ‘The Kites’ and one called ‘Watching’ about you as an animal eating grass. I couldn’t get under the poetry being too disarrayed and ungathered for the intensity of its needs.

The Bin Report is that I remembered to put it out with 2 green garbage bags in it. My achievements.

Love, Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Rd.,

Balmoral Beach. NSW. 2088.

4th March 1982.

Dearest Ghilly,

You will wonder what has become of me. I wrote a couple of cards to you just before Xmas and since then so much has happened. For a start, I have moved with Mary to Sydney to live for a year at least. We took a lovely old wooden house at Balmoral Beach next to the water. It is for rent for one year and two dancers from the Sydney Dance Co. had it and offered it to Anthony, Niffy’s husband, who I was staying with in December. He told us and another man Christopher and we took it together.

I went home at the end of Jan. and let my house to Hugh and Amanda, on the small side, and to two Poms who seem very nice on my side. I actually get more rent from my house than I pay sharing with Christopher and he is very polite and sweet and intelligent and good too to Mary. She is at Mosman high school and likes it very much. It all seems quite miraculous to me, and a great relief not to be running into Thomas who wants to come back to me and I am utterly determined not to have him back. It would do no good to me to do it while his wife is so upset and the whole thing is too sad and awful to do any good for me at all. My book[52] is launched at Writers’ Week this Sunday in Adelaide and I haven’t seen it yet, but fly over tomorrow night for the week. I’ll stay with Julia plus all the friends I had planned to have to stay with me at my house. After the launching we are going to dinner at the Coalyard restaurant to celebrate and I hope to God it all goes well. I will send you a copy when I get some Gills. After all, you have been with me from the onset of this business. I think so often of you and your work too. I saw Rita Hunter go all the way as Norma, the lady can sing all right. Mary and I went to a dress rehearsal of that, and it was her first opera and she liked it very much. Rita Hunter is a vast, vast lady, as you may know. Then I saw The Bartered Bride with Christopher and I didn’t ever find out who sang in it as we didn’t have a program but it was full of fine singing and I cried.

52 Trader Kate and the Elephants (1982), published by Friendly Street Poets.

Hugo is back at Adelaide doing economics again as he failed first year eco. And doing Hons English as he got a credit in that and politics and has dropped philosophy I think. He and A. are getting on very well and he sounds happy and is being super nice to me and is calm and responsible and manages my house for me and sends the rent.

It is all quite a miracle to me and I pray with my doubting heart that it lasts.

I have a job one day a week at the Aboriginal Artists Agency in Nth Sydney and that’s where I am now.

I do hope yr. well and happy dear Ghilly.

Love. Jills.

Balmoral Beach. NSW.

April 6th 1982.

Dear Helen and Peter,

Happy Easter! I hope all’s well with you two. I did like your poetry book, Peter, as I said and the Encounter Bay poem is very lovely and very fine I thought. I haven’t read the stories yet but will write to you later on them. It’s early and I am waiting for Mary to finish an essay and Christopher (with whom I share this house) to get up and to have a run and a swim. The little yachts are floating in front of my quilt so still they may be dreaming. I fell through the wooden verandah and have a clot and bad vein as a result—I just disappeared suddenly fell—most dazzling experience. There, then gone.

Thank you for your kindness in Writers’ Week. I finally did talk to Thomas on the last day and it led to what I always knew it might. Seven months struggle silence and determination down the drain. It was three hours from meeting to motel. So I feel very resigned. He trails through my life like a bloody knot. However I want to be positive and to make this a good thing in our lives and not have it as a destructive and hateful force. After all love is a good thing in the world and better than bitterness and fury and loathing. I hated myself for a while which was so horrible I thought I’d crack up but now I know I won’t as I just accept it and feel quite humble and resigned and quite defeated and accepting. It’s actually a very pleasant feeling now. I feel like a fox that chewed off its leg, fled, only to feel the trap close on the other leg. I’ve come half way across the country with my kid to get away and all to no avail. I no longer care.

I would like one or both of you to come and stay for a week with us, as it’s very lovely here and would be a great rest. If at any time you can (and I know it’s very difficult) please remember the offer is here and waiting to be taken. The standby airfare is $208 return—not bad.

The hydrangeas are still pink and blue but some are turning red and green as it’s autumn, my favourite time. Very mild and dreamy with lots of birds. Here is a photo of us on our pink verandah—there are yachts behind our heads but they can’t be seen so try to imagine them please and come and sit here yourselves. I work at the Aboriginal Artists Agency Fridays and if you get near a phone that is free, do phone me if you want to.

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

1st June 1982.

Dear Herb,

I hope you like these photos. It’s raining drat it & here the weather affects us more than in Adelaide—it’s seeing so much landscape, perhaps, from the windows. But also the Australian landscape is known for having a very oppressive quality at times and it has certainly got it today.

I wonder how you are. I don’t know if I should ring—speaking of that, you all nearly got a phone call, at Chrissie’s Sat. at 10.30 p.m.! I was at a party dancing a lot. Susan Hampton & Jocelyn gave it with a lot of ‘Bye bye Miss American Pie’ which I dearly love to dance to up loud & a Professor of Law could dance more than I, but then, as I said to him, I’d been a little slowed down by having about a flagon of wine in me. I’d been to the last Women Writers Session with Jerry[53] and had been to lunch at Scoffs with Jerry and later at the bar with my old friends and then to Susan’s party so you can see, the idea at the time it struck seemed very apt that I could phone you all and check how yr. party was going. I stayed the night and slept at 3.30 a.m. which is a shame as I am trying hard to rest but I had no money for a taxi. Susan drove me home at 10 a.m. today.

53 Jerry Rogers—artist, gardener, and author of four nonfiction books—has an organic, rare tropical fruit orchard in Queensland. She lives in Mosman, Sydney, with her husband, radio personality, Bob Rogers. They have four daughters, Brett, Sheridan, Justin and Skye.

I met a Jewish psychiatrist at the party and his new wife who said I’d be O.K. with you, but she was having heaps of trouble with his kids as the girl had anorexia nervosa. (Shrinks have a lot of problems!) I gave him the wisdom of my years, undaunted that he was older and better read, and said he should keep things simple with kids and not analyse too much.

When Mary comes back from Jerry’s she’s got a lot of analysis going, and I say ‘We’re doing well Mary, you’re a legend and I reckon talking and going over and over what is not a problem creates problems.’ Problems are very fashionable since the 60s I think. I’ve never cared for the word myself. I’m not saying they don’t exist, you know what I mean about this. A lot of not very bright people have a great call for doing this I reckon.

Susan and I did a bit of showing off by the big fire with stories and made people laugh, as we love to do. We rave and pun and laugh—it’s great with her, she’s a wit and we send each other off.

My lips are almost better! Yippee. Robert Adamson[54] said, as I got out of Wilding’s[55] car on Thurs. night ‘Here Kate, take this and there’s $50 for you for anything in here you’d like to review’ (he runs New Poetry). He’s got a real sense of humour I think, as it was the Cornell University Press List of Publications and such things as Astrophysics, Philosophy and Aesthetics and a dozen titles of mind-blowing and high falutin’ excess were there; a Venetian 16th Century Painter’s works; Who was who in the Greek World; Anglo-Saxon Art—a new Perspective; Arts of the Islamic Book; On Deconstruction and so on. At home I sat in the couch and read it laughing quietly not to wake Mary.

54 Poet.

55 Michael Wilding, poet and academic.

There are often moments I feel life is really only being made up a minute or two before it happens and the writer gets stuck for a reasonable set of action and events, and loses grip and things start rolling round in a very demented way for days or hours until a grip on the script is taken and things become more reasonable and the fact it is all written only a minute before is well hidden again.

Well, Dear You, I think I’ll finish this and take it with the baby I’m minding tomorrow and send it so you will get it Tues, hopefully. I am glad you are in Adelaide till I get well and strong and we will sleep sweetly together many hours of peace in the same room with great delicacy and tenderness. And I will bring you tea in the morning and you may bring me tea in the morning too. Oh it will be lovely if all that happens. Love Kate.

Balmoral.

Wednesday 22nd September 1982.

Dearest Peter and Helen,

Thank you for the most happy dinner. I had a lovely time and it was a treat to see you both at home. Herb says he’s seen you Peter and you took his BP. Imagine my alarm to hear the awful news. I had a husband sick for fourteen years and to fear that this man may get ill is so horrible and so ironical as we are capable of such happiness. He’s due here on 7th Oct. for 6 days and then at end of Oct. for a few days, and then, when the exams are over, I think will stay here a bit and then go to a cottage in Queensland. Isn’t life amazing? I am at times in a kind of shock and reel around wondering who’s writing the script and what the hell I’m doing and maybe I’m playing a lunatic.

After we had dinner with you I went, on the Sunday, to cook Mary’s birthday lunch and when I went back to Herb’s he asked me to live with him in the USA. He says he’s leaving his wife whether or not I go there. One part of me wrings her hands and moans and another paces against the bars screaming ‘Traps, traps’ and in the centre I stand trying to be reasonable and lucid and calm and sometimes I manage it. The trouble now is the honeymoon is over and cruel partings take a toll of confidence and hope. Oct. 7th seems a long way off.

Well, enough of all that except to say Herb is Hugo’s big hero with American history and jazz and Barry Westburg is Hugh’s tutor and the pair have replaced Johnny Rotten and Syd Vicious in the Llewellyn mythology of giants among men. I love to think of it and then I laugh. Mary too is keen as Herb is sweet to her and makes her laugh as he does the Mother too.

I’ve been writing a lot, but not stories unfortunately as I wish I had but I’m not in a strong enough state to do prose yet. I was sorry Pedro dear to miss your reading at F. St. but I had just told Thomas at dinner and was going home after that goodbye which I had so dreaded and feared a scene. It’d been all I could do to read coherently that night and I had not wanted to disgrace myself as Herb was there for the first time. I haven’t written to Thomas yet but I will as we will still be friends but I can’t quite do it and be honest as yet. He, I must say, behaved brilliantly and called for champagne and did everything right. Ten out of ten … today I go to Kirribilli Neighbourhood Centre to do a workshop of poetry for the Women & Arts Festival here—I do two hours on Wednesday mornings for six classes. There’s an Aboriginal girl in the class who calls me ‘whitey’ behind my back and wants to write ‘When the white man came (and ruined everything) etc’ and dreamtime stuff and I will have a hard slog teaching her to be simple and hurtful and true and not preaching and raving. But if I could it’d be great as so far we haven’t a good Aboriginal poet in English. More’s the pity. Why don’t you come over and stay with me. It’s lovely here. I had my first swim Saturday when it was hot but now we have storms but they are passing. The tall ferns outside my window are waving like the desperate pleading. There’s blue wisteria falling over everything like love and pink and white plum blossoms behind it wherever I look as if planted by chance turned genius.

I can’t remember if I told you I am going to live in America. When Mary goes to University next year (or repeats her matriculation if necessary) I will go—she can stay here with Jerry Rogers who has a two-storey mansion looking into the bay and daughters and one at Sydney University, Justin, who is Mary’s friend or she can go to Adelaide and stay with Annie McCutcheon who has offered to have her and whom Mary loves. She’d be with Hugh at Adelaide and that’d be good as this last trip home they became friends and she wept when she said goodbye to him and he couldn’t do it at all and went to the toilet. He is very European towards her—being with all the Greek and Italian boys at Adelaide High made him so. I am re-thinking some feminist ideas as you see, and now for my sins have three cruel grim feminist books to review for the Australian. I am doing it now but the timing is so ironic—here I am in love and about to leave my country and friends and I read The Men Problem (British Conference papers), Our Blood (atrocities and rape and violence written by an angry woman) and Homosexuality in Marriage. I could have done without it right now. They asked me if I’d be a regular reviewer and of course I would be glad to, but grim books I’d rather not. Give me a sweet romance. (No not really, give me good writing and modern.)

I do not want to get up and go to do this class I see but I must. People take a lot of energy, don’t they? I do hope you see Herb again he was very charmed and touched.

Love from Kate.

Balmoral Beach.

Sunday, 26th September 1982.

Dearest Helen and Peter,

This is where we live, and now at last, swimming. After a week of rain and misery and pining, it’s sunny at last!

I hope you will come to stay soon.

I hear Herb’s blood pressure is down, thank God. He was very worried, and in fact, I was too. It’d be so ironic if he got ill. I always have had cripples and fear it greatly. He is crippled neither in mind or body and I rejoice in it.

Hope all’s well with you 2 + 3. Lovely review of yours in the Sydney Morning Herald, Pedro! Congratulations.

Love. Kate. XX

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

10th October 1982

Dear Herb,

Here’s a bit on the day I told you a little about, that I said I’d send. Don’t read it if yr not in the mood, it’s not important. O.K.

Report on a day at the Women’s Writers’ Week at the Seymour Centre, Sydney. 12th October, ’82.

I got up at 6 and wrote the paper I was to give from the notes I had made and typed it out. When I got to the bus I found I’d left a page at home so I ran back and missed the bus. The taxi cost $7 and that was the first but not the only cost of that day. It finally cost $90 and I earnt $80. When I got there Judith Rodriguez was talking in a huge theatre with Susan Hampton about poetry and folk music. I sweated, I can tell you, when I saw the size of that hall and the spotlights. After their talk was over we gave workshops on writing and I had the misfortune to have a woman who thought it a great idea to perform poetry crouched and then rising to stand and with music and dance and other such garbage and pretension. But because she was an actress she had the gift of the gab and I was worried that some of the women might actually have a go at it. I tried to say mildly that one had to be careful with poetry as it easily fell into pretension and foolishness. It was clear from the way she spoke she had the hots for a Polish theatre director who is very keen on all this and she could not be influenced by a few mild remarks of mine.

Afterwards a woman told me for fifteen minutes how shy she was and I was wondering if I could faint to escape but instead I kept walking over to an ashtray but she was as implacable as they so often are.

Susan Hampton and I had lunch of white sandwiches and wine with Nancy Keesing[56] who told us stories most of the time. She has a new book Lily on the Dustbin coming out soon with Penguin. Faith Bandler[57] came up and chatted, as she was to chair it. Lee Cataldi[58] was the other person on the panel and in the end was I glad to have her! I kept eating the awful sandwiches full of salty things to poison me and wanting to get drunk but being too worried to do it. Because the bit I was doing was on Ambition and Motive, I knew damn well it had to be presented with a lot of style and confidence. I was also scared the women may not like what I said about being so upfront and what in the end could be seen as competitive. I needn’t have worried, most of the people who understood what I said were too smart to misunderstand and the ones who spoke were too full of themselves to have listened. After we gave the papers, the questions began. Such questions! One woman asked that we ban the bomb and Judith Rodriguez who dearly loves a microphone talked about a young boy who was her student who wanted to write about El Salvador and the point of that was quite lost on Lee and myself. Then a woman talked about a lesbian collective in the USA and the point of that was also lost on us. Lee had spoken on the difference between male and female poetry and used Susan H. and John Tranter’s poems as illustrations and was very smart. At this time we both began to flag and lost hope. Afterwards Westie[59] praised me and gave me a big hug I felt for minutes.

56 Poet.

57 Poet and political activist.

58 Poet.

59 Chris Westwood, feminist and later CEO of the ABC, referred to as ‘Westie’.

At the dinner a woman started talking about my poetry and when I asked her if she’d read it she said no. So I said, ‘Listen, that’s my work you’re talking about and you are hurting my feelings and if you keep on I’m going to get angry.’ And she kept right on. So I lost my temper and called her stupid and said I was fed up with stupid women and although I didn’t mind her, I had told her not to talk about my work if she hadn’t read it. Westie and Helen Mills[60] and others got up and went to the Women’s Jazz Concert upstairs and I think and hope it was only the timing and not my temper that was the reason they left.

60 Feminist lawyer.

Dear Lee Cataldi said that after the afternoon’s session on that panel it reminded her of what Sylvia Plath had said in The Bell Jar after being sick with a friend in a lift—that having been sick together you are friends for life. She said that was how she felt and so do I. I can’t understand why all those intelligent women in that audience let the ravers take over and not one clever useful question came out. One woman asked if I only write when I’m happy and if Jill Hellyer[61] only writes when she’s sad.

61 Poet.

I’ll tell you something that may be offensive, and that is I paid $5 for a copy of Refractory Girl that had three pieces of my work in it for which they cannot pay, and that is perfectly O.K., but one was a review of Susan’s book Costumes that was an honour to do and a week to write and think about, another was a short story and another a poem. It costs quite a lot to be a feminist if you ask me. It’s not that I am casting aspersions on feminism, I am just pointing out there is never any money for the writers and the people who do all the work.

As I was leaving I ran into Adamson[62] and Michael Wilding and asked them if I could have a lift home, as I knew A. lived in Mosman. I got into a sort of van with them and Wilding set off at a lunatic speed roaring along over the bridge, all of us shouting and when I said I had found an intelligent critic in Australia he said that was all bullshit (and academia, from which he makes his living) and the only reason I got a good review was because I had fucked the critic because he had heard that I do that with an American academic. I said that yes, it was true that I do but not true that I had fucked the critic. We went into a Chinese or Japanese takeaway and there they told me how I do not lay my poems out correctly, or rather Adamson did while the Chinese girl behind the counter tried to take their order. Wilding wanted to know what was my class background, why I can’t think, but I said working class because I thought it might look boastful if I said middle class and I have never quite known as my mother was so ambitious. I think a lot depends on what you define as working class. My father sold his labour for a wage but I had elocution lessons and my mother had daily help in the house. That was not because they were rich, but she couldn’t cope with four children under five. He belonged to Foyle’s Book Club but we didn’t have a piano. You can see how complicated it gets. It was not till later that he bought a farm and they began to make some money and I remember that the Income Tax people did not believe that they could live on so little when they first went to the farm. He was a Colonel’s son and she was the daughter of an illiterate boundary rider, drunkard, epic poet.

62 Robert Adamson, poet.

When we got to Mosman I got out, took a taxi home and the driver said I was the third drunk lady he had driven that night and wondered what was going on in the town and I said, ‘It’s the Women’s Arts Festival mate, and there’s about a thousand of us in the same state.’ I stumbled into the holy home and have only briefly spoken to five people since, one was Mary and two were shopkeepers and now it’s two days later. Soon I’m going to write a letter to Mr. Wran[63] and the Herald in praise of Westie because if anyone deserves it she does for tact, work, style and a level head.

63 Neville Wran, NSW Premier at the time.

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

Thursday, 14th October 1982.

Dear You,

There is such a storm raging; there is no reason to get up at all. The house could fly off like a kite. The tree ferns, let me tell you, look like dancers acting grief and dementia and overdoing it a bit, with a stage hand above pouring water from an old iron bucket. For reality, the director would do well to have less excess!

Thrice yesterday I talked about poetry—once to my class and, in the evening, in the city to Chris Mansell’s class. It amazes me how little people actually know about poetry when they want to write. That may sound elitist which, as you know, is a common accusation against me, but there are libraries. Yet, my friend Edna who’s sixty if she’s a day, and is a nurse, has taste, herself in that pit of ignorance the medical profession. She’s very eccentric, passionate, shy and wants me to give her lessons after our class finishes at Kirribilli.[64] The fact is, some people are smarter than others don’t you think?

64 Kate was teaching a writing class.

After the class, Chris and I went to Dixon St and had dinner at Choys which I like best of all. Perhaps we will go.

What is the difference between Yiddish & Hebrew? Are they the same thing?

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

15th October 1982.

Dear You,

Here you are. I hope you like them. I do. In the Post Office they are speaking of horrid students and egg fights and a woman is complaining her car was hit by an egg. Oh dear. I said, ‘My daughter was there’. I will write later telling you of the craziest day (14th)—Jude Kuring (the tall one with the puppet) raving at me and the puppet called Carnal Knowledge and a mother of eight whose dinner she was too poor to pay for (but it was O.K.) and the whole raving day, lunatics, intellectuals, ingrates, insults. Oh feminism! Oh men! Oh women! Oh wine! Oh poetry! Oh fuck the lot of you!

Love. Kate

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

Tues. 19th October 1982.

Dear Herb,

It’s sunny, the flag is up, Mary is asleep, there is a big cup here on the table in the sun—what more could I want? Nothing much, except that either you are here with me or that I know you are well & rested.

After the phone call at Niffy’s I was worried you sounded tired. Perhaps it was the long swim. Are you sleeping? I know yr taking yr vitamins. I am taking yrs with Mary and Berocca. Would you like to have a non-drinking time with me? I’d enjoy it and can do it as I often have and it’s quite good. Probably do us both good. I’d ring and send a big hug over the airwaves but I’m worried about your phone bill—and it’s so hard getting all the 20c pieces into the box.

Someone is swimming along unaware I am watching. When Susan comes in an hour or so, we’ll go down and take the manuscript[65] and swim. I bought a big piece of steak which I plan to roast and have with a blue cheese and chive cold sauce for lunch. I am very fed up with liver.

65 The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets.

Ant said last night, he’d like to take you out in his canoe round the bay when you come. He’s very charming and it was a sweet sight to see Ant and Willy who has been all over the world with Ant (dancing) sitting laughing—Ant so urbane and sophisticated and Willy big with a T-shirt saying ‘Universal Studios’. They’ve been to USA two months ago in a film by Tom Wolfe. Ant was cast in the film against his will as he was acting as manager of the Artists’ Agency, but he is so good at acting it was a happy chance. We laughed at a photo of him in a big Aust’n felt hat with a group of Aborigines—he looked very ocker. He had to drive a truck very fast and turn fast and teach a man to sing Waltzing Matilda in the film and he kept thinking he’d be killed. He was once a cameraman, so he said he knows they can’t cut him out as he’s in with shots of the star and dreads now his friends at the movie. We are all going as groupies to opening night here we threatened.

Queensland is so grim politically. I was surprised, but should not have been, to hear Ant and Annette his assistant being quite positive about Fraser.[66] Annette said ‘Well, unlike most politicians, he really sticks to his principles and I admire that.’ I said, ‘So did Hitler’. Then Annette said Ant ought not to worry about the lack of proper media coverage of the dancers at the Opening Ceremony, as no one cared about excellence nowadays anyway. I must have blinked, as she said ‘Oh dear’. Niffy works her arse off to get one perfect shot and I spend time trying to be a writer and the world is full of people struggling for excellence. I think it’s the most hopeless thing to think that it doesn’t matter, so for that reason I said something mild about it.

66 Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister.

I can’t find Tom’s article in the Weekend Australian. If you have it will you send it to me? I did look quite hard. Perhaps the Adelaide edition is different to the Sydney edition.

By now you should have the second lot of photos. I do hope you like these. I think you look lovely and I put them all in my album an hour after I got them and burnt a saucepan of water for tea being so preoccupied.

Love. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach NSW.

Wednesday, 20th October 1982.

6 p.m.

Dear Herb,

Thank you. What a lovely man. Aren’t we lucky? I am writing now in case I can’t get you on the phone tonight. I rang your room as soon as I heard the news[67] and told a stranger who answered to tell you the news is good. I wonder who it was. Then I rang Thomas as I knew he’d see you at 5 p.m. and you were probably in some pool somewhere and as hard to find as Burt Lancaster swimming home. Then I rang Hugh and woke up Amanda who knew nothing and I, sweating in a hot glass phone box, tried to be tactful, sympathetic and lucid. Thomas seemed formal but warmish.

67 A breast X-ray was clear.

I know Thomas’s voice—it was guarded, mask up, hiding ‘Oh gee, let’s not expose even an ear lobe, but make some courtly bows.’ (Hiding an imagination as big as the Chinese Peoples’ Palace Restaurant on Unley Road.) In other words, he was glad, but careful. He may have had a tutu on too.

Jerry has just been in with Skye[68] and asked us to Abdul’s to dinner; she said she wants to take us to The Garlic Clove.

68 Skye Rogers, writer and artist. Jerry’s youngest daughter.

And what can I say about how good you have been? How staunch & true dear you. I am very sorry to have worried you. I do hope you don’t get too plastered tonight. Oh, am I going to be Nice! Sweet Life!

I have stopped smoking. I tried to give the packet to the taxi driver but he didn’t smoke. I will take Vit. B and C and not only be fit but stronger and never let a germ into this holy temple of life.

I’m raving, sweetheart! I was never so frightened in my life. My hands were drenched. This time, I felt I’d had it, as it was all so different to the past. Enough.

Today was my last class at Kirribilli and we all kissed goodbye and Edna (the nurse) drove me home.

And offered to pay for my taxi to Dee Why to get my X-rays read. I was so touched but I didn’t need it.

Since Susan came and got the ms. in shape, I’ve thought about the title and may now simply call the book Luxury. (It’s a short poem’s title that Susan had said I should use as the epigram at the start of the book.). But now I think it’s a lovely title and it’s a political poem, though it doesn’t sound it.

Do you know I will actually have money? I’ve never had any of my own before. Now all we need is for you to get here safely and well and learn to sleep as sweetly with you as I did with Mary last night which we always do when we are upset or anxious. I will soon learn. I declare it.

Well, I’ll stop now. I just wanted to send a letter so you get something from me by Friday, as I didn’t write to you earlier today. I will now stop all this phoning up and be much stronger. I do so like to hear your voice, but I will be more disciplined now. Oh good intentions! Oh promises! Oh Life! Oh Breasts! Oh love. Oh kisses.

Kate.

Thursday. 7.30 a.m.

P.S. Dear You, You will have been to your Dr. by the time you get this. I hope she’s impressed with the slow heart and the blood pressure (cheese is full of salt as you may know so is mineral water but not wine nor water, neither is jam, as you also no doubt know). I often go somewhere to eat and see there’s almost nothing I can have or want except the wine.

It’s very quiet apart from a noisy swell of the waves and I’ve just seen a red and green Rosella parrot. (A tinned tomato soup was named after it!)

Now that I have the grant and a clear X-ray we can talk about when you leave Adelaide. It seems mad to go back again after the 20th Nov, as you can leave Australia from here and it’s an expensive trip back as we both know. I can pack up your house while you’re at work between 10th Nov. and 20th if that’s any use.

You know your advice re my book was good—I feel silly not having thought of it myself—I thought publishers did the structuring! After Susan got to work on it, it had a form and a sense it had lacked & then Chris Mansell called in and both took it off to photostat and to polish it up. You are in one group alone, and there’s a group of ‘Female Gothic’ as Susan calls it & one of experimental writing, one of family (Hugo and Mary etc) and one of ‘The Girl’s Point of View’ and one on early Thomas and one late Thomas—(a group about the destructive Power of Love) and it’s to end with the poem ‘The Greeks’ and to have ‘Teach us to care & not to care’ as the quote under the title of that. So I hope it will be a mature and well-balanced view while being passionate and wild and taking risks. I’ll get another lot of photos, too, for the sections as I like pictures and it’s a help to separate the groups of poems but I may not do it if you or the publisher tell me not to.

Bob Boynes,[69] Diana’s ex-husband, offered to do the artwork on my next book and he’s one of the best painters in Australia & teaches at the Canberra Art School so it’d be a good snappy job. It’s always surprised me how at University (here, at least) the arts are separated—

I never saw any English lecturer who mentioned the cover of the book, but often it was a photo of a painting from the era when the book was written & it was attempting to do some of the things the book was, or at least belonged to the same struggle of that period, but they never mentioned it. I think in English Lit. people are really scared of the other arts and don’t like to mention them, yet they are all connected and part of the same history.

69 Robert, artist, studied at the South Australian School of Art, began teaching 1964, and has an exhibition history dating back to the mid 60s. He has had over 50 solo shows across Australia, the UK and the USA.

It is getting warm so I hope to sit in the sun today—it was hot yesterday but I just ran or was driven through it and a swim would be a luxury today. My bikini will seem a luxury too today. You will be able to swim a lot here next trip.

Love. Kate.

Balmoral Beach.

Tuesday 12th April 1983.

Dearest Pedro and Helen,

Congratulations to you too dear Peter. I am minding a baby 18 months and he’s crying. Damn it. I do love him and he is usually great fun but it’s been a long day and I’m not Mum.

What shall I tell you first? I think I may be away when you come to Sydney. Not sure, yet. The reason is it looks pretty certain to me that Herb is not going to leave Mrs. Herb and I should bow out gracefully and fairly swiftly. He writes three times a week and I too, more than that, but all the sadness and struggle seems only to confuse him and he speaks of history and guilt and his complex head and the past and so on. Heigh ho. Them’s the reasons but the real thing is it can’t be worth it to him, I guess. To top off this difficult time, where I have sat literally knitting to pass the time, I got a letter from Jan, Herb’s wife. Full of abuse and threats. Oh dear. I was amused at first and would never answer it. But I was finally very disturbed by it as it shows plainly two women are here locked in mortal combat if I stay in the affair.

Jan thinks I have set out to destroy her marriage etc. etc. and I sometimes shake my head at we women’s self deception—or the success blokes have perhaps in deceiving us at times. Whatever the reason, some of us seem hardly able to face reality in the most distant fashion.

So my dears I’m off. I am always running away somewhere it seems. This time I will go to Europe for three months I guess.

I do the review still and do not like it much. I do it for the money. They give me awful feminist tracts I do not like to read. I did get a lovely book by Storm Jameson, a novel, called Women Against Men and did that for the Australian and hope it is in soon. I have never been paid by them but the Sydney Morning Herald pay promptly, as you no doubt know. She is a good writer and a great relief to read. Alive and ninety-five now and has forty-five novels below her belt or on some shelves, would be better to say.

I have been in a big fit of gardening as the agent said we should cut it back. I am a kind of cricketer gardener. Cut and slash. Hit and swipe. I like it but do not know a weed from a flower here in Sydney. It is all six inches tall now and I am half dead from it. I hope the landlord is watching and approves. I am so anxious to please him and keep the place.

I will write again soon as I know when I go or if I go and then we can arrange, if I stay, to see each other when you come over. I would so much like to see you both.

Love from Kate.

Balmoral,

20th May 1983.

Dearest Ghilly and Stewart,[70]

70 Stewart Buchanan, Scottish tenor.

I hope you have my letter asking if you can meet me in Paris. I forgot to give you the exact name of the hotel I am booked into for the night of 30th May. It is the Louvre Concord Place Andre Malraux Paris 1. Faces the Opera House. I hope you can come but I do know it is just a wild chance at such short notice but worth a try I felt. I will go next day and get a cheaper place on Rue St Germain, Hotel Suiz I hear is nice. Will try that. Well, enough of these details. It may all be futile, who knows. I fly UTA and get into Paris at 8.30 a.m. Monday 30th May. I got another BritRail pass today another 15 day one … I insured myself for several thousand dollars of illness, death, luggage and money, God knows what else, failure to arrive and such stuff. I don’t know I just paid the $90 and hope it is OK. I insured myself also a few weeks ago through the Women’s Weekly. I was bored so I cut out an ad. and I am now worth $10,000 dead. And if I get sick, I get $50 a day but for some more mortal illnesses, heart disease, cancer, etc., I get $100 a day for hospital expenses. I think this is a lot of fun and I feel very much more a respectable person and a serious worthy citizen being an insured woman.

Enough of all this. I hope to see you soon either in Paris or in London. I got the other Britrail as I thought I might flit down to Wales and go to York and so on. Just whims dears, whims …

Saw Judy Davis and Colin Friels (from Javo in Monkey Grip) at a 2 p.m. show of Chekov’s The Bear and Strindberg’s Miss Julia. What a sensational pair of plays and performers. I have never seen a better afternoon or night at the theatre. Cross my heart. It was riveting. We went to Choys in China town and had dinner with 10 friends and felt it was a good day indeed though a poor meal, I admit.

I gave friends yr. London address to contact me if nec. And I hope you don’t mind. I asked Mary Harrison[71] to ring or write from Poole, as she is still as silent as the grave.

71 An Australian nurse living in Poole.

Mary has just made a sensational salad of lettuce and avocados and lots of green beans and shallots and cucumber. I am doing chicken with cheese sauce for dinner as friends are coming. Hugh is at work here on a politics essay. No word from Herb and I think that is the end of it. I am OK and recovering.

Can you get to see Fitzcarraldo? Do try. It is about a man who wanted to build an opera house in Sth. America.

Mary is wearing bright red lipstick and is off to town. She is more and more grown up not that she ever was childish.

I am so glad to be able to see you soon and will write from Paris if I don’t see you there and let you know when I will be in London. I plan to stay one or two weeks in Paris. Depends if Jerry comes there on 9th June as if she does or you can come I will wait on and stay a few more days. Love to you both.

Love. Jill. XX

Plaka, Crete,

Greece.

8th July 1983.

Dearest Helen and Peter,

I’ve taken a small, new, white, Greek house on a hill with a grand view of an island for one month. Very pretty house. I declare I will go no further! Ten thousand red burnt Poms drove me witless and to desperation in the towns here, so we fled to the hills and a town with no shops and a few goats, chooks and a donkey.

Ghilly and Stewart go to London to do a concert. They are practicing now and even got all the cicadas started up too! It’s hot and stoney and I will try to work now from here. Love from Kate.

Plaka, Crete.

Greece. [Postcard].

28th July 1983.

Dearest Helen and Peter,

In reality of course this picture is really a mess. Poverty is often so picturesque.

I have been on the back of a motorbike and in trucks with eggs and bread and all manner of transport here. Met an English mathematician as I was swimming at Plaka on my way home from Driros.

I write daily and now the poem discusses things with the reader and the writer and I see I have invented a companion. Herbs grow wild on the side of the road and I am well. Hippocrates sent people to Crete to convalesce and I can see why.

Hope all’s well with you 5.[72]

72 Them and their children Anna, Daniel and Alexander Goldsworthy.

Love from Kate. XXXXX

Plaka, Crete.

31st July 1983.

Dear Philippos,[73] Kalemera!

73 Philip Martin.

I have taken a little white Greek house for a month or so and am writing a book of poems (which doubtless I’ll have the devil’s job getting published). One must do what one must do. Fifty-four done so far that I’d show. I live alone, swim, eat, lunch in a taverna, get a little drunk, swim, sleep and write in the evening. A whole new discipline to face my work daily like this.

I still haven’t got a copy of your book! I have nothing left to read here and tried to hire a typewriter but even if they hired them which they don’t, they’re with Greek lettering.

Just a few goats, donkeys and chooks with local people in this dusty town. No shops. Suits me fine.

Hope all is well, dear heart.

Love from Kate.

Mosman Hospital.

NSW.

20th December 1983.

Dearest Helen and Peter,

The reason you haven’t heard from me is I had a hysterectomy and it was not the easy thing I thought. I lay and longed to die. Emotionally it was devastating. Outside my window is a huge white magnolia tree and that has kept me going counting the flowers daily. I’ve been here eight days and Hugh and Amanda have been like loving angels, stroking my hair and arms consoling me. They have also painted my kitchen (pink and white) like a teapot.

I have ten poetry books for the Sydney Morning Herald to review but lack the wit and will, but will.

Love from Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach,

2088. NSW.

21st December 1983.

Dearest Ghilly,

You should have a letter sent from Mosman hospital saying how sad I am for you to be giving up Stewart. I feel you’ve done the right thing under the circumstances. Simone de Beauvoir says ‘a violent man beats regularly’. That letter that I sent Gilly worries me as I was not well and wrote of my new nightie from Hugh and Amanda to you when you are in such grave difficulties and I fear it was callous. I hope you will forgive me. I was so shocked when I heard the news. I long to know how you are coping. I will send your birthday present tomorrow but it will miss the real day I fear but I will be thinking of you.

Tomorrow Gilly, is the sad anniversary of Herb’s departure. I do not look forward to it yet I am proud to have survived and to be living alone (well more or less—Hugh and Amanda are with me at the moment until I am better) and I have written a book in this year, been to Europe, and not to the shrink, had my hysterectomy, kept my friends and made, I suppose, a few enemies. There, that’s a typical list counting my blessings.

Hugh and Amanda are loving angels to me and I got out of hospital yesterday at 9 a.m. and went in a taxi to them. We walked along the Esplanade in the sun with it shining on the sea and I knew I did not want to die but to wring every drop of joy from life.

In hospital I got very low and longed to die—it was a much bigger and worse operation than I’d imagined, not to be undertaken lightly—like love or marriage—and it had a colossal emotional effect on me. I sobbed for days and felt ‘If I ask for a rope, I suppose they’ll get suspicious’.

Robert Stead[74] brought chilled champagne and red roses and was all a lover might be but I found a woman’s voice on his phone when I rang him one night and it has gone unexplained. It was unnerving but he owes me nothing so I said nothing.

74 Bursar at the University of Sydney and Christina Stead’s nephew.

Ghilly, your card has not yet arrived but it will soon I guess and yes, I got a lovely poem from you that you wrote on Spinalonga.[75] I wish I had said I love it before and yes I got a parcel of letters you sent on here for me from U.K. so thank you. Give Mary my love if you see her. I have no address yet to write to her.

75 An island near a house Kate shared for one week in Crete that year.

I am quite strong now and can walk a mile. I am happy to be home and the tree ferns and the birds and the newly painted kitchen. I do hope you are alright Ghilly dearest.

Love from Jill.

1984–1989

Balmoral,

10th January 1984.

Dearest Ghils,

I hope you are alright. You are one of the bravest, most honest, ethical, honourable people I know and I think I am so lucky to be friends with you and Dear Heart you are much loved and admired and besides all that—you are stunningly beautiful!

I was shocked from the whole terrible sad treatment from S. as you can imagine. But, I felt very odd and suspicious and shocked Ghilly when he told me in Scotland that he didn’t feel he really had a mother and that Mary had never been a mother properly to him! This, when she was making his breakfast and waiting on him hand and foot and it was obviously not a new thing at all—but a lifetime of service and he walked downstairs and sat and ate. I was very puzzled at that and shocked! You are right to leave and I feel it will take years of help, as you say. I do grieve for him as I love S. and wish so much for his happiness but fear the prognosis.

Your Father was a great charmer too ’til you got under the surface and boy! What a trickster! Thank God you are so brave to do it and only growth will come from this pruning. Try to think that in 6 months you will be feeling quite different—hard to believe though that is (and maybe no comfort) but it did comfort me.

But you have youth, growth, looks, talent, wit, intelligence, great humour and love fun and life so what can happen except growth. As Julia says re you, ‘For her they should be queuing up!’ True. Yr also a favourite of hers and that’s not to be sneezed at! More follows. Love. Jill. X

Balmoral.

10th February 1984.

Dearest Ghilly.

Your three letters came yesterday to my relief! I read them on the beach and after a long trip to the doctor and breast X-rays and was euphoric with relief of all clear there and of hearing so bravely from you. You are going to be ALRIGHT and have done the right thing! Praise be! But I know it is excruciating to separate and you are now helping yourself to heal by expressing your grief and anger to me. You will avoid depression as you know, by expressing rage and talking honestly … not all at once together, I mean, you will have some depression as it is a battle to learn to live alone again even if not living alone in the house. I did it slowly and now I like it but it was years of struggle and depression and I am free-er than I have ever been having faced that I will never have Herb. He has written again three days ago offering money for doctors, the operation and so on, saying the 500 he lent me when I was in Crete is a gift. I will reply, but am too fraught at the moment as I got a horrid infection in the wound and found myself raging quite irrationally over that. I can’t understand it, but boy was I WILD!

I have been to Thomas’ on a ferry for dinner and am at Hugh and Amanda’s flat over Ashanti Café with croissants and tea. Robert has bought four dozen oysters for me for the first night Andrew and Beate came to stay and then he left to be with his kids. I was very touched. I fear I am falling or am I rising? More follows.

Love. Jill

Balmoral,

Mon. 25th February 1984.

Dear Ghilly,

Yr. letter has just come and I was so pleased to read it—fancy getting off with C.! At last I cried as I read on breathlessly thinking, like you, he’d never get to it! Strangely the bride photos rose up in my bedside drawer a few days ago and I too looked at them with fondness for that time. It is a pity about Stewart and yet I am still glad (with the madness that would’ve ensued) you had the courage, but if he hadn’t had that temper!

My two letters were silly and scatty I fear as I was in an odd mood. I’m on the beach after three days of rain and Susan has rung to say no work (on introduction of our book) as her mother’s arrived. How it DRAGS! You will be sick of me moaning—soon I will send you a copy of it when it is done.

Thomas came to lunch rather out of the blue and I didn’t put him off thank God as it was his 2nd day back at work and I felt I’d see little of him from now on. Finally S. didn’t arrive at all so the whole day was a write off (except for a lusty little interlude with Monsieur Stead). I stayed with him last night and I went to a concert in a chapel at Rose Bay with Jerry at 3 p.m. and a film Meantime at 5.30 p.m. and to Fisher Library this a.m. which is near Thomas’ house. He’s O.K.—more relaxed—smiles, wishes you well—made a formal little speech of wishing you well last time I wrote but I hadn’t any room left for it I’m afraid. Says would say more but doesn’t know what to say but thinking of you. Take a bow Ghil—it’s not often he says anything. He doesn’t care for most of my friends and can’t abide Susan! He’s nice to Jerry now though—didn’t get on well at first. I kept them apart for 18 months as a consequence.

God I laugh at some of the things in your letter Ghilly! E.g. that ancient relative of the Queen’s who made a pass. Also poor Colin[76]—the way you put it made me smile.

76 Ghillian Sullivan’s first husband.

Listen dear heart it is always as you’d know hard to get back to really liking sex with anyone after the love of yr life and the greatest passion has gone. Robert and I have less than Herb and I had which is natural as I am not in love. It takes time to recover and time with another man lets it develop into another sort of tree—not the same tree one had before but one that for once at least has really grown in depth and pleasure but it took over a year I’d say and is still developing—he feels it wasn’t great at first either—I ground that out of him the other day.

I have an all-over tan that I don’t care for as a result of the nudity at the Beach—nudity does not come naturally to me but Robert seems to have a calling for it. His bloody mistress left her sarong in his house a week ago—I see it’s gone today—the night when I saw it for the 2nd night running it burnt a hole in my brain. Next morning in a fit perhaps of ESP he took it out and draped it over the handlebars of Katherine’s bike that is kept in his bedroom. Wow! Did I jump! ‘What’s this?’ I thought, ‘Wasn’t it hers?’ No, cool as a cat, he wraps it round his oh so slim loins and saunters out to make the tea! I fell back on the pillows flummoxed I can tell you! However, I see now it was only a ploy, as it’s gone today! i.e. When she came to dinner Sat. night she took it home Sun a.m. O.K. See the wretched way I live with the poison like a daily draught of bile. She calls him and he speaks (quietly oh so quietly) as I sit eating my dinner like a school girl with my hair pinned up with 2 combs and knees neatly together munching food I can’t taste for the horror and embarrassment in my jaw! Yet I remind myself better women than I have borne infidelity with grace and dignity. e.g. Zara Holt has just come out and said that Harold had dozens of women. She put it to the T.V. man rather pithily I thought: ‘The queue began on the Right,’ she said. Also Diana Cooper put up with that buffoon Duff’s barnyard of dairy maids as she called them, she should never have married him and wouldn’t have either if all the decent men who’d loved her weren’t killed off in the 1st W. War. He just got her as he’d survived. The Pig. Also Rosemary Sinclair (wife of Ian, Minister of Primary Industry here). Also my favourite Hazel Hawke—he’s been a great womaniser and it’s quite public. And the list is endless so why should I complain (I do) as Robert has never promised me anything. It’s just that it’s hard to bear to know the man you go through tunnels and caves with one night has the night before done the same in the same bed with another.

P.S. I heard this week I’m to be in the New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Ed. Les Murray, so that was a boost. Love. Jill.

Balmoral,

April 6th 1984.

Dear Helen & Peter,

It was a treat to see you in Writers’ Week but I wish we had had a bit of time—but that’s Writers’ Week and always will be. Next time let’s try to have lunch on a Saturday or Sunday or something.

I got back dead after a twenty-six hour train trip and Robert Stead met the train and next day I clapped my hands for joy at being in my own bed with the tree ferns, a green breeze and the music on. I wonder why I ever leave at times—it’s usually a mistake—shall I slump down into old age—grow fat and buy soft slippers and stay in bed.

I am at work at Mitchell Library two–three days a week and am so happy! It’s better than the movies—I sit with Susan and old boxes of fragile scraps crumbling like old dry leaves and read till I’m glassy—people’s lives long dead under my hands. Then we turn on the microfilm and read as I turn the handle as fast as I please—I am my own projectionist. We have a picnic in the Botanical Gardens opposite for lunch. Who could spend a happier day?

It’s 6th April now. I am on the beach at Bal Bal as Herb used to call it. He sent a lovely Diana Boynes pendant I got this January and says he’s unhappy. I cannot help that. I try to be happy but in the last two days it’s not been so easy. Something is wrong in my life and I’m not sure I can name it. Probably a small mixture of emptiness and loneliness is the nearest I can get. I do not yet feel futile though that could be coming up. My book Luxury has had no acceptance—no replies in the last eighteen months in fact. I sweated over two articles on poets for the Sydney Morning Herald and the second especially nearly killed me—like eating sand. Luckily I got two poems accepted by the Sydney Morning Herald today after futilely picking up a nice man on the beach—I liked his bathers that’s why. We had a coffee at Ashanti and he drove me home to my house with my potatoes and chicken and books in his car with windows that would only go down if he pushed the button.

I do not feel like typing ‘I Am My Own Companion’ as who will publish it? I know it’s a mistake to think like this but lately I do.

I wrote five poems last night and this morning so I am grateful for that as I feel uneasy if I’m not doing that regularly.

Hugh and I are off to a twilight concert at 6 p.m. tonight—a pianist. I love the idea of autumn and twilight concerts—we went to one last week with Robert and to dinner at The Imperial Peking at the Rocks later.

Next day Robert and I had a picnic breakfast at Washaway Beach—

a wild beach down steep grey rock cliffs … People take their clothes off and later much later I do reluctantly. I do not care for nudism on myself or others as a rule not at the beach anyway.

Perhaps my recent mood relates to the unbelievable hammering Jamie Grant gave me in the Flinders University Review magazine—

I felt my heart hammering as I read. Why would he do that?

Well, dear hearts, I will go up and have a shower and get ready for the concert. Perhaps I’ll pop in a few new poems for you to see.

How’s the house going? I hope too the book is doing well dear Peter.

Love from Kate. XX

Balmoral.

26th April 1984.

Dearest Ghilly,

I wrote yesterday in haste and I think there were many other things I wanted to say. I don’t want you to think I have forgotten you at all even if my letters didn’t get to you. I write almost daily to Mary so she won’t get too homesick and that has stopped my friends getting much from me. Mary has given up Pierre she rang and said so. I am relieved. I have posted a letter to Robert giving him up as I feel no good can come from an affair with a man who will be cruel to me from time to time even if he is lovely other times. Sound familiar? All I will get is a few more days of love and many of cringing and terror and self disgust and loss of confidence and it will end one way or another later on so why not now while I have not so much to lose and still have some self respect. He did not mean to mock and ostracise me perhaps but he did it and to ingratiate himself with his children like that is not suitable to me so I posted the letter with a sad heart but a firm one.

I knew it was alright, though sad, as he has another mistress and I have spoken to her by chance on the phone at his home and his daughter Kate has told me several times. I like monogamy and though I long for it and a stable civilised elegant relationship I feel it is not possible for me to find it … but I notice the loss and resignedly go on with now this promiscuity on my part. I was faithful to Robert after I got back to Australia as I wanted no one else and he liked it that way too. But in the end a month or less ago Hugh had a long talk with me about my life and that I am lonely and said Robert has had a year and is still with his other mistress and I must face facts and look round for someone else more suitable to my long term needs. As a result I picked up two men on the beach next day, both nice, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

Hugh and I went to a twilight piano concert that night and to a Lebanese meal and had a good time. Hugh called me Belle at times and says it’s like some faded Southern Belle who has seen better days from a good family and is being married off by her son. He makes me laugh a lot and is very ironic and satirical which I love.

Am at work on my ms called Luxury now titled Kites and sending it back to Redress press after all their 9 pages of advice from 3 readers. Must get ready for a Lit. Board grant application by 15th May. God help me do it and get the grant.

Lovely to hear your type of voice is in demand. Thank God.

Lots and lots of love. Will write soon. Kate.

22 Edwards Bay Road,

Balmoral Beach. 2088.

27th April 1984.

Dearest Ghilly,

What a treat to talk to you last night. I was asleep (10.00 p.m.) after the day yachting with Edward as I said in my last letter and was a bit dazed so I hope I made sense and showed how glad I was to speak with you and to hear that you are coming home on 29th June. I put that to confirm the date. Joan Sutherland is singing on the radio ‘The Daughter of the Regiment’ and it is a cold crisp autumn 5 p.m. with a pink and grey sky and birds calling to come home to tea put your warm nightie on.

I had a lovely time with Edward, a pilot I picked up on the beach, on his little old yacht sailing in Middle Harbour past wild bush in the silence of the wind and water. He is gentle and we made love in the tiny cabin and ate sandwiches and salad and had the sweetest time sailing along till the dusk came with yellow zigzags of sunset following us with black between the gold and crows calling. I loved it. Then, being rowed ashore, in a dinghy in the cold—I liked that too. And pulling the dinghy up on the rocks and laying it over on the boards and driving home happy enough and no tension or anxiety or restraints—that was good.

Robert got my letter today I’d say. I haven’t heard from him so I think he won’t apologise and I will not see him again. But that’s as it must be, and I will never take vile cruel treatment. He’s lucky to go out with me and I am a ton smarter than he is and he was lucky to be in the hay with a great dame cracking good jokes. And I wrote poems to him that will last long after he’s dead and forgotten. He’s a lovely man with a twisted pride and a cruel streak so; it’s cringe or stand up straight. I didn’t love him and for that I am grateful—it felt like love but wasn’t really—unlike your love for Stewart. But you will recover and be loved again. It is inevitable. I do hope yr. feeling better, Ghills.

Love from Jill.

11 Priory Rd.,

Waverton. (where S. and J. live.)

7th June 1984.

Dear Philip,

Many thank for sending us Ann Elder’s uncollected poems. Yes, Susan had the books and today we are onto it … that is, choosing Anne’s work. My goodness she can be good can’t she? I do love some of them and the quiet tone … subtle and intelligent. I bet she was lovely to talk with.

I hope you had a break in the way you’d wish. I didn’t ask when or where as I felt it best not to.

I am learning to sail and also to drive and to ride a motorbike … my friend Edward is a pilot with a yacht and likes to teach me things. Some things I am keener to learn than others … I think I will only drive as a hobby. The sailing makes sense to me and so we go out in the boat and flap around Middle Harbour and two days ago went under or rather through Spit Bridge and out to the Heads. We sailed past Hugh and Amanda’s house … flat … and I yelled out and they hung out the windows waving. He will take me up to buzz them in the plane next. Last week I yelled up at them from the motor bike and they waved as I went by, clutching hard with my helmet on. So now I feel all that is left is to fly past in a rocket …

So until soon … Blasting off from your friend Kate.

Love from Kate.

Balmoral.

12th September 1984.

Dear Helen and Peter,

Just a note to say I think of you and here’s a few poems to prove it.

I sold my house in Adelaide and have all my paintings and furniture here now and it feels good.

Working on Rigby book[77]—mss deadline 30th Oct.—going at a nice canter. Was ever a job so joyful. We[78] read on beach, lunch on verandah and largely agree.

77 Later The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets.

78 Susan Hampton and Kate Llewellyn.

Hope all’s well with you lot.

Love from Kate. XXXX

Glebe (I mean I am at Robert’s just overnight)

19th September 1984.

Dear Ghilly,

What a treat to get yr. letter. I sighed and chuckled too over it and all yr. damn struggles—but laughed at ‘the modern piece, with no opportunity to sing decently and we are dancing as well.’ I will tell Robert, as he’ll laugh. Bob Boynes and Mandy Martin came Sun. on their way to New York and had a 4 hr stop so Robert and I met them at the airport and we all had Yum Cha in Dixon St. Robert was strained and got his usual stomach ache—he doesn’t like H. talking about his father and neither do I.

Bob gave me a beautiful painting, a memento of our trip to Brisbane where I did research and Mandy was Artist in Residence. She’s to represent Aust. with 4 others at the Guggenheim for 2 weeks now hence their N. Yk trip.

I was working at Mitchell Library with Susan today and yesterday on our last look for our dead girls as we call them. We have fun and laughs and a picnic in Bot. Gardens—deadline coming and a vast amount to do. Some tension comes up and we would like to stop but it goes with talk and to me—it’s a good relationship I feel. e.g. I want Margaret Preston’s Cups and Saucers for cover—a great painting and we went to see it in NSW Gallery yesterday morning—it’s called Glue Shift. Susan finds it too uncolourful and would like something red. Jesus wept. However she will look for something else but I will poss. get my way in the end and she will not regret it later. Yes, yr. right I’m getting tougher with friends you know. Wendy phones often and all is well between us but she is an overpowering personality as I suspect I am myself.

What fate of Julia’s play Ghils? I asked Annie McCutcheon on the phone. I watched Dialogues of the Carmelites with Robert on a simulcast last Sat.—Isobel Buchanan[79] was in it [and] very lovely. Terrifying opera—I gripped Robert as if I might fall. No more space.

79 Scottish soprano.

Love from Jill. X

Balmoral.

10th October 1984.

Dear Bob and Mandy,[80]

80 Mandy Martin, a practicing artist who has held more than 110 solo exhibitions in Australia, Mexico and USA. Bob Boynes’s partner at the time.

It was a treat to see you that Sunday. I had a lovely time. Robert had a pain in his stomach that he gets often.

Many thanks for your card from N.Y.

I wrote a poem ‘Frogs’ on the beach today thinking about our trip. I dedicated it to Alexander[81] but perhaps it would’ve been more apt to do that to you both. (You’ll understand it’s Herb I’m referring to—not the person the poem is dedicated to.)

81 Bob and Mandy’s son.

We are hard at work on the Rigby book and part 2 of it has gone off to the publishers … they are asking for it all one month early as they want to start typesetting. But Susan and I are now in confrontation … not quite, but the tension is high as she can’t finish anything and I am used to getting shows on the road.

Part one—i.e. 1864 to 1940 (birth dates of the poets) is almost done but she can’t let it go. And back and back we go over it, and them, until I feel after some days, I’ve simply carried one lot of stones from one corner of the prison yard to the other. She is potty about Aborigines and wants a load of old junk in because it’s black, which I think, is a bad idea in all ways. Hilarious scenes—I could tell you of later … but, short of sending a message via NASA to the Moon to get permission from the Man in the Moon to write a poem about him, I can’t think of more delaying and time consuming devices than she has thought up with some of the Aboriginal stuff. (Some tribe somewhere, has to be consulted and some woman who owns it … but the real fact, laudable and totally right that that is, it is all a waste of time as the stuff is not translated into anything suitable for the book … just anthropologists’ and linguists’ words … e.g. ‘We build a fence … We had a Corroboree’ … etc. not at all how the real thing would be.). So it is just all delay of the most dangerous kind … playing with Black rights is not something I’d do lightly. What if, having given permission, they are angry if we don’t use it? Many questions like this in my mind but I try to hold my angry tongue. I did not mean to write of this but just a shorter note to say here’s a poem from our trip and I love the drawing! I hope you’re OK after New York. Barbara and Chris[82] were nice to have stay and we had a good time. I really got on well with her. I had a swim here yesterday and today, as it’s hot. So maybe summer’s here at last. Amanda is in Perth. Hugh hard at the thesis. 4 chapters handed in yesterday so he’s pleased. He is lonely. He eats here a fair bit. He tells me his ideas about ASEAN but I have old dead poets in my mind and new poems bubbling away so I get a bit glassy eyed at Kampuchea in 1979 and China in 1975 etc. Mary due home this month. No word when.

82 The artist Barbara Campbell and her son, Christopher. Friends of Kate’s. Barbara’s husband, Duncan, was Australian Ambassador to Rome.

Lots of love to you 3.

Love from Jilly.

Hugh’s Flat, Sydney.

Sunday, 25th November 1984.

Dearest Helen and Peter,

I write on old paper (as I am at Hugh’s for a week and have no other) and from the Big Avocado. But I am coming to the Little Apricot (Mon 3rd Dec. till 11th Dec.) for my niece’s wedding. I hope I can see you—I’ll stay at the Pak Poy’s at Norton Summit—can’t recall the telephone number. But will phone or praps you’ll phone me. I hope to get to Friendly Street Poetry reading on Tues so may see you then.

I am in this flat alone to write as my productivity dropped off with the Rigby book and it’s difficult. But as I get the grant from the Board I felt I’d better get going and produce! But I am always writing, it’s just it got less—say four a week and even now I have only managed that number here. I rested and swam a lot and needed that and the loneliness helps make me strong quickly though it’s painful—I feel as if I’ve been suffering when I make myself get very very lonely—it’s really heady and I feel I must need it as I keep doing it. The real truth is I think I find a lot of people such a pain and even some I love a drain that the need to escape gets strong and I plunge in and shudder at first and hate it but come out of it very strong.

Hugh’s in Adelaide with Amanda who’s been touring on ‘Camelot’ and has finished his thesis and was half-dead and so was I. He was very strained—24,000 words done three times over in drafts. I fed him like a caged tiger and I am amazed at the days and weeks of daily isolated work he was capable of. Let’s hope it does well. He returns for a viva exam now on it—to defend it. It’s on ASEAN.

The Rigby book turned into a bloody nightmare and after nine months work four days before deadline Rigby’s Adelaide collapsed! It was like giving birth to a dead baby as Susan said! Well, the Managing Director of Rigby here signed a letter dictated by our lawyer to release us from the contract and we are now free to take it elsewhere. So in a manner of speaking we are rushing it to a new hospital where we hope the staff are good and brilliant and can save it—Rigby finally offered us only a print run of 4,000 but we felt they no longer understood the book and could not therefore promote it and sell it well so it was best to leave it then and look elsewhere. Heinemann phoned last Sunday and asked for it and Routledge and Kegan Paul begged for it—but talk is cheap and we wait and see. What floods we’ve had—a Mercedes Benz floated down here past Hugh’s window and the man had to climb on the roof and dive in and swim ashore up the Esplanade to Raglan St. Everyone very cheerful though and banging rugs on trees and drying out cars and floors.

Well dear Hearts I hope all’s well with you and that I can see you soon.

Love from Kate. XXXXX

Glebe.

5th March 1985.

Dear Ghilly,

I hear it’s cold & killing people in Europe. Autumn has come here & I’m thinking of buying a cashmere twinset! Yes I’ve become very conservative—it seems fashionable and I think it is related to the swing to the Right that has happened in U.K. and U.S.A. and here too, though Hawke is still in.

I so much would love a talk with you—espec. on my new thoughts on feminism which I’ve been reassessing recently & have some criticism of its administering not though of its basic idea. I mean I don’t question the need for justice for women that seems reasonable enough but some of the evangelical qualities that grow from it & the feeling of knowing what’s right and what’s wrong. I think it’s dangerous as the feeling makes for a type of zealotry that I really loathe and often suspect. Good news first. The intro. to Penguin with—wait for it—only Susan’s name on it! I was devastated and so outraged that I agreed to let her have only her name on it when she asked. An irony really as the whole subject of it is how women’s work has been denied, reviled or buried by men. No man would dare to do that! I have after a couple of days mulling it over, rung her and asked for my name to be put on it. Otherwise how do I account for the whole month of Feb. What did I do then if not the introduction? It is too long and rather boring I fear but at least it’s its original size and I cannot stop Susan’s microscopic view of history and politics—that’s the way she is. We wait to hear from Penguin now. Good news No. 2. Philip Martin my poet friend from Monash is going to write an article on my work for a new book coming out on Aust. Women Poets, ed. David Brooks, U. of W.A., and D. Brooks has written to me asking for a statement of poetics and what methods I use to attain this. Ah, I grit my teeth and suck my pen and mutter ‘poetics? poetics?’ What can I say? I try really in the final analysis I suppose to write passionately, sensuously about relationships especially between men and women and the interior of them. I am not very interested in exteriors or the appearance but in what’s hidden and unspoken but often so taken for granted it is not recognised till it’s printed out and then it’s greeted with a sort of relief as the truth. Also I am interested in the things between things not the actual things themselves. e.g. I am much more interested in the connections between, say, the sand and a shell than I am in either the sand or the shell. I am not interested in landscapes where there are no people. i.e. sunsets etc. leave me cold in my writing.

I am looking at units and houses in Glebe Gilly, no hurry, just looking. I am staying at Robert’s 2 days while I do it. He’s madly gardening, planting 14 flowering gums, & is so happy doing it.

I hope you are good-oh. Love. Jill.

Canberra.

11th March 1985.

Dear Helen and Peter,

Read your story in Australian Short Story here in Canberra ‘Sweet and Sour’, Peter. Congratulations. Am here for National Word Conference or Festival. Thea Astley and Gerard Windsor were best.

Green and red birds flit everywhere and autumn is sneaking round trees. Much folly and tomfoolery at Conference as usual—but I enjoyed it on the whole.

Penguin say they’re sending us a contract for the History of Australian Women’s Poets so if they do it’ll be a relief. The intro’s done thank God and I think it a great bore. Never mind.

Love. Kate.

Leura.

25th September 1985.

Dearest Ghilly,

Your letter came an hour ago and I was so nervous opening it, as I feared you’d be hurt that I had kept so silent while you were here. I hope you got my letter posted about 10 days ago explaining how I’d lost yr. address and phone and found it only after you left. I rang many times but then it was plain you’d gone. I feel I was a poor friend at this time but I was so glad we at least had two telephone talks. I am glad you’re in pretty Wiesbaden and will phone Barbara Campbell in Canberra and get her sister’s address for you to meet them. They were very nice to me. He is a psychiatrist with the US army there.

I am drinking a cup of Russian tea and it is so strong even I am wincing. I am still garden mad as I said on the phone and in my letter. I planted the ingredients for ratatouille in my little lane last week and now have to dust it with tomato dust as grubs are at it already … I don’t like to use poisons but what can I do?

I have just spent two days with Robert or rather nights as he goes to work daily. I use his place as a city office in a way especially at times like this as my book Luxury is to be published by Redress Press on 18th Nov. at The Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Hotel in Balmain and today Dorothy Hewett agreed to launch it for me. I am very pleased to have her as she is one of the two top Australian women writers in my opinion … the other being Gwen Harwood. It is at 6 p.m. in the garden so I hope it will be a lovely warm dusk and we can sit at tables and talk and be easy. It was hard to find a decent place to launch it. Yesterday at Robert’s the Redress photographer came and for 3 hours took some photos of me trying to get one for the back cover. Mary came over for two hours and she took some of us together so I hope one or two are bearable and if so I will buy some and send you one.

Hugh came up last weekend and is rather macho as you found and yet sweet to me and very debonair with my coffee shop friends who were nice about him to me later. I gave him a lot of food to eat and marmalade to take home and a French teapot with pink rosebuds on it and saw him off on the train. Robert and I are getting on very well and I thought two nights ago at his place that I felt I was being bonded now to him and the prospect filled me with fear. It is hard for some people to understand that though I am happy to be with him and feel loving and tender towards him I know perfectly well we couldn’t live together. He is too bad tempered. He has a tremendous ego and is very proud and touchy and it is tough work being with him. He is though the most tender man and very very kind to me so it is always lovely to be with him … provided his mood is not too grim … and good to be home as too much would be damaging. I found that out too when he was up here four weekends straight when his other mistress and Christopher[83] were in U.K. Whenever I think someone is starting to really rely on me and depend on me and cling to me I feel as terrified as if I looked into the pit of hell and I have only one impulse and that is to flee. I am sure I am psychologically disturbed in this area … I have hurt Julia and now Susan Hampton. She wishes to see me but she talks such rubbish about Zen or her six new jobs … she’s exhausted and has no time to write so she took six part time jobs … this is very typical and why I am so defeated by her.

83 Christopher Stead, Robert Stead’s son.

There are four waterfalls nearby this house and so I go on lovely walks with Gordon[84] and Woolfie[85] or visitors or alone. Lately though with digging up the ivy in my lane and putting in vegetables down there I have had no energy to spare for walks … I stripped the front door before I went to town on Monday and now I am about to paint it cream. The whole house was full of dark brown paneling and a lot of red enamel paint too so it is all now pale cream and linked up with this all through and my new all white bedspread and lace pillows and white curtains make a room I love to walk into or lie down in.

84 Gordon Graham, playwright.

85 Sue Woolfe, bestselling author and partner of Gordon Graham.

I am as you can probably hear, more settled and feel calmer and more rooted than I have for years Ghilly. I did not write many letters to you or anyone for the last six months as getting this house meant coming up here two days a week and searching for two months. Then I was the topic of an anonymous letter to the Department of Social Security and had a six-hour interview over two days with them. I saw the letter—every detail of my life was laid out there and someone surely hates me. It was so chilling to think I have made someone hate me so much. I must say the Department were brilliant to me in the form of a thirty-year-old man who did the investigation … I was half dead with terror as I thought I’d go to gaol. He was superb and put my fears to rest somewhat and treated me with every kindness and as a result so far, and this is now three and a half months ago, I have had no money stopped no letter to say it will be. He felt not telling them I’d moved until two years later was not a capital crime nor not confessing my two grants and in fact Tom Shapcott was brilliant and wrote a letter on my behalf saying there were no actual incomes for me to claim but the money was to be used to write and therefore not part of the Social Security adjustable income. If you know what I mean. In other words, it was for research and books and materials and not to live on and so they accepted that as it seems they have before and it is usual practice but I did not know it in my fear and ignorance. I was very impressed with Tom for this and felt he really had the writers’ interests at heart. He is after all head of the Literature Board but I did not know his politics were that admirable.

I have been on the wagon for ten days and that has been a help to my health. All the digging and also painting the inside of the house has made me very strong so I hope to be very well this summer. I take yeast and also Evening Primrose as they say it keeps breast disease away and I have a propensity to that and also they think it decreases weight on some people. So you can see I am making efforts to be well. While I stay with Robert my life will always be difficult as it can’t be otherwise with a man who has two mistresses and is the victim of the blackest moods … but if I keep a grip on what is important and do not get depressed and my work goes well and even prospers I think I’ll be alright. Having the house is a great joy to me and centres me and keeps me feeling very much more stable as I said. The plants and the birds are even strangely company for me and so when I am alone for three days or so I don’t get bleak … I also really need to be alone to write.

Since I have been here I have been so occupied with the physical that I only wrote 12 poems but I hope now that will improve. I’ll put a few new ones in this letter and with this my last word because I must get going now.

I do hope you are happy in Wiesbaden and many many thanks for your most forgiving letter even before you got the one explaining what happened. Thank you also for the two photos Gill, I put the one of you by my bedside lamp and when Guida[86] comes up in a week or two I’ll give her the other. She came up two weeks ago for three days and we had just the nicest time. We get on so well together in the house. Amanda came up on Guida’s last day here as I may have told you. She was, as my mother would say, as mad as a meat-axe and I had a hard time keeping a straight face. She is in Melbourne now Mary thought says she is happy with her lover Brie and Brie is lovely and strong too and so I am glad. I just want Hugh to be happy and not to go overboard on this vile beer and girls and football stance he has adopted. It is only armour but an unattractive one. Poor Hugh he is like me and does things the hard way … we both learn slowly and test everything to the limit … even others’ patience.

86 A friend with whom Kate shared the house at Balmoral Beach.

Love from Jill.

Leura.

Fri. 4th October 1985.

Dear Ghilly,

I hope you are settling into your new home and finding some friends at least! It is a pretty town[87] isn’t it—so clean too—I felt safe there too. All that Art Nouveau architecture! I’d call it art nouveau but it’s the German word for it I think. Some apartment buildings were stunning. It’s hot today. Yesterday I wore a sundress all day and was grumpy I don’t know why. PMT without the ‘M’ perhaps? I’m better today—I’m not good when I see too many people. My book is finished with layout, photos and proof reading. I see the cover design Tues. and it is off to Melb. to be printed and Dorothy Hewett is to launch it here all being well, on 18th Nov. at a venue yet undecided. I hope the Seymour Centre, which is Robert’s idea. He is off to Bega for this long weekend, as Chris couldn’t get a flight to see his mother so R. said he’d drive him! It’s 6 hrs! Just when I told all to keep away and come the following weekend! Nevertheless I’m happy as I put oak leaves from my lane onto the roses and poppies today and painted the front door cream. The first tulip was out when I went in my dressing gown with a cup of tea to see how well the plants coped with the night, (just like matron’s round). It is bright red with a black heart. Eleven daffodils out today and pale blue pansies and black-faced ones too flapping in a small breeze like dolls’ flags.

87 Wiesbaden, Germany, where Ghilly went to sing.

I have a new project—I am typing it straight out daily almost—a Blue Mountains Journal. A sort of female gardener’s diary of the amateur’s delight and learning (hopefully) as she goes.

Adelaide Writers’ Week wrote and offered return airfares for ’86 & to be on official list to read. At last! Also ABC broadcast a rather dreadful poem of mine on Sun. and gave me $85 for 22 lines. Compass Magazine published a short story and gave me $50 and Redress Press have an anthology of Australian women’s short stories out on 17th Oct. and mine is one of the 32 stories. I’m glad as they had 700 entries so all in all it’s been a good week for work.

I have felt poisoned with either food or allergy or something and long for a naturopath to fix me up. So failing that I got some Evening Primrose (for breast lumps not the upset) & yogurt tablets too and am on a very simple diet of garlic, salad and yogurt and fish that may help. Isn’t being ill a great BORE? I’m not really ill just off colour as they say. Everyone says I look so well living up here. The air is pure and I sure have early nights! Great walks too.

Hugh is OK. I spoke on the phone with him today. Mary at another weekend of S.W.P. meetings.[88]

88 The Socialist Workers’ Party.

I’m off to Adelaide in November for a week. I do hope you are O.K. Love. Jill.

P.S. I play yr. tape too and I do love it as it feels as if you are here! Robert asks David Stead[89] on Monday if he’ll talk to me re Christina—if so I may be able to do her biography.[90]

89 Robert’s uncle—Christina Stead’s brother.

90 This projected biography was later abandoned.

Glebe.

December 1985

Dear Peter,

It’s more important to be a writer of novels than letters so thanks for your phone call. I cursed myself for talking so much and especially about V Leduc! I panic and try to give all that would happen over lunch in a ten or five minute’s trunk call. It’s madness.

Here’s the story I said I’d like you to read. I made it up as a parable on the nature of ‘modern love’ or rather the fact one can love anything if necessary. But maybe others will see it differently—I tried to write female erotica and as you know erotica is the devil to write as it is hard to avoid being either banal or sordid.

I’m off to the Zoo today as it’s a lazy day for Susan and me on the introduction to what may be now The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets. I plan to say we both got into the bath with a biro each and dashed it off amongst the bubbles. I don’t wish people to know what a task it’s been for us—neither used to formal language any longer. Two hundred poems would’ve been easier but we hope it makes sense and makes a mark for … whatever the ideal is we struggle towards. Susan had a story in Southerly this week and said she had seven layers of paper under the final photocopy (of cut outs and paste ups). She’s a great perfectionist as you can see and I tell you this to encourage you in the three pile of drafts you tackle—your daily mountain.

I’m off to Zoo with Robert Stead today and lunch as its last day of his holidays. My own productivity may increase when he goes back to work as I drop everything at a phone call—first things first I say as I rush out the door.

I sent Andrew T. this story in case he’d like it for his anthology. Well one door closes and another one slams in your face as the saying goes.

Please give Helen my love. Tell her she is one of the rare women who actually allows me to have a friendship with their (her?) husband without frowns scowls or badmouthing and I salute her. Love from Kate. XXXX

Leura,

6th December 1985.

Dearest Ghilly,

This will be the hastiest note that I ever wrote. I will write again properly soon but I want to say Thank you! In a heartfelt way for the letter and the wonderful tape. George a friend who is a mathematician and a lovely man put it on for me this morning as I was too scared to try on a strange machine myself in case I messed it up. It is truly beautiful. The best Christmas present possible. You sound very marvellous and more mature. Your voice is as fresh as water. Mature and fresh, a lovely combination.

I am baking Xmas cakes, 20 in all, 6 done. Hugh and Mary are coming up with Sue Dwyer a friend from Sydney. Also Gordon and Woolfie and her brother so it should be a lovely day. I am alone here a lot, days on end. I like it … but it is rigorous at times. Mist comes down for 4 days and then not being able to see the shapes of the trees, I find a bit hard psychologically. I race to town and stay with Robert and come back refreshed and drained too. He is being very nice at the moment. He is mad about my writing success … don’t know why but it is very deep and has a really amazing effect on him. The opposite of jealous … but I feel may in some deep-rooted way be not too far away in its base. I mean the other side of the coin. He is kind to me and generous but Ghilly he still talks to his mistress No. l on the phone in my presence. It half kills me. I never can make him see what it feels like. Not that I try—he can see the effect it has. He can’t face up to her needs and fears so he lies to her and pretends I’m not there and so I must bear it. Or leave. I did leave again! A few weeks ago but finally weakened. Yet it is complex and I have the most innocent and tender nights with him surrounded by a childish spiritual purity I had forgotten but I once had and only then, in the early happy days of my marriage. Isn’t that strange? I wake up and almost call him Richard. Never had it with anyone else … and I loved Herb a lot more than I do him.

I am doing a Blue Mountains journal for publication I hope … sent the first 40 pages to Penguin yesterday so X yr. fingers. Our poetry book for them comes out mid ’86 and we have a contract signed at last at last. Get this Ghills … it’s to be called The Penguin Book of Australian Women’s Poetry … Hooray I am so thrilled and pleased and it makes it authoritative and definitive and the first ever too. Will double our sales and be in every school library with that title.

I love my house and garden and would love you to stay. Waterfalls, three of them, ten minutes walk away and thousands of acres of gum trees in a great valley. The Three Sisters are nearby—I see them from the back. I will write again soon. Excuse please, this haste.

Love from Jill. X

Leura.

28th January 1986.

Dearest Ghilly,

As I trudged in from posting a vast package of manuscript plus letter and 2 photos to you, there was your lovely letter in the box waiting. I was so happy to have it and to know you are OK and that things are better for you. I was so happy too to hear you liked Luxury and yr. friend had a look too. The Americans have a copy nearby you—Virginia and Bob—as Barbara Campbell, her sister and my friend bought one at Gleebooks and sent it to them. I will get that organised very soon Ghills I have been a rat and so remiss.

I had dinner with Barbara and Duncan the day of the Boynes-Llewellyn dinner in Jan. at Kirribilli and next day went to see the new house they have bought in Paddington and had lunch on Glebe Pt. Rd while Robert and his mistress unbeknown to me were lunching and having a reunion set up two or three doors away. Only a kind fate stopped us eating at the same place. He told me when I met him at 3 p.m. that day WHEN WE DROVE UP HERE TO STAY. God it’s been tough Ghilly, I feel like jumping off Buttenshaw Bridge down into the miles of gums so no one could ever hurt me again. He doesn’t seem to mean to do it but that actually makes it harder to leave him. How weary we all are of it and how ashamed I am to confess to my friends I haven’t done it yet. I am a bit better today and walked up to the post office and did not feel too bad. The place and town and house are lovely and they heal and help me. I live on potatoes. The whole of the journal[91] is going to be the product of many bags of potatoes. They suit me and I now think I am actually allergic to wheat flour and IT IS IN A GREAT MANY things. I had pasta under the cherry tree with G.[92] yesterday and groaned half the night. I can take a little flour but too much and I AM A MESS. The snow sounds so lovely with the oranges and red carnations. You could be a painter whenever you wish. I hope one day you will take it up when you have time. Yes yes yes, of course I will come to hear you in Melb. thank God yr. coming back so soon I say. And how I adore Mr. Falling Leaves. I am in love with the name. God you are lucky to meet someone with such a name … I only hope he is half way decent.

91 The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains journal (1987), Hudson Publishing.

92 Gordon Graham.

Two years is a long time and I truly admire you for it. 5 months I have counted on my fingers and I will see you again. Thank God and if I haven’t finished with Robert don’t speak to me. Sneer, dear, sneer.

I have been out picking basil. I am making pesto to freeze for later. It’s so useful. I can make a meal in half an hour if I have it on hand. I wish I could thrust a bunch of its lovely scent under your nose and see you inhale and smile. I have a new scheme for another book and that is one of letters from mothers to daughters and daughters to mothers. I will make a submission to Penguin as soon as I hear from them on the Stead and the Journal. If you would care to have some from your mother, I would ask everyone’s permission before ever using anything and if Ruth would save some of yours. I’d be glad Ghilly. It would be especially interesting as an Australian artist abroad I feel. My mother writes wonderful and mad wild letters full of wisdom and I will save hers, too. Lots of love and thanks.

Jill. X

Leura,

5th June 1986.

Dearest Bob and Mandy,

So sorry for the long silence. I am sending just this note and a few bits of writing just so you know I am still here and thinking of you. I have written to almost no one for two months. It has been such a difficult time. Robert has gone crazy with the effort of trying to talk me into coming back. The weeping phone calls and visits and pleading have utterly knocked me about. I have stood saying no until I was exhausted. Finally last weekend he came up twice, having put a letter in my box by hand the Sat. before and filled the week with calls, and then on the Monday rang twice and sent flowers and to put it plainly the long and short of it is I caved in. I feel my friends will be appalled at my weakness and be sorely tried by this. But I gave it my best shot. I am no longer sorry, just tired. He says he loves me and that was a great surprise to me … Funny way of showing it … I mutter to myself. God help his enemies!

I put in an application for a senior fellowship from the Lit. Board and should hear in Nov. That was a lot of work too.

My garden is fine, my writing totters but going on I am glad to report. Hugh is into Duntroon officially now and goes early July.

I tour Tas. with Blanche d’Alpuget[93] and Tim Winton second week of July under the aegis of the Lit. Board. That will be nice I think. I wanted to talk to her about biog. anyway so can in the car going round past the apple trees.

93 Blanche d’Alpuget pulled out of the trip and Kate travelled with Tim Winton and George Papaellinas.

I just hope you two are still speaking to me after all this silence of mine and caving in and going back to Robert. He says I can make him happy. Really? News to me again. But can he make me happy? I most sincerely doubt it but I would love to think it possible but I’d have to be nuts to believe that.

I am alone here now and I like it best. The policeman I let the place to for a fortnight or so went off to get married to a nurse. I think I am poorer but more peaceful this way. The autumn has been truly a miracle. I have never seen anything like it.

I will run down to the corner box and post this now and just hope you will excuse the brevity, the grimmer mood than I would wish and the fact that I send a bit of writing rather than a proper letter. But poss. really, I never did much more in fact!

I love my snake.[94]

94 An Aboriginal carving, a birthday gift from Bob.

Love from Jilly. XXX

That was a wonderful show, Mandy! I do hope your show in Ad. was a success, Bob, I wish I’d seen it!

Leura.

20th July 1986.

Dearest Bob and Mandy,

Many thanks Mandy for the call last night.

I found Tas. very Scottish, beautiful and loved it. It was a shock to talk to strangers by the dozen day after day and the three men I went with were lovely—Tim Winton and George Papaellinas (Ikons, Penguin Books) hadn’t been there either before.

We stayed up till 1 a.m. each night talking in my motel and drinking vodka and so on. George is a very very funny Aust. Greek and I was doubled up half the time laughing. I love love love to laugh and he was a gem for a trip like that. We did Burnie, Devonport, Launceston, the men were called faggots in the street there and George got scared after that … and then Hobart.

I’m glad to be home, fire lit, pot boiling (not in the literary sense I hope), bulbs thrusting up, but I am strangely restless and edgy. Times like this I am glad I don’t live with anyone, as I’d be a pain in the neck. I ache, am tired, irritable as if my veins have turned to barbed wire and have no one to blame not, this time for once, even myself. It’s curious and I do hope it will pass.

I am in the doldrums a bit with my Journal. Keep the Faith, Herb used to say. I just must but with a big job, one weakens and falters, as you no doubt know only too well yourselves.

Some have faith in it like Suzie Mitchell,[95] but they are not here. A long, kindly-meant, (here we go …) letter from Marisa[96] saying more or less it was a queer mess and fell between 6 chairs and what did I think I was doing? I can answer that but I am too tired. It is supposed to be post modernist in that it is just the events of a day made (hopefully sometimes) into a work of art and nothing can be made up. It is ever the moment (though some acts provoke anecdotes) and is to put people to sleep … and is avowedly eschewing most of the 20th century of tension inducing things. Fast cars and petrol, Chernobyl, Marcos and so on come and go and are never mentioned and that is the reason. They are not my topics. Mine are the weather, domesticity, love, art, gardening, the names of plants, a woman’s simple daily tasks and her heart’s thoughts. The people she meets who are her friends and visitors are included but no one else. And that is it. Bucolic, pastoral, rural, domestic, modern, feminist, even hopefully at times poetic. Yes, a ‘mess’ but that is how I wanted it. A rich life put down with a lot of censorship to make something calming in the face of trouble and pollution, quarrels, grief, illness, rows and ugliness. But will it work God knows. It badly needs a brilliant patient editor. I must have faith and keep on.

95 Susan Mitchell, Australian writer.

96 Marisa Raniolo Wilkins, later author of Sicilian Seafood Cooking (2012).

I rang Duntroon first last night to tell Hugh to watch State of the Arts and to see if he was OK. After all the silence not a word so far, I fear solitary confinement is his state or if not, is his destiny. He was not available, surprise surprise. Out 8 kilometres away and not due back says the man on the phone for another 2 weeks. My God I wanted to weep, What are you doing, out in that cold camping are you mad … don’t you know he’ll be sneezing all night. He looks strong but is prone to hay fever, colds and dreadful earaches. You will kill my boy … instead I asked mildly if it was any use the FAMILY, (yes regard those capitals) I thought they would like that, and Hugh would himself, being Family Mad in my opinion, were to write to him. He said yes, a truck goes out there every day. Taking I suppose, the bread and I guess they get the water from a creek …

Enough of this raving, I must go back to sitting by the fire grinding my most irritable teeth.

I go to Ad 15th Aug. for one month drat. Herb will be there as I may have said at length and I truly dread it. He is not coming back like Lt. Pinkerton, even if he thinks he is. It is a closed room and I do not wish to enter it ever again.

Love to you both. XX. To the other two too! XX

Leura.

Wednesday, 22nd July 1986.

Dear Jerry,

Here’s the piece on the farm. It is, as you see, done in a new spare, minimalist style; yet again fantasy poked its finger through a hole in the text and waggled it at me saying, ‘you can’t get rid of me so easily!’

I think the ending can be improved. I send it as it is but, before you finally decide if you want it, I can alter it—put a bow on it—or a knot—better for this spare style perhaps.

Love. Jill.

It’s two degrees!

Leura.

24th July 1986.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

Many many thanks for the letter from Karitiana saying, thank God, you are still there. So I write at once with the oil of the dressing of the salad still on my hands to try to get the 1 p.m. post at the corner box. It is cold and I have just got home from being with Robert three nights. I stayed on as I got a cold after Tasmania. Mainly a sulk, I think, not sure why. I am OK and was just so tired. It was a trip to remember, full of great laughter and hard work and beautiful landscapes and throwing snowballs on top of Mt. Wellington, Hobart. We went from town to town doing up to three gigs a day each and were like rich gypsies. I felt all I needed were big good circular earrings and I’d do the part. George Papaellinas is a hoot of a chap … I do really love him and he is Greek and loquacious hour after hour, puff at the cigarette, talk, puff … on and on till my eyes nearly rolled over to where he sat with one leg elegantly crossed over the other with pointed black suede elastic sided boots swinging. He is a bore and yet also lovable and Marxist in the extreme, hates post modernism, my God even I have caught up with that. It snowed a lot while I was in Tasmania and I mean here at Leura. Tony and Inga[97] took shots of the garden and so tomorrow I will post some. No I can’t I haven’t any cash. Next week. My neighbour told me Monday that I should have held out and not gone back to Robert … possibly … true enough and that in the end I would have got him … if you know what I mean … lashed for life I think is what was in her mind. Then she said I compete with other women. True I do. But when I asked her to describe when I had so that I could correct my ways, she refused to say. I was left feeling guilty and cross and ashamed of myself. But, as they said in the Inquisition: ‘Just tell me what I have done, My Lord, and I will confess it’. So I feel cool towards her but cannot afford a rift, as she is all I have to be my friend here. Robert came up Monday night and stayed as Chris was with his Mother who is in town. I went down at dawn with the moon and stars with him next day and then Chris stayed away two more nights so it was like the old times. Robert seems happy enough, smiles and smiles … a real change. But the job is not going, as I said to you, to be easy I fear. I went with Robert Tuesday evening for an hour to the (don’t faint, it was even his suggestion) Harold Park pub where the writers were reading. After we left Frank Hardy was arrested for $8000 of parking fines by forty police and is in Long Bay Jail for three days rather than pay and front page publicity and even on ABC radio and TV. Just what he wanted to advertise his new play or rather show touring soon and new book. Mary saw it all as a cop plot to get Hardy.

97 Neighbours Tony Morphett, playwright, and Inga Hunter, artist.

Susan said George Papaellinas did it as a publicity stunt for Frank and the pub. George swears it isn’t and is wild with S. for saying so, but declares Frank did it all himself for a good free ad. And my, did he get it.

No word from Hugh at Duntroon. I went to his enrolment in Sydney the day I flew to Tasmania. Mary of course boycotted it and then I went and had a coffee with her at the Roma after it.

I am off meat and you’d like that I think. I do spinach pureed soup and baked jacket potatoes with a garlic salad and avocado and feel full and well after this and my stomach acts as if it is very grateful and no longer rebels nor grumbles nor makes any threats. So perhaps at last I am onto what I ought to be. Yes The Penguin Book of Women’s Poets is out. Looks good, modern and nice. We have a big reading and party at Harold Park Hotel 5th Aug. Have a drink then to it will you. More news soon. Must rush rush rush love love love. Kate. XXXXXX

Leura.

10th August 1986.

Dearest Woolfie and Gordon,

I hope you are still in Kalamata or that the mail is forwarded. I have just been out chopping off the big yellow blooming wattle that came down in the storm. It was at the front gate, on the judge’s side and split off hanging like a loose tooth, so axe in hand, I chopped it off … not hard at all. Especially for one who has fought off death threats so bravely by running into the bedroom … oh la … I am trying to be calm. I scraped off the ivy from the drive too, in a fit of energy. The sun is out and the storm gone. Bad news, the two big gums on the escarpment at Gordon Falls park, you know where the bronze map of the valley on a plinth is, were damaged. The biggest, a great silver thing, went over and its sister tree was split but stands minus one big branch. Split, not in the trunk I mean, but on a big branch. I saw them cutting up the big one yesterday after Snaps.[98] I felt like weeping. It was one of the great trees of the mountains. Like a fallen elephant I remarked to a cutter. ‘Funny you should say that,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of a whale. I was involved up the north coast with a whale rescue and the worst part was burying the dead.’ I came home solemn and chastened.

98 A Leura café where writers met on Saturday mornings.

The storm has gone and my house, I am glad to say, is safe and not even a leak. Frederick up the street in the tidy neat garden and house next to the lane leading down to a battle axe block had his back hit … back of house, I mean, $1,000 of damage by a pine, and the neighbour is taking down the other pine to avoid it happening again.

I am trying to be calm and placating myself with domesticity. Mary[99] and Suzie[100] don’t need me in Adelaide now and as Herb hasn’t arrived, I’d like to race over there for a bit. But I am broke and it’s madness to leave home at a time like this as it is dearer in Adelaide for me than here. Mary is insisting she pay and I go but I don’t wish to take any more of her inheritance. Not sure what to do. So I will stay here and calm myself and just write the journal. Only about five weeks of that to go before the year is up and it is over. Fancy. I am thinking of calling it The White Thighs Journal. Do you like that? Tony[101] said the only banned book he could recall the name of was White Thighs. I think my white hyacinths are just like white thighs and with two of them on the cover in a glass it would be a real selling title and a very disappointing read for anyone who wanted a pornographic one. Maybe this is all folly. I must first find a publisher. I send it this week to McPhee Gribble as they may just like it. Tim[102] says he’ll ring Penguin Monday to see about the Stead biography. I should be gearing up now the poetry anthology is over and I am free. If only I were (free I mean).

99 Mary Beasley.

100 Susan Mitchell.

101 Tony Morphett, novelist and screenwriter, of A Country Practice and Certain Women.

102 Tim Curnow, Kate Llewellyn’s literary agent.

I thought of flying over to you but that’s foolish.

Love from Kate. XX

Leura,

October 1986.

Dear Ghilly,

It was wonderful to meet you in Melb and have that day with you. What a good coincidence … well, we did help it along a bit, I admit. It was a good idea to have the swim and sauna too, what shape would we be in if we’d gone to Milano’s?

I hope your work is doing well. At least it should be nice with D.O. working on the project. I hope so anyway.

I am having a cook up … boiled fruit cake for Gordon and Woolfie who are in town but arrive I hope this week to stay until they get a house to rent here to have the baby in the mountains.

I am resurrecting Grandmother Llewellyn’s old biscuit recipes and I enjoy it greatly. Ginger crunch and caramel squares and Mrs. Martin’s biscuits are their nice old names. Cooking soothes and calms me, as you know.

I have the strangest and most consoling feeling at the moment, I am absolutely certain I am on a path that has been chosen for me and that if I just stay calm, take care of myself and my affairs, i.e. money, and work well but not excessively … i.e. not go mad over the Stead biog. but tackle it calmly and patiently, all will be well for me in the end. My career has had a good year to put it mildly and my personal life has been horrible. Vile things I never would have believed I’d be involved in. And the work so flourishing in contrast. Also, even if I did have Herb in the long run would he halt and hamper and cramp me? I don’t know because in fact I had a big scare here at Leura. He was so clinging and hysterical … followed me talk talk talking to the compost heap when I put out the peelings, back to the sink … until I could have crept into a mouse hole to escape. But that may not be the whole truth but just at that time. But I think if he ever did come to Australia to live with me he also then would be very anxious too. Perhaps not. I tire easily you know and clinging makes me hysterical. So I try to be fatalistic about it all … but this may be just sour grapes. I haven’t heard from him since we parted at the train station. Wendy McB. rang and said she’d run into Annie McC. and Herb in a restaurant on Thursday night and all was fine she said. A shot of green went straight through me. I felt how could he be sitting laughing with my friends when I am here alone. How ridiculous that is. It’d pass in a second or two. Gills, do let me know the dates for coming back to Aust. when you can … I will write them in my ’87 diary and try to be sure to be available and here when you can come to Leura for a real holiday. The bird life, the valleys and views and so on with the waterfalls will certainly heal any problems or tiredness I hope. I know you’ve been to the mountains before when you were here with S. and we were at Bal Bal. So you know what it is like. Mine is a bit more rural than that but it is in the town and very pretty and only a kilometre from the train.

Lots and lots of love to you

Jill. X

Leura.

6th December 1987.

Dearest Ghilly,

I’ve been playing your tape and I am so sad you’ve had it so rough in Wiesbaden! What a bad trot! Mad people abound. The Chief Judge of the Family Court—this is related—Elizabeth Evatt—bought the house next to me. Her court is always in the news as now 2 men have killed their families being upset over rulings. That’s what I mean about these madmen. I think some have had their own way so long they go mad when crossed. I think of dear Stewart so disturbed and sad. Thank God!! you left him. Excuse me saying this.

I am reading lovely things—2 biographies by Victoria Glendinning[103]—one Vita (V. Sackville-West who built a great garden besides being a writer and friend/lover of V. Woolf). Also Unicorn Among Lions on Edith Sitwell—both utterly brilliant.

103 UK-based biographer and novelist.

Did I tell you I am planning to do the biography of—wait for it and don’t pass out Gilly, sit down now—Christina Stead. Yes, I almost faint in the night when I think of my audacity. But I’m keen and Penguin say they are, and the Lit. Board say no one else is doing it in Australia as far as they know. Her Literary Executor, Prof. R.D. Geering has talked with me and is not keen but will not stop me. He doesn’t wish to do it himself, wants to cover up her sad last years of alcoholism. He’s her minder you see and wishes the whole topic of her life dropped—but writers and artists don’t belong to a single person. So I will press on. Robert has offered to speak on my behalf to all living members of Stead’s family and they have agreed to talk to me. Hooray! It’s a vast job, Gilly.

I do hope things are good with you now. Writers’ Week invited me to be on the official programme so they will pay my airfares so I’m thrilled. I’ve waited 10 yrs for this.

Happy Christmas dear heart. Love. Jill.

Leura.

March 1988.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

Thank you for the wonderful flowers that came to the launch of Honey. Nick Hudson brought them out so happily hidden previously in a back room. He gave them to me as I finished talking. They were pink proteas and pink and white carnations and lots of white fuzzy stuff, all very lovely and still fresh here in this house. I took them off to dinner with Thomas Johnson and Andrew Taylor who had launched the book and with H. whom I had just begun an affair that day. After dinner at the Bangkok which was easy and I had dreaded it thinking the dear Murphy sisters might come and H. and maybe the dreaded Beast too … but I got off very lightly … imagine the combination of that lot … I went and stayed with H. and later at about 2 a.m. went to the casino for the first time to get a cup of tea. This past weekend I took care of my mother who developed volcanically high blood pressure … It is normal now and I am so cross with her rudeness and cruelty I am not even ringing her up … but of course I will be in a bad way when she dies but that does not make me a hypocrite … just to say for the first time I am acknowledging how awful she can be … I was a wreck … ‘aged ten years’, Suzie said as I came in from that trip and I was a mess but I had a happy Writers’ Week.

I interviewed Victoria Glendinning for Follow Me magazine while we were down at McLaren Vale at Andrew Garrett’s motel and winery … She was charming and talks a text so all I had to do was push the button on the recorder and ask the odd question. I will write it when I go home which will be Sunday, 20th …

Dear Sarah Forbes kindly came to the launch and so will give you a report of the events. Thomas said nice things about my work which was a pleasure and acted like a fool … I think he was drunk … unusual for him … he insisted on reading a poem called ‘The Journey’ as I never like to read at launches as I think it a bore. He read in the most grotesque way … a sort of Daddy and Babsy bed time story style more suitable for the three little bears … I stood frozen with horror and wished to turn to stone … in fact I thought I had …

I saw Lynn Hard but broke a date with him and now I feel I don’t think it wise or that I wish to see him again except as a friendly business person. In fact the world of coincidence is too strange to be believed and as Arthur Koestler says ‘there’s more to it than we think’ … for instance … at 2.30 a.m. coming out of the casino who should I meet going in but Lynn who a moment before I had just thought of and decided I couldn’t lunch with him that day as I had a book signing at a shop to do … so it was very strange. Today Ian North is coming out here for a drink and to talk about a photo he took that he will sell to the Hudsons. He seems very cheerful … I had lunch with Ali Carroll[104] today.

104 Alison Carroll, curator.

Fancy the Times on Sunday closing, … I am so sorry … Australia is going from bad to worse … I don’t like all this Packer/Fairfax power a single scrap.

I think Mr. Hawke got bought for a song a long time ago by his mate Big Kerry … who, if he is an honest man, I am a fella.

I don’t expect you to say anything nice especially about Honey’s cover as I think the yellow bit at the top mad and wish it were black and I bet you both have better ideas than that. But I do hope you like some of the contents … Thomas quoted the frog poem and discussed what is done in that poem at the launch so that was a nice

co-incidence I thought.

I am longing to start on the book Dear Caroline[105] but need to get to Queensland to begin it … I wish I didn’t have to go away so far and be so lonely … also the cost will be high too … but I think it makes a lot of sense to put it in the north. I have worn out Leura I feel for the reader …

105 Later published as The Mountain (1989).

After much boring to-ing and fro-ing about Dear You some of the erotica is put back in and I am now faintly amused as my softly softly approach has finally won the day … and no one is hurt or cross and all even believe they have thought it all necessary … and blame the others for the cuts … It was strange though, when the first letter of the book was cut out … it began in a very down beat way as a result …

Sorry I’m going on about this … but I think the topic of censorship a most interesting one … Then, that letter was cut so when she[106] says she is rushing home to masturbate … all that was cut out and to my amusement it simply was not at all clear what was on her mind … just to lie praying or dreaming it seemed … So I have put that part back … as she says she went to a lavatory on a train several years ago thinking of him and now again has the same urges and feelings and that is what she is planning to do when she flings open her front door.

106 ‘She’ refers to the main protagonist in Dear You (1988).

Not really a big revelation … especially when one reads Edmund White the USA writer here for Writers’ Week … who read to an attentive audience from his wonderful book A Boy’s Own Story …

I do hope for both of you that your own work is going well. Andrew McDonald is coming for a day or so at Easter.

Well dear hearts, I do hope you are both fine and that Laura and Alexander are too.

Many many thanks again for the beautiful flowers. It was a real thrill and I must admit I felt grand swishing around that casino with that sheaf of flowers and a fast heart …

Jilly.

Wagga Wagga.

11th August 1988.

Dearest Jerry,

Your letter was spark and relief in a queer day. Thursday bloody Thursday I almost wrote at the top. I am so sorry to hear of your flu. It leaves such a trail later and the weakness and depression are hard to bear. I hope the Dr. was useful … could you bear to take something very very mild to get you back to sleeping … you know I do it. I didn’t while away as I was always scared I’d miss a bus or plane or fall asleep after lunch when I was among some scenery. But those mild tablets do help a lot and I don’t feel I am hooked as I stop easily and don’t take them frequently. But I do use them I admit.

I was so terribly glad you liked the book. I do value your judgment. There’s to be an interview I did with a lovely young woman Julie Miller who is a freelancer for the Spectrum pages of the Sydney Morning Herald Saturday week. She came up to Leura but I was packing and trying to finish planting in the lane before I left next day so I was a bit ratty but she was so nice …

I have been with Bob and Mandy since Friday last ’til Tuesday morning as I went to the launch of the database at the ADFA library. Mr. Whitlam spoke for over thirty minutes in heat and light and was very very funny. He is so erudite and such a complete showoff … a great speech but in the end I could see, and what was the poor devil to do but talk of Latin and his great knowledge and so on … he had to fill in the time … nevertheless I saw a vast vast ego trumpeting its own blasts. My own ego is not to be sneezed at yet I feel not many women would dare or dream of doing what men do … it just became clear to me as he spoke on and on.

People here are exquisitely polite … drives me mad. I swear to relieve the tension and try to stop them being so mannered … hard to explain … but I long for a bit of sordid reality.

Today for instance. I was taken on a two and a half hour trip to Finley High School. I was told to be ready at 7 a.m. Arriving after miles of green lovely plains with a woman named Debbie driving, a sort of link teacher who helps all schools around … a sort of a saint full of eager helpful earnestness … mother of two under five, husband at home … stout, young with a beautiful skin and mouth.

As we pulled up we were taken by a student into a classroom and there were fifteen twelve-year-olds. I had to talk and had been told suddenly in the car that this was to be the plan for the entire day. I nearly got out and walked home. I am not a trained teacher I explained and how the hell was I to keep up a pace all damn day talking about something I know only a few things about and can’t do talking of all day as I can’t give it all out. I stood sulkily in the playground and said to my host Debbie I couldn’t possibly do it all day and there had been a big misunderstanding. I hated being a nuisance to her as she was so polite and kind … but inwardly I was close to tears. I said I would do three classes at the most … so we did.

I bought a side of lamb, now here’s the cheerful bit … at a butcher in a tiny town … only $14 and it looks lovely. So now a pot of soup is boiling, I have three tiny chops ready to grill and a lovely swede to mash which I bought thinking of you in a shop there also. Life has many treats. Doesn’t it just.

I saw a great Australian drawing show at the Australian National Gallery with Bob … all sorts of early drawings and many by women who are almost unheard of … not spectacular; the kind that are elegant accomplishments but I loved seeing them. It reminded me of all the drawings we all did as teenagers but of course better than that I suppose but how can one tell … things look good in a gallery because they have that importance there. But I liked them a lot and I really loved the show, as it was so original and strange. He has a lovely show ready to go to Macquarie Gallery soon and I slept among it. His work is so beautiful, dark and strong.

I don’t think you should come to Wagga at all. Especially as you have the Queensland trip ahead and the flu to recover from. I will come to Sydney on a bus and see you when you are better. It is easy to come as a bus leaves 2 p.m. Fridays and would get in about 9 p.m.

I heard to my great shock that dear Philip Martin had a stroke and is paralysed and can’t speak. He is coming to Sydney for Jenny.[107] I want to come also to see him. He had a long happy lunch by the sea at St. Kilda with Herb and me last time I saw Herb and who would have thought that it would be he who would have the stroke with Herb and his blood pressure being a concern …

107 Jenny Gribble, academic and Philip Martin’s partner.

I am having two cloves of garlic steamed with my vegetables each night on the assumption that if it is good for Diana’s cats it might be good for me. And for the rest, that is in the lap of God.

Lots and lots of love … I hope you are much better … but remember it takes time to recover from this flu but I’m sure you’ve heard that all too often.

Love to Bob and to Sheridan and love to you, dear brave one. Jill.

Wagga Wagga

2nd September, Friday 1988.

Dear Jerry,

You are having a lovely time home on the farm. I was thinking about the farm last night and wondering if it was at all clear when I write about it how really lovely it is. I am about to give a talk to the academic staff in the Humanities and Social Sciences on Women’s Writing. So there has been much staring out the window watching the rain.

I like the motel where I stay very much. I watered the window boxes this morning and they rang and thanked me. They were half dead and now it is raining. Yesterday a Professor of American Literature from University of Florence came to lunch and to lecture. He invited me to come to Florence … they have a renaissance villa on a hill for visitors he says. But it was all more or less a courtesy on his part not a real offer … one can’t stay long, just a few days while you give a talk … but it would be nice to actually know someone if I ever did go there (we’ll never be in Paris together again …) and although it is a long shot it was better than a wet fish.

I went to get my mail from the house where I was although the doctor had kindly been delivering it to the motel but I had left a couple of towels and needed a walk and wanted to show willing to get my mail. The woman was there, mean, hard and charmless. No wonder he is looking embarrassed. He, if he is clever, will be having second thoughts but it is too late for him … some men, I am certain, prefer a harridan, it reminds them of a scolding mother and they feel quite at home knowing in their heart just how very naughty they really are.

Yesterday I had a queue outside my room for my open morning where they can come if they want to talk about their work. A young mother from miles away with a science degree and two toddlers who is writing short stories and is very lonely … I felt for her as she grabbed and leapt and swiped to save them from tearing down stairs, opening files and pulling down shelves.

I go to Tumut to see the countryside with a student Keri[108] as she has a car and offered to drive me. We leave Sat. 9 a.m. and come back Sunday evening so I am looking forward to that. She rushed into the motel two nights ago as I was having my chicken fricassee and said I’ve just written a poem waving it at me. I read it and it was really wonderful … she’s very good, she’s the one I met last time who said almost nothing and who I almost overlooked until I saw her work … then off she went and I resumed dinner. We had a talk about where she should send it, as it is too good to just give to a tiny magazine so I was rather amused about the passionate visit and knew very well how she felt.

108 Keri Glastonbury, poet.

Leura.

Monday, 5th September 1988.

Dear Jerry,

Well, I have heard the news and now Mary told me last night on the phone you have given her maternity overalls which is so lovely of you and very typically generous and supportive too. What can I say? I am thrilled about it and appalled and happy and sad too, all those things … resigned as this was inevitable of course but oh it is a big step. All our lives will be changed now I say to myself. Mary is as you know 23 today and it seems young but all mothers no doubt think these thoughts. She will be a lovely mother. He wants to marry her but she says no as she doesn’t need to show the world she loves him or him her by marriage she says. I think that a very typical attitude from her and I wonder if perhaps it would be wiser for them to marry. I do understand what she means though.

A review of Dear You was in Spectrum in the Sydney Morning Herald. I find it interesting to be put along with a UK pulp novel, second to it, by an Australian reviewer in an Australian paper and to read that when I write I am a compulsive liar and what’s more I am one who knows that she lies. This woman is afraid to attack me in the way she would secretly like to, so she says such things as this.

I provoke much hatred in some women’s hearts there’s no doubt about it. Love too, but some hatred in some.

I went to Tumut and had a lovely time with this 19-year-old girl who is very wise and quiet and lovely. We went to Talbingo where Miles Franklin was born and saw the place she loved more than any other on earth and the plaque, which points to where the house Lampe was under the dam now built. It is a heavenly place. Quite spiritual.

My talk to the academics went quite well I think. The Dean told me today it was fine and wide ranging enough and not too specialist for a range of people to be interested. But then I guess he had to be polite about it.

Well dear heart, I will stop and try to write this blasted review of D.M. Thomas … what can I say? Another dirty old man tells all … do we want to know … yes in fact I think we do, well at least I do as it was good and I did enjoy hearing how he lives and it was honest and brave and perhaps not unusual as it at first seems. His perpetual infidelity I mean. Monogamy is far more unusual I think. Let us hope Mary and Les can practice it … and amen to that. Have a wonderful time if you can and gets lots of rest.

Love from Jill. Love to Julie & Anton .xx. and hello to Diana & Jim.

Leura

Tuesday, 19th October 1988.

Dear Susan and Andrew,

Your letters came tonight when I got home from Wild Stars a big dance/light/music show with Wendy and Amanda. I read them over several times and smiled and felt embarrassed. How good you are to me!

Well, first of all, I didn’t intend to launch into a defence of Thomas, as it’s inappropriate I think. I will never stop being grateful for the way he saw whatever talent I have and let it be without direction (which must’ve been the hardest thing of all) and lived it, saluted it, encouraged it and believed in it. Many lesser men would’ve tried to direct it. I love him for that. He even said ‘There are poets and people who write poetry—you’re the former and I’m the latter—you think in images’. I am not sure the latter is a good thing or necessarily true, but the generosity of that I love. It cost him dearly to swallow his ambition and he saw me and loved me for things I had which he wanted but didn’t try to crush. So, for these things, I love him; but the past is really only gratitude in the end, and the present is a dear face who spills ideas and arguments which tax, stretch me, excite me and above all cares for poetry and as I know, in my immediate locality, no others who do, it is a palm in the desert and I stagger to the shade and lie and rave at the space and it can go to hell while I am in shadows which make me real.

Later!! (P.S. I don’t mean you can go to hell, I mean the world of others than poets.)

Now about the Macquarie experience—I didn’t for a minute feel slighted, I was so glad to see you both and actually liked the way you drifted in and out as I felt it took for granted we were such friends we could and I also felt you were telling me something which was about my hecticness and that we should be calmer and I do like lessons from loving friends. So that was all fine.

Last night I did a radio reading and interview and although I felt embarrassed at the little girl way I read part of the poems I was quite spiffed about the interview as I thought it sounded like a person I’d like to know and who actually talked sense excitedly. What I’d like to do is just an interview talking about writing and the things which one comes to after a bit and the way one deals with say avant-garde movements—history—obsessions, learning the craft, rejection, over-praise etc. (by over-praise I mean the fact that you’re a woman being seen to be worth a clap whether you’ve done it well or not, I do hate that). Also, while I’m at it I’d like to talk about ways of teaching Literature all of which I do like and value and it’s only that I think some things could be valuable in the area of poetry criticism which is really about a love and value of poetry. e.g. How can anyone value poetry in a true sense—i.e. read it for pleasure, when, in fact, they can’t tell a good poem from a bad? I reckon, and it stuns me but it’s true, I’ve recently found a few top essay prizewinners, no less, who can’t tell! It’s true I tell you perhaps you know, you always seem to agree with what I’ve just tumbled to; but when I tumble to it, believe me, it’s because I’ve worked it out through experience and also observation and not just bloody-minded gossip. Well, if instead of being given pretty O.K. poems to write out the meaning of, if people were shown good and bad poems and sung to and the out of tune things read too, they’d start to see and hear, then, if they were given six or so poems both great and awful and asked to choose the best and write why. I know this is a terribly old fashioned method and must have you groaning but given the fact I like tests and have seen the Advanced Colleges of Education and the way-out stuff they teach, I value the quaint ways Departments of English stick to at some Universities. I keep thinking of your groans and sensible quarrels with this conservative line of mine but I think people can be taught by these old fashioned methods, and as I don’t have anything concrete to put in place of tests and hate sleaziness of the mind, it’s all I have to suggest that people could be taught to tell the difference and may love the mysterious things they see. Oops, I nearly argued with myself but that doesn’t mean I don’t think this is a good idea. Why am I thinking of arguing when this is after all a mild enough idea.

‘Song of Australia’ is on so it’s time to stop—not before time either. I do go on to you two. Take this in bits if it helps.

Love from Kate.

P.S. I am actually alarmed at my bosom, you mentioned its increasing I see and I hope it stops. I view it with alarm.

Pt. Willunga.

14th February 1989.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you for dinner that wet day—I was so pleased to see you both. And to find your place and now I have a grip on the transport I will be over to see you—more often. I got to the Opera House by running barefoot in the rain as I’d taken stupidly a wrong turning at your back entrance. How can anyone be such a dope about directions?

Once there, Ghilly’s husband failed to show so I asked the Opera Company representative what to do as he had the tickets and Cyclone Nancy had hit his town Caloundra. She kindly gave me two unclaimed ones. As I ran up the steps I met him and his friends so tickets then abounded. We returned mine (I admit). A wonderful night—afterwards drinks in the dressing room with Ghilly and then supper at The Intercontinental. A far cry from my isolated days at Leura.

Hugh had Ghilly and me to dinner five nights later just before I came here and he was at his funniest and best which always makes me so happy as laughter is to be realised and gloated over I feel. Almond orchards are nearby and also net covered vines—we are on the edge of the grape area—such a beautiful landscape. The sea is clear and aquamarine so your toes show and deep (wine dark) blue out further with pink sunsets that turn the sea gold and pink. Surely angels go to bed in such sheets. Starlings in the tall pines wake me in the morning—great flocks of them—hence the nets on the vines, I guess.

We get fresh fish from a man next door but two. I helped him and his daughter haul in a great net of shining silver mullet. (Here he goes past now trailing his boat behind his car.) He watches from the cliff for the fish and then the girl rows out with the net and he shouts and points for her direction. The net, the fish, it all felt biblical and very moving. I didn’t know fish were warm? Did you? I felt one as I picked it up from the sand where it had leapt trying to get to the water. Warm! ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘the sea must be warm today!’ But it wasn’t, as I fully knew having just been in—strange how the mind alters facts to accommodate strange unfitting information at times. The fisherman, Geoff, told me fish are warm. No, I didn’t put it back in the sea though I wondered if I should. This indeed for dinner that night was fresh fish. It feels like Greece here, hot, dry, empty with the sea so blue and calm. We had dinner on the cliff last night under a thatched shelter shed and watched men go out in a dinghy to hunt a shark. I’d just been swimming thinking how foolish I was to have spent all those Januarys worried about sharks when I came here when the children were small and I was married. And with the home! Shark news!

I do hope you can read my handwriting, poor dears! I can hardly type as my neck hurts so when I do and if I must I put it off I notice. Craven to the bootstraps! I do hope all is well with you both.

Love Kate.

Pt. Willunga.

19th February, Monday, 1989.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

I hope you got a note I sent last week. The mail here is sleepy and so slow I wonder … but do not I repeat do not bother to reply it is not necessary at all … I just wanted to thank you for dinner and to have a chat on paper …

I am stiff in the limbs as I helped haul in two tonnes (or is it tons) of salmon this afternoon. A great day. A great haul. I wandered along for about four kilometres to get my mail from a small P.O. store on the beach. When I got back I saw a fisherman running to his boat parked on the beach. I said, ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ He said … ‘a big mob of salmon up at Sellicks beach. Hop in if you want to come. I leapt into the four-wheel drive, (an old wreck) and at the top on the ramp, in leapt his elderly cousin Colin with a big dog … I was in my bathers squashed between men, dog, gear and binoculars in my lap.

There certainly was a big school. Dark, like an alive cloud in the water … We span down onto the beach (as is legal here in parts) … Geoff hunched with chin almost on top of the steering wheel, arms high akimbo on top, also, of the wheel, old cloth hat down over the eyes, almost … the car a sensational dusty wreck—a true working vehicle; a miracle it goes at all, all rusted too, from the seawater into which it goes. He rowed out while we watched on the shore … through big surf. He half-naked, tattooed, heart of gold, I am told … daughter Donna leapt, beer bottle in hand, screaming with joy onto the back of a truck barracking like a happy banshee … Her bra, a strip of green cloth over immense breasts waving against all sense of gravity and danger … I too jumped up and down for glee on the shore with the tattooed men who rolled up with their big bellies. All good hearted souls … as the two-hundred and fifty yard long net trailed out, Geoff sat quiet as a bird on the water holding the boat still to be quiet and not scare the fish. In they swam … oh death to all …

He rowed swiftly in to shore as we yelled and called ‘Whoopee’ … Hauling and pulling until he ran and got his car and dragged the net in with several rollings and retying of the net as it was too long in its great length. (Too long for the width of the beach.) These are also, I think, the other delicate moments of fishing as the fish can escape if the net is let out too far …

In it came two tons of death … and people ran to help … The dinghy was filled twice to the top (and it was not small) and buckets of seawater tossed over the cooling fish … then many fish boxes were brought out and for several hours we threw fish into boxes as the seagulls gathered overhead … Children ran up with string bags and plastic bags and chose their fish with me laying them out on the seat of the boat to let them see … they did not like to touch the fish … So many leaping even then … I was given four and each is about a kilo. I bought five as well and have cleaned nine big salmon now and dusk has fallen … Geoff, the fisherman wrapped the fish for me in his coat … so gallant … his wife dropped me home as we are almost next door to their house … in I came to show Wendy my happy haul … I said … ‘And now don’t ask what we are going to do with this … you insisted on blessing the fleet … it is all your fault’ … she had made the sign of the cross like a Greek bishop the day we got here and first saw the man and his boat …

Tonight, finishing cleaning the fish, I said … ’Do you remember I was cleaning fish when I rang you from Henley Beach when the big bushfire was on and you were packing to leave and your kids were out fighting it and I said ‘What fire?’ you had replied … ‘take a look up at the hills, you dill … half of Adelaide is on fire’ … and so it was … She told me that it is ten years to the day that this fire happened … What a strange thing … here I am cleaning the same salmon and here with her and today came a letter from the woman with whom I was staying at Henley that day, Julia Britton, who writes to me about once in two years … What caused this strange coincidence? Is it merely that? I think there is a lot more to this life than meets the eye, and I am sure you both agree …

An eight-foot shark almost beached itself a few days ago, chasing a school of mullet. I may have already told you this. I have written a poem about it and I might send it to you with this …

Wendy and I drove to Victor Harbor today through lovely countryside and even some kangaroos … We got a crayfish there for our dinner … and truly this does seem to me a land of opulence and luxury even though it looks so barren. A laden fig tree leant over an old fence as we passed … lemons in an empty yard nearby this house … I help myself …

If I can lay my hands on it, I will put the Writers’ Week programme in this too … I hope that at the next one we can perhaps come over here together and have a few days together … though I know it is most awkwardly timed for University, as lectures begin almost at the same time … But maybe we could try to get some plan going nearer the time … Anyway, it is a thought to keep in mind …

Well I hope things are good for you both and that life is getting a bit easier too …

Love Kate.

Ninga Ninga.[109]

109 This station is owned by Kate’s brother, Tom/Tucker Brinkworth, and is located in Kingston, in the south-east of South Australia.

17th April 1989.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you for having me to stay and for the lovely dinner.

My friend Wendy and I are here for one week on my brother’s station. Birds galore on the wetlands he has made and what a sight, blue cranes, black swans, wild duck, ibis, geese and many whose names I don’t know are there. Emus strut in groups in the background and kangaroos lie around with one or two standing, ears pricked as we pass. Malleefowl nests are here—big piles of compost to incubate the eggs—we walked five kilometres out to see one two days go. All night rutting stags call like pigs—the sound carries far—they sound as if they’re on the verandah! The whole carcass of a stag hangs dressed in the cool room. On Friday three hundred men are coming for a duck shoot. My brother Tucker is to cook dinner for them—just how I do not know as yet. The most he’s had to cook for, his laconic wife Patsy said, is five hundred. Calves are being castrated in a set of yards nearby and their mothers call while they bellow then run to mother. In this they are in a way their own Judas as who they are is then marked in a book for the blood lines—their ear tags are noted and the mother’s, and so each one is known as its mother’s progeny. (We are our mothers’ sons and daughters!)

We drove to the wetlands twenty kilometres away and saw the trees standing dead in it with pink galahs decorating them like bows of ribbon. Over one hundred red gums were cut dead in the swamp to make the verandah posts for this homestead by Tucker and his fifteen-year-old son, Ben. A vast task!

The house is set low in an oasis of native trees. Patsy watered with her baby son on her back in a pack with watering cans while feeding the builders—all twelve of them for one year three meals a day! Such achievements are unsung and yet stupendous and even I think noble. Native birds have come now to feed of course and tiny blue wrens gather over the lawn and hop on the verandah along with tiny honeyeaters.

Tucker put six wild ducks on the sink for us while we were out yesterday and we got fresh sweet mullet fillets that day too.

I dearly want to write something about all this yet quake at the task as it’s all been done before!

How to find a new way!

I do hope you are both fine. I’ll enclose the diet you asked for, Jenny, and hope you find it as interesting and easy as I have. Certainly I felt very well on it. I’ll phone when I get home after Anzac Day. Love. Kate.

Wagga Wagga.

21st September 1989.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for having me stay. What a boost it was for me. I had not actually realised how I had sunk in spirits until I felt better thanks to all you did and your company and that of the girls and Bob, and now I feel quite wonderful. Sun’s out, I am about to walk into the town, it’s fifteen kilometres as I think I told you. I walked out here one day to people’s astonishment and it only took two hours so it can’t be all that far.

I had such a good trip on the train, reading Jan Morris was marvellous. I slept too, while you worked, as I said I rested for us both.

I weeded the strawberry patch in the garden where I am staying this morning just to keep my hands in the soil and came out to work with the dashing young Dean.[110]

110 Professor Richard Johnstone, who was Dean at Charles Sturt University at this time.

Your letter about the dogs eating the blood and bone was here waiting Jerry. Many thanks for it too. I expect the second one that is missing, not the 2nd one you wrote, will come tomorrow. (If not I will ask at the Post Office and fill out a form.)

I read The Sweetshop Man too, not quite to the end yet and I liked that a lot. These clever writers. Is it that the English are so clever or is it that it is so competitive there that only the crème de la crème get published or rather, and I think this is quite likely, here I see things too closely in the writers and writing and, lacking the distance, cringe away a bit at times, just as one does with a member of one’s family who stand out or perform. I am not sure what it is. I neither wish to boast about Australian writing at the present nor be unable to enjoy it. I would like to accept it and enjoy it but very often I just can’t. It looks too raw or clumsy. My own books I think possibly fall into that category for some people too. Some friends are very, very silent about them and I know they have read them. I myself don’t really mind this as I think it is quite impossible to like everything friends do in their writing or whatever it is they do, and I would not like them to force praise from their unhappy throats. I prefer their silence. It is just that I notice it. Gordon and Woolfie for instance do not say

a word.

And for all your support and enjoyment and saying so to me both in voice and in letter I am so very grateful Jerry. It takes a big heart not to blanche at a friend’s work.

I hope you got miles and miles of work done with Frank yesterday.

It will be lovely to see you in the mountains again. You will be thrilled with my little woodland path; it’s looking soft and green, a modern miracle among the rocks and cement. I plan to do some serious weeding. Nothing like deprivation to make me willing to work at what I procrastinated about.

Love & thanks. Jill.

Wagga Wagga.

Wednesday 28th September 1989.

Dear Jerry,

Here’s a card Mandy sent and the fact of the quinces made me feel certain it was meant to be sent to you by me as it seemed so apt … also what she says about the farm on the back and your kindness I thought you should know as you have been so generous to them as well as to all the others … that happy band you shower …

I have been to the mountain with Fred.[111] I loved it. That should be said first. Second I want to say journeys are strange and important things. It is no accident that Homer sent Odysseus on that trip … people change … maybe I did myself. I saw my friend change so strangely from a mild Aussie of mild manners rather shy, with a glass eye, two sons aged twelve and fourteen to a man who, if he had turned into a wolf, howled at the moon which we watched rise over a hill a bright orange ball sent I felt just as a present for us … I would not have been surprised. We had six children with us and a pair of Louise and Gary’s (he’s a theatre director from Newcastle) … the youngest was two and a half and we all walked eighteen kilometres with back packs up very high paths … snow lay about in hollows and the children had a snow fight and made a small snow man and ran on ahead like dogs and seemed utterly unaffected, the youngest was carried in her father’s pack, by the hard walk and the hill. We stayed in an old hut built in the 20s. I gasped when I saw it. The furniture is all bush handmade furniture … an old chair from plants crossed with hessian on the back and seat and a bath … oh Jerry the bath … I thought of you and asked for a photo and if it comes, I am in the bath fully clothed with the children around on the front verandah where it stands forever … plugless and beautiful. It is of struts with a lot of galvanised iron draped under it and with the ends filled in with iron. A lovely lovely hut with a big fireplace that we burnt all night entirely smokeless thank god. Ah what a trip.

111 Fred Halligan, academic and brother-in-law of Marion Halligan.

I had a lovely letter today from a woman in Hobart replying to my thank you note about the one she sent of Waterlily. She offers me the loan of her boathouse cottage at Battery Point, when I go there in December: birds and wildlife around she says. With or without her. Seems perfectly sent to me for H. (that fish I long to fry) to hop away like two kangaroos with something on their mind to be alone. But many a slip my dear so I am not going to get needy which god knows I have spent my life making the mistake of being and desperation always leads to disaster …

I am off to the dentist for the last time today … I will be more comfortable after this man … such good work and I am grateful I got all that work done.

I send Thomas’ piece in the local paper … if you can understand it you are a clever woman … it is so aptly complicated and unclear all that he says is perplexing and obtuse and strange especially in these political matters. I treasure it as it amuses me and is so exquisitely revealing of him. I don’t need it back that’s not what I meant.

I loved the Jan Morris book. I will talk to you about it someday. I think you will enjoy it … many wise things she has to say and such a difficult life with such a smiling face.

I hope everything is lovely for you. Jill.

P.S. Jerry your second letter that was missing sent from Queensland hasn’t yet come. Also, I’m home, as I said Friday, or if I stay at Glebe, Sat., but Robert will meet the plane and I think will drive me straight home. Love. Jill.

Wagga Wagga.

29th September 1989.

Dear Mandy and Bob,

Thank you for the lovely card Mandy. Because it had quinces on it and they are Jerry’s favourite and mine it seemed particularly apt that I show it to Jerry. Also because it shows how much you enjoyed staying on her farm I thought you wouldn’t mind if she saw it.

I’m glad your show went well in Brisbane too Mandy.

Tomorrow I fly home. Hallelujah … I have liked it here a lot luckily … but oh to be home will be lovely.

I did a reading at the same restaurant during a dinner and sixty people to my amazement came to that. The Dean was M.C. and I think it was a real success.

The Adelaide Advertiser gave Dear You last Saturday a lovely review. That Katharine England is good, not because she liked Waterlily and did this nice thing on Dear You, I hasten to add, but because she actually reads the books, not always done you know, and thinks about the work really fairly and intelligently. She said she was envious and that was honest … it is what happens sometimes and a kind of bitter fury rises in their breasts, the reviewer or the reader sometimes that is, and they say terrible things. I had this pointed out to me by an anthropologist as I have told you over the Mary Rose Liverani review in the Australian.

It was the same woman who wrote the good review for the Sydney Morning Herald who told me this as she had a houseboat once and had a lot of envy as a result from people.

I have been offered, speaking of boathouses, a boat shed/cottage in Hobart in Dec. when I go there to Battery Point, from a reader of both books. I am going to accept it I think. I can have it with her or alone. If I can get up the courage I am going to offer to stay there with that fish I long to fry from Perth as he will be at the conference and we have not met since last March. I am sure one way or another I will pick up the courage … surely.

I am a bit worried I might have hurt Leanne[112] as I wrote rather late when she sent some lovely photos she took especially those in Jerry’s garden and she asked to have another try at the portrait.

112 Leanne Crisp, a Canberra painter who later painted a portrait of Kate Llewellyn for the Portia Geach Memorial Award.

I am not madly keen to do it as it is a odd thing being painted but I do like her so much and do not wish to put the kibosh … is that how you spell it? … on any of her plans or ambitions. I think my letter may not have been very enthusiastic and she might have read between the lines … perhaps I am wrong and she is merely on holidays.

Oh god isn’t it lovely to have so much paper … I do like having an office with paper, glue, pins and stamps all provided … I will miss it. I should just get in a lot of all that at home and not keep on recycling the glad wrap in a manner of speaking.

Well dear hearts, I do hope the holiday was good for you and L. and A. Spring is here in Wagga and no doubt with you and so life should be easier from now on.

Love. Jilly.

P.S. If you see Leanne please tell her I was very thrilled with the photos.

Agra. New Delhi. India.

Wednesday 17th October 1989.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you for having me to stay … Well just as I wrote that six hours ago, Nelson Mandela came out from the hotel where we’d been having lunch—not together I add.

I clapped and he smiled and nodded and tears ran down my face. I’d seen the Taj Mahal in the same few hours. I love India—I think!

Love. Kate.

P.S. Passage to India is a Godsend—it’s exquisitely appropriate. Thanks! Kate.

1990–1992

Leura.

Friday, 10th May 1990.

Dear Jerry,

Your book has come here and I have read much of it. It is truly wonderful. I love your introduction. I had three copies and showed it to Betty O’Connor[113] who really adored it and will buy one. I ordered four more at once!

113 Friend and neighbour and wife of Bill O’Connor.

Now a thrill, your book and my Figs sit side by side in the window of Megalong Books on the top central display box! Next to mine sits Kaffe Fassett’s Figs Address Book! I have ordered one as it seemed meant.

Thank you for your beautiful card! I did, yes, actually think it was Mary at first. Also thank you for having me to stay during my teaching. I’ve got a room at Hugh’s now so will not need to ask again for a while but it was a real solace and retreat for me. I’ve ordered something to thank you but it’s not here ’til June.

And how can I thank you for the rug? It is so beautiful.

The Road Less Travelled is one book I think I heard you speak of. I love it—Hugh lent it to me and it’s been salutary and helpful. I’ve bought my own copy. A wise and loving book full of sense and learning.

Andrew McDonald and Diana are coming up tonight for the weekend so I’ve bought a side of lamb and have a big fire going. It’s ages since I’ve had visitors except Les.[114] That was a good visit and Jack loved it. Les cut wood and played with Jack and we had a barbecue at the swings. All very good for the three of us I think. On his birthday I took them to Bon Ton and we had a strawberry cheesecake and candles and singing under the trees—it was very pretty and touching. Mary says I’ve sent back an angel! He’s in a single bed, sleeping better and has no bottles in the night. It took some doing but I feel gratified it has worked.

114 Mary’s partner at the time and Jack’s father, Leszek Larski, musician from the band Bondi Cigars.

Bill and Betty gave him an old beautiful blue cyclops tricycle from under their house.

(There’s rosella jam at my house, apple jelly and millet porridge.)

Congratulations, thanks and love from Jill.

Glebe, NSW.

23rd May 1990.

Dear Bob and Mandy.

Thank you for the last visit. I wish it hadn’t been so fleeting. But with Perth looming, I felt pressed to get home fast. Hugh in the end didn’t come to stay and I was a bit relieved. His car is playing up. Cars!!

I did a reading at the Harold Park Pub last night and am at Robert’s as a result. It’s raining and I’ll go home tomorrow as he’s just invited me to have a perch (fish) dinner with him. It is so bleak at home now and cold, I agreed with alacrity.

Now, first of all, I hear Bob your work was on ABC television but I didn’t see it. I hope you have a video so I can on my next visit.

Mandy I hope your Melbourne show went well in spite of the gloomy prognosticians we met at the airport returning from Melbourne. I am sure you will have good reviews and buyers.

I am told that two or three Sundays ago I was on the Peter Ross show reading at Harold Park pub but I didn’t see that either.

Mary gave a wonderful dinner for me last night to thank me for having Jack so often. It was just Mary, Les, Jack and me and some good wine. She doesn’t like Robert, understandably, so he is never invited. She is not one to compromise in some areas but she is not narrow or holier-than-thou.

I will go to a booker of flights as Nancy Phelan,[115] a great traveller, told me of one on the train yesterday and I will book a flight to Europe and back very soon. I will send details to you at once so we can get dates and exact meeting place ready.

115 Writer and friend who died in 2008.

Babs Pak Poy will be in Perth when I get there on 3rd June for the residency. I am to stay 9 weeks. Also Ghilly gets back from Russia and sings on 4th and 7th July in Perth so at least I’ll be able to see two friends plus Auckland if he decides to come calling.

John[116] rang last Sunday and said Ghil’s in U.K. and depressed (homesick) but is O.K. and her pregnancy is going well. He meets her there with Stephanie and they go to Russia for a month very soon while she sings Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw with English Opera.

116 Dr John Miller, Ghilly’s husband.

She sings in Canberra next April so I will come and we can all meet together again.

I do a reading at Katoomba Thursday night and then no more public things until Perth. This year is quieter for me. The new book is due out October this year and will be called Stardust I think.

I bought a wonderful navy, full, longish skirt yesterday at Leura. On the way to the train I got a glimpse of myself in a long mirror and I looked like a rat-bag. So I flung off my culottes and stepped into this fabulous garment, removed my purple socks that I’d thought so highly of moments before, pulled on new slate blue stockings and left relieved I hadn’t let anyone see me looking so daft. The cold does odd things to one … warmth becomes so desirable that looks go out the window.

Love to you both. Kate.

Greenmount.[117]

117 Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre.

Thursday 31st May 1990.

Dear Jerry, (I have sent this for the farm too.),

Well, I’ve been here nineteen hours now. There is a big vase of acid yellow wattle on this table and I have borrowed a radio which is playing some Mozart now … no, Haydn’s concerto.

This house is very old and beautiful, run down; austere in most ways, comfortable with few luxuries. I’ve just lit a wood fire in this living room. I got in in the dark last night to find the living room filled with about twenty people sitting on white plastic chairs listening to some execrable poetry. They left after half an hour, at 9 p.m., and I was offered a cup of tea by the young woman who met the plane. But I went to bed and took Ric Throssell’s book about his mother, Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard. I have a small bedroom freshly painted pink and a narrow bed that was once Ric Throssell’s. (It needs a pillow put under the mattress to stop it sinking.) In the morning I read some more, waiting for it to get properly light. Perth is two hours behind Sydney so by 7 am with the magpies calling, it had seemed a long night. I wondered like a governess who had arrived at the castle at night what I would find. A harsh housekeeper rattling her keys and frowning … a flighty, fey, mistress perhaps, unreliable and slightly unhinged. Bush or garden, I wondered that too. I read just then in Chapter Nine called ‘Intimate Strangers’ (which will, I think, aptly enough, describe our relationship, that is K.S.P’s and mine, since she has gone but is plainly here. Rooms she walked through, where she wrote and spent fifty years, hold her like a perfume) … ‘In the stillness of Greenmount, Katharine took up again the manuscript of Intimate Strangers. The early morning bird songs were the only sounds about the house to wake her now, as the pale jade light of dawn lightened the sky behind the hills and the morning star shone in dying brilliance against the last fringe of darkness. Sometimes still the native thrush sang her heartbreaking beautiful song alone in the vast, silent stage of the morning. Katharine knew all the bird songs in the garden at Greenmount: the chestnut breasted warbler, the superb warbler, the yellow rump tit-warbler, the melancholy heart-cry of the pallid cuckoo in spring …’

Hearing these birds and the magpies was a moment where I felt a combination of chill of coincidence or more than coincidence and the pleasure of recognition and a sudden terrible sadness. I don’t know why I was so sad, tears came to my eyes and I blinked them away as I do now thinking about it. Did it show suddenly without giving me time to be stoical just how we all must die and these things continue? But I don’t think it was quite that really, more that it was as if she spoke and showed these things to me, a visitor to this place she loved so passionately.

There is a two-roomed large flat built onto the side of the house and the caretaker Lyn lives there. I crept out to the bathroom and took a shower, noticing sadly there’s no bath, though I read there was one in Katharine’s time, and dressed. Down to the garden I walked. First though I had opened the front door; wooden, heavy, old and locked. It led out on to the most beautiful verandah on stilts looking down into black wattles, a jacaranda in full fern, Cootamundra wattles, I think that is their name, and many other trees standing among wild grass. There are two lemons in fruit I saw as I walked with my teacup, an orange and a grapefruit also fruiting. A vast bougainvillea, purple, also described in Katharine’s work as like stained glass with the light coming through at certain times of the day. It has colonised an immense pine and like a cathedral soars to the sky on the support of the old pine. There is a study built in the garden; it’s wooden with a big stone fireplace and chimney built like those old wrecks of houses one sees so poignantly standing in half deserts outside country towns with a few quince or fig trees or an apple bravely carrying on through hot summers and silence and wind.

This study, I’m told, is for me to work in while I am here. But I can’t imagine I will, it’s so isolated. I like living rooms. Preferably empty ones, or kitchens. Studies look a bit like a cell to me. Collette’s new husband, Monsieur Willie used to lock her in a room and would not let her out until she had written, you know. I’ve always said I will write anywhere. You could throw me into prison, cut off my arms and legs and you will find me in the morning with a pen in my mouth writing on the floor.

I came inside and Lyn got up. I took a walk looking for shops. It is a public holiday here and, even so, I had thought I might find a delicatessen open. Robert thinks it strange or eccentric that I travel with food. But now I see arriving here, it is just as well I did bring a few tins of salmon. I’ve brought my pepper grinder, my cup and a tea strainer. I count myself lucky to find there’s a teapot here. Nothing can be relied on in these circumstances, I have found. I walked for almost two hours but found no shops though two signs pointed to shopping centres. But the road did lead me to a small creek full of arum lilies. I stumbled down the slope and got a bunch with some leaves and thought myself most aptly rewarded. What could be better than this flower that brides in the Thirties carried standing after the ceremony, no before, I think, in photographer’s rooms like white unlit candles, their arms full of these lilies which are supposed to smell of death. They looked like lilies themselves, with their trains and veils draped round their feet in a twist that exactly mirrors the flower’s shape. So armed with lilies, I came home and put them into jugs, one in my bedroom in front of the mirror. No pictures interrupt the walls so the flowers reflected in the mirror are most welcome. Lyn left for the day. Alone I lay in the garden and read. Then I came up onto the verandah and lay on a couch and read of Katharine entertaining on this verandah, many visitors, many famous writers. Sherry and gaiety seem to have been the thing. She was dreadfully poor and gave any money she got away to either reconstructing European villages or for friends to publish their own work or for the rent of halls for Communist meetings. What would she say now of Europe, Gorbachev, Lithuania and a united Germany?

I boiled some rice I brought with me and ate that with some Chinese radish and chilli pickles Robert had bought me in Chinatown.

The light, slowly turning to dusk is now hitting the purple bougainvillea outside the window I can see through Lyn’s flat and, indeed, it is liked stained glass glowing like part of the colours of Rajasthan.

There is a bookcase here, glassed and locked with Katharine’s books laid out on the shelves. But I can’t see a key so I will have to wait until the administrator comes, perhaps, tomorrow, to open it, if she will.

Apart from the garden, the lilies and the verandah, the best thing that has happened is that I was met at the airport by the daughter of the woman who greeted me ‘What’s Thirinah mean?’ I asked her while her mother went to fetch the car. ‘It means the same as Sarah,’ she said, ‘but I can’t say it. I am going to get braces on my teeth soon.’ And I looked and saw that it was true. She had slightly protruding front teeth, slightly separated. She was at the age where the new teeth look too big for the face. Strangely, her mother had the same impediment and it was she who had introduced me to her daughter as Thirina. I thought it was possibly a classical Greek name and it never occurred to me there was something wrong with their speech. Then I noticed that as a result of the long plane trip, I too, had the same trouble and lisped all the way through our conversation. I was very taken with this little girl and if I make no other here I hope to make a friend of her. There we stood, three lispers at an airport not all that troubled by our defect, more bemused than anything.

And now, even through it’s only five o’clock, I must boil some rice and open that can of fish. Don’t talk to me any longer about travelling lightly! Here I go to the narrow bed with as cheerful a heart as I can muster. To tell you the truth, I am almost convinced that on jobs like these, one is somehow supposed to spring fully armed from the earth like a warrior sowed as a tooth in the Golden Fleece. Or otherwise, like a soldier ready for battle in a foreign land, all kitted out, entirely self-sufficient complete with tent. I’ve brought almost everything but the tent and I’m not sorry, either.

Love from Jill.

Greenmount, W.A.

7th June 1990.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

It is beautiful here a lovely old garden. We face west or my bedroom does and looks down over the plain to Perth and then the horizon stretching to South America or Africa. I have been miserable but am getting better but the time looms long.

Most odd set-up here … a big sunny flat, newly built on the side of this old house is let to a caretaker who works at Myers. I have a bedroom and the offer of a study in the garden, Katharine’s studio, when it is painted. This means that all day there are coughs and voices outside my bedroom from strangers visiting the administrator. I am allowed the living room when nobody is here which is usually after 5 p.m. but some evenings there are meetings. They have it all around the wrong way to my mind. The writer should have the separate flat and have privacy. I can’t say this but I will later to the Literature Board who funded this debacle. I am their first interstate writer and I reckon I ought to be the last. It was most strange and hurtful to be left here from Sunday night when I got in till Tuesday morning with no food nor access to shops. It’s callous. I might have starved for all anybody knew. So the feeling from this and the fact that Jack has asthma and Mary has trouble with Les and the thought of the long time ahead meant tears from time to time.

I have found a piece of writing by Katharine on the birth of her child Ric Throssell the diplomat I met in Canberra. He came up to me at an opening and said, ‘I believe you will be sleeping in my bed.’ I drew myself up and said, ‘I think that is very unlikely.’ Then he told me he was Katharine’s son and that his old bed was in this house. I’ll enclose a copy of this writing as it’s quite touching … it’s from the son’s biography of his mother called Weeds and Windflowers: The life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard.

Captain Hugo Throssell, V.C., Katharine’s husband, shot himself in the head here on this lovely old front verandah when his son was eleven and she away travelling in Russia. It is said he did it to get a pension but I think the facts lie elsewhere. Neglect is one word that comes to mind. Not necessarily by Katharine, she had done much to relieve his depression and she had terrible migraines which would have kept on probably if she had not taken her sister’s offer of a free trip with her to Moscow and Paris. It, the suicide, was brought on by the fact that nobody treated depression well then and also sleeplessness brought on by money worries. Hugo dealt in land and the market slumped everywhere. It is easy for me to talk but I think it’s a tragedy that nobody did anything to help him.

Katharine had left a manuscript here in her study that she had built with the proceeds of Coonardoo winning the Bulletin’s novel contest. She built also the stone verandah now covered in ivy. In the manuscript there was a description of a marriage that was dry and ending and the man shot himself and she thought that Hugo might have read it and taken it to heart. As you would, wouldn’t you. So she altered the end when it got published and ruined the book or harmed it in doing so.

I had dinner with dear Babs Pak Poy at the Hyatt two nights ago as Virginia her daughter works there. (Ginny and Mary are best friends and as little girls used to get up and start chasing each other. Mary’s white hair in their hairbrush Babs said always looked like a silk worm’s). This was a great treat, as I needed friends and those dear faces after all the austerity and strangers’ faces.

The administrator here, Barbara Brandt, is about forty and arrives at work with cigarettes and a room vaporiser for her office with her husband, an out of work nice American who actually bothered to show me where the shops were who sits most of the day on the verandah or chops wood for the fire or does dishes. She is an asthmatic and the smoke rolls in under my door so I have a blanket there to stop it, with a naked light bulb the only light, the bed which dips in the centre like a hammock, no radio, nothing could contrast more sharply with the luxury of the office with the latest technology abundantly supplied. I wonder that the Government doesn’t pay for the administrator’s cigarettes, they pay for everything else. I expect that is why they have nothing left for the writer in residence … I think that one day the Literature Board is going to lose a writer on one of these jaunts, they will simply top themselves in loneliness, neglect and desperation. When I described briefly the scene here, Eileen Stephens from the Board said on the phone, ‘Oh we suspected as much Kate.’ In other words, they knowingly threw me to the wolves.

The climate is wonderful. Most days are 21 degrees with soft rain in the evenings. There are pink flowering gum flowers in the kitchen that I gathered yesterday on a walk to Sir John Forest National Park about two k. up the hill from here. I miss you.

Love to you both, Kate.

Greenmount.

Wednesday, 11th June 1990.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for your phone call yesterday. I was so glad to hear from you. Thank you too for being so kind to Mary. What can I say about the situation? I said it was not going to worry me and I don’t see just what I can do at the moment. But of course I am appalled to find her without her own home, a baby and only a tiny job. But I have faith things will improve as she is well and young … I thought of getting a flat in Sydney on my return and letting my own house. But I am not sure that will be of much use … I mean that she could move in with me. She has the use of my home now and she could flee there … but she would need to come down to work on Friday and Saturday and place Jack in the hands of somebody else for that period of time … But I think she won’t do that, as she will be too lonely at my home. But if one does actually have a place to go, one is not without some support, and of course, she has your kindness and great offer and Skye too. But do not think I did not appreciate your offer to have her on the farm … where you have the need for peace and to give that up is really wonderful of you … and then again in your own home … to offer to have a girl and her baby there is marvellous too …

I have lost my voice. It is very strange and not really a bother as there is nothing to say here anyway except to the people around, the painters, the administrator and the caretaker and those things are merely the daily ‘hello’ and ‘I have a phone message for you’ …

But it is very Jungian to be like this. As I felt I could not say what I thought here and how appalled I was at the treatment I have had and the situation, I went ahead and became silent …

Reading Katharine S.P. many remarkable things there too that Jung would have something to say about … first of all, her own father shot himself … then her lover in Europe (who was wealthy and took her around Paris in lavish style) threatened to kill himself if she left and held her in fear for a long time over this. Then her husband shot himself. As you know he did this while she was away in Russia in the beloved land of the revolution and how that revolution led to death and disaster … Next her son took his bride there and she, too, died. She died of polyneuritis within months of arrival.

I am going for a long walk today so will post this at the post office in Midland if I can get there … a lovely day again … such mild weather, thank God for it!

I am trying to join the library … was turned away first time even though I was taking classes two mornings a week and had a room of my own there. I was told I was not able to join, as my nearest library to this place where I am staying was not that one … I said nothing but turned away defeated by one more bit of silliness …

Soon the study should be ready for me to use. The painters have been there two days but have begun on the office here now. This is outside my room so I will go out, as I said, now. They say, though, that later today they will go and finish the study. This weekend there are all day workshops in the house so I will be glad for the study to be ready.

I heard by chance on the radio this morning that Thomas Hardy novels are those one can lose oneself in. I am going to try to get several as I have only read two and use them for just such a purpose.

We went to a winery for lunch … rather like the bistro by the river in Adelaide and sat and watched huge gums toss in the wind and rain with a small river, the Helena, below and a tiny boat, a paddle steamer I think, to bring passengers up to the restaurant … things are very gauche here Jerry, in my view so far. It is a limited view, I admit, but style is not plentiful …

I do hope your book is going very well and that you have a wonderful time in Queensland. Please give my love to dear Julie and to Anton.[118]

118 Caretakers on Jerry’s organic, rare tropical fruit orchard at Elanora, Queensland.

Many happy returns of your 41st wedding anniversary and congratulations to you and to Bob.

Love. Jill

Greenmount,

24th June 1990.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

First of all, the good news. I have resigned … I have said I will serve out the first part of my term i.e. 6 weeks and leave after that. I will go home 14th July. Yippee … I will see Mary and Jack and Thomas for a few days … then I will head off to Q. to the farm …

I absolutely have to finish this book Laughter … the last date for poems to be in is end of July for October release. I have done four or five so far … but need more … about 50 or so … ha ha. Fat chance … so the book will be a bit thin but I think it will come out Oct. come what may (God willing says she hastily).

I resigned because I spent the first 9 days on my bed crying each afternoon. Nothing had been done that could be left undone in relation to my arrival or this residency. I see now I didn’t change my clothes for 9 days … so I think that shows a kind of depression … (I did change my under things …)

The students are getting better … (at the library where I teach or try to four hours a week) life looks quite up down there now and new students come, some of whom have the luck of education so it is easy there but hectic as I don’t waste a minute … no breaks just hell for leather. A new student came today aged 89, on a frame, (her daughter brings her) … she has a diary she wrote 40 years ago on the goldfields of Kalgoorlie and will bring it to read bits to us tomorrow … Photos too, so I think she will be, of them all, the one who gets a book published! She is vacant looking but a fine brain still working away in there, thank God.

Her daughter aged about 70 calls her ‘Mother’ … ‘I have come along with Mother’ she said …

Afghan rug over her arm and a cushion for Mother under an elbow … what a pair …

I still almost three weeks into this residency haven’t seen any members of the board who run this place. Their indifference is impressive.

I wrote to the Lit. Board again and told them of this and the project officer, Katherine Murphy, is coming over next Tuesday and we are to have dinner. She says the Board view this behaviour by these people as appalling … and another officer there told me opening my letter with Katherine M. that it confirmed their worst fears about the place … so it seems I was thrown to the wolves.

Lovely sunny days and cool nights … beautiful tall flowering gums everywhere … Silver Princess (like a weeping willow with pink flowers, a native gum here) that Robert has one of (in a tall straight version) and that he makes me bow to three times as I pass … these abound here and I am mad on them.

There are consolations you see … The study in the garden is now painted and I can go there … I have a bed and doona there into which I slip most afternoons with a book of American new short stories … Barbara, the administrator here, though, calls like a fishwife ‘Kate!’ … at the top of her lungs for the most trivial things and up I get for no purpose … She thinks privacy is what people have in the grave and would rather not have ever …

All this has been a real lesson to me. I see now that there is almost no limit to what a dullard with a computer can achieve. Here, they have a wonderful ability to write appealing and impressive grant applications on their computer … their skill in this is only matched by their ability to waste the money then granted … Austerity is no stranger to me nor does it have an unfriendly face … but I think a few creature comforts were my right. The meanest motel would have a window blind, and a heater, and a radio … the most slovenly country pub would have bedclothes and offer some food perhaps …

I am going to enclose a few poems I have done recently … just to show you all is not, I hope, lost … and I am still at it … as they say …

Robert very kindly writes every second day and says he is fretting about me. Good I say to that … and amen too.

Here you know, I get the oddest questions … I can hardly think of a reply. Today a woman asked me in class (with a degree from a local University) … What is the difference between prose and the short story? I stared bewildered for a bit. I said, ‘It is itself’ … a Zen reply if ever there was one. I felt like saying ‘as a table has a flat surface so a story has prose … it can’t be itself without it.’ But, flummoxed, I said that a meal has food and can’t be a meal without it, so the story has prose. But what is the difference?’ she asked. ‘A story is prose’ I said … and showed her prose … in several forms …

Next a woman wrote saying she couldn’t come to workshops but wanted to publish 25 copies of her grandfather’s autobiography and some letters and photos. Should the photos have captions? … also … should the photos be in with the letters or separately? … should the page be big or small? … How would I know for God’s sake? Should she send it to the publishers … (wait for it) … in a shoebox? At this I began to think somebody from here or a friend … (do I have any here?) was pulling my leg … But I think it is all genuine. How will I answer, exactly, is beyond me … I feel like saying there have been some remarkable illustrations of the efficacy of the shoebox method with publishers … Confederacy of Dunces being among them (no pun) but it is probably a wiser thing to get a big envelope at the post office … or take it yourself, in a folder perhaps … why can’t people think of these things? They want to know if you take a basket to the shop? … just ask me, I have an opinion on that too … Ms know all …

Basically I just wish they’d all leave me alone.

But the grave fixes that and grants it.

I have bought a side of mutton as some people are coming to dinner Friday night and they are those two couples who have kindly asked me to their homes. I plan a curry you see … but on Sat. the centre is hosting a lunch for me to meet local writers … (my idea I am afraid as I felt I never would if I just let things go on in their maudlin state) … I will make the curry for that too … But I am buying a kilo of smoked salmon that I saw today for the guests tomorrow night … this is my thanks to them who acted when others who might do nothing … Philip Searle of Chez Oasis or is it Oz? did a big platter of it at the food symposium in Adelaide after Writers’ Week in March this year … he was clapped as he brought it from his van at a public Loaves and Fishes lunch … Gay Bilson and all the food people were there … he had with it a sour cream and horseradish mixed cold sauce and piles of fresh sourdough bread … One took a lump of bread … a hunk … and put the salmon on and slathered over the sauce … I will never forget it as all the flavours were so perfect together … excuse me I think I just have to rush down now to the shops 4 kilometres away and get a bit to eat immediately or I will faint dead away.

I’ve lost the key to this house … seems very Freudian to me … it looks like the key to Wuthering Heights. It’s huge, heavy, and I put two paper clips on the end to help it float up in my handbag.

People here speak a little bit differently I notice. Some of them do … They say ‘end’ for ‘and’ and ‘Merrion’ for ‘Marion’ so I concentrate at times to not make mistakes … when I listen.

I have just finished reading Coonardoo … All Katharine’s, no not all first editions, some though, are here in a glass fronted bookcase. A strange book, a cross between Barbara Cartland, Zane Grey and Germaine Greer. But ahead of its time by miles I think and quite revolutionary.

Here in the streets of the suburb nearby where I shop there are many Aboriginals in the parks with paper bags or flagons and bottles and lurching in terrible scenes. Among them run fair-haired children with honey coloured skin which according to Coonardoo gets darker as the children grow up. It looks so grim and horrible and a real illustration of part of a culture just being exterminated by another culture with the alcohol they have brought to these shores. But the picnic atmosphere looks so much better under the trees than sitting indoors in the cold library over radiators as I do a few minutes after or a few minutes before.

Enough of this pious clap trap … I haven’t got any answers at all but just watch in a startled way as I suppose most people do who aren’t there in the park with them.

I have been given eggs from a friend’s chooks so it is a real treat to have boiled eggs almost daily. Can I really tell the difference? … I think I can but then I used to think I could tell the difference between real whisky and now I think this of gin but I am not certain I really can.

I am sorry this letter has gone on a bit too long … take it in two or three snatches … why should I give advice … I mean I don’t expect you to read it all at one sitting or even all at all …

It was so good to have a talk. Love from Kate.

Greenmount, W.A.

27th June 1990.

Dear Jerry,

When I got in last night from dinner with Katherine Murphy from The Literature Board your letter was waiting in the box. I was so glad to have it and sat down by the dead fire and read it twice with a lot of smiles and pleasure.

The farm sounds just wonderful. There is nothing like planting trees for joy and long satisfaction … and now all this fruit is beginning for you …

I leave here 13th July, Friday, that is, Hugh’s 28th birthday. I will stay overnight in Adelaide at brother Peter’s and visit my mother then come home Sat. 14th. So I will ring you after that.

I am boiling yet another free range couple of eggs for breakfast … and sitting in the living room with Barbara the co-ordinator rushing around at only 8.30 a.m. so as you see there is no privacy to be had … except most rarely, and that not at all guaranteed …

Yesterday Nick came here with wine and chocolates … lots of smiles … I put a note on the door that the place was unattended and closed till 6 p.m. (which was true as both women here B. and Lyn were off at work elsewhere that day for once …)

I wonder what we can do to bring up baby Jack to be a different sort of man … these men have had this done to them … they were not born the way they are … I am certain of that. But to see boys kicking and pushing each other in their grey jumpers in any playground gives one pause. The girls are not doing this … and why not? … I don’t really know as certainly tempers flare and passions are there in those girls … May be a kick is no worse than a hidden bitter fury gone underground.

No, I am not advocating kicking though …

There was a lunch given here for me on Saturday and about thirty people came. The house was full of flowers and I lit a big fire and I felt Katharine S.P. herself would have liked it all very much. But I see I have no line in small chat. I just walked around feeling bewildered, responsible and incapable. When Lyn, the kind caretaker, bright-eyed tells me in the morning about her cat and its tricks and habits … I just glass over … I am only interested in her cat if it has three eyes.

Imagine Cliff[119] with an $80,000 dollar car … is it possible to spend so much money … is it possible to have so much? Irene invited to marriage! I am astonished, but if she could be happy with Cliff and he with her, why not? She thinks highly of him and teases him a lot in a sexual way and flirts so there is some spark there … but maybe not really sexual enough to keep the fire going … but money does help these matters quite often …

119 Jerry’s brother Cliff Douglas.

I am in my dressing gown and now somebody is coming in the front door … I am becoming inured to this … rebellious too, I suppose, so the dressing gown is part of my passive protest … perhaps. I think a white rhinoceros in any zoo has more privacy as at least the keepers and the public go home at 6 p.m. and there is peace till morning.

But the day here again is sunny, bright and delightful … blue skies daily and such gums I am speechless with admiration. The M. Preston type in one case with leaves coming out from the branch with nuts nestling rich and large on the branch too and all a silver grey round leaf … do you know what I mean?

Banksia of a bright orange kind all along the railway lines … and much Geraldton wax in great profusion … all quite lovely and randomly done … it could be made much more of … it looks as if a bit was put in and it grew and multiplied but done in great swathes would be even more brilliant.

I am enclosing a letter which you should only read if you are in the mood and have time and energy … there is nothing in it of great importance … I am just defeated at present by my wish to write to my friends … I copied this but do not think I will make a habit of this Jerry … As always, your letter showed me many things and taught me things too … made me smile and was a great pleasure to have.

Many thanks. Love, Jill.

Elanora. Queensland.

12th July 1990.

Dear Jenny and Philip,

You are both often in my thoughts. I’m here three weeks to get over a cold and to begin Bananas my new try at prose and to write some poems I hope! I felt I’d not be well ’til I got warm and now I am both. This paper in one sheet beautifully wrapped, was given to me two days ago from the Sheraton Mirage Evelyn and Crabtree shop by a friend. I tell you this so you will see that I chose to send it to you after some thought.

Daily I let the hens, bantams, turkeys and geese and ducks out and if I needed conversation in the first week here they spoke back. Now Jerry is with me and the butcher bird ‘Merle’ in French sings its heart out daily on the white verandah railing while two orange and green lorikeets eat from a dish of sugared bread.

From a secondhand bookshop in Brisbane, Jerry’s given me a deluxe and I mean deluxe edition of the collected stories of Flannery O’Connor. What a gift. Tears came to my eyes.

She had the peacock as a motif through her work and here, when I arrived, a dead one lay in a box in the bathroom where it’d been ailing (they’re awfully fragile). Julie, the caretaker, picked it up and held it under her arm like a bouquet while she spoke about the death of animals all of which she seems to understand in a profound way. Such things!

Love to you both.

Kate

Leura.

Friday, 5th October 1990.

Dear Jerry,

I hope London and your family are a pleasure to you and the new baby Jake![120]

120 Jerry’s grandson.

Perfumed air wafts in my drive now as Spring is fully here and flowering trees galore burst like pale feathers all over town. I bought white cosmos plants but lost them in a shop in Mosman and am trying for more. You taught me among a million other things about cosmos. A queer name.

On Sunday Peter Sainsbury[121] called as he does from time to time and had afternoon tea. He offered to call next day (holiday Monday) and cut the front pines to let in light. A ton of branches fell. Roses now see sun and must be blinking with astonishment!

121 Local resident and curator.

My new book will be called Departures or Transports I think (prose). My goodness am I going to have beautiful covers now Jerry! Niffy is already planning them and will do the backs as well so I don’t have these schizophrenic backs any longer. She has invited me to spend Xmas with them and Mary too. I heard you tried to phone me. I will try to call you before I leave and will call Margaretta too if I can. My mother is very well—the best in two years thank God!

Jerry, in 1992 the Tate will have a Matisse show from the Hermitage. Let us make a date to try to go. I’ve just finished judging the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Prize—3,000 children! Anton[122] rang, twelve goslings out and many more due two weeks ago!

122 Caretaker on Jerry’s farm, Julie’s husband.

Utter silence from Robert and I rejoice in my new strength, peace and energy.

9 Oct. At your house to get your address—all is clean and peaceful.

Love, Jill. X

P.S. Tues. 9th Oct. I leave Sydney Fri. 12th for nine days in Delhi—21st Oct. Paris then 1st Nov. Rome as I said. J

Leura.

5th December 1990.

Dearest Bob and Mandy,

Thank you for the long call Bob. I was so glad to talk to you. Jack is here and I’ve sent him off to get my glasses. I have your coat cleaned; Mandy … is my blue jacket with you? Don’t worry if it isn’t.

I am writing in haste, as it is hard to get time to do anything with Jack except daily tasks. I am finishing correcting the mss[123] … from Tuscany and hope to send you a copy today all being well … just for you to see the gist of it and to check there’s naught to hurt or harm. Also to show you what I am up to and the tone of it. Nick Hudson is very very pleased he said to hear of it. He hasn’t seen it. I have to send this to Tim and then type the Rome bit that was done in handwriting but that will come in a few days.

123 Angels and Dark Madonnas: Travels in India and Italy (1991).

It is to be called Angels … and will be dedicated to my neighbours Betty and Bill O’Connor who are marvelously good to me. They pay bills for me if I am away and so on … Bill is currently painting my hallway as the carpet left marks on the boards edging … can’t recall the name of them … my bike over the years has marked the walls too. It all looks rather shabby I thought when I got home. So small too in contrast to Rome.

The garden is lush and green and very (much) bigger … amazing growth after two years of solid rain and now such heat.

Hugh is in London and I hope he loves the trip. He is driving. Mary is moving to the beach … she rang yesterday and I talked gently to her about getting clean air for this child and herself. They are never well … In Poland the pollution is so bad the people are ill and asthmatic by the thousand and must go down salt mines for clean damp air. It heals them. What a world we are living in.

The baby[124] has no food tinned, nor salted, nor sugared and so on, yet drinks filthy air daily … He sleeps 15 hours a day here so I am lucky.

124 Jack Llewellyn.

I have written seven poems the first night home at Jerry’s. Angels is one and it will give the title to the book. When I can type it out I will send it as it will explain the title and so on and will be in the book.

I go to Tahiti to finish the book in June. I should try for Yaddo near New York I suppose rather than the Rome one … it would be so much easier. But those are long-term plans and my first sights are to get this book done.

I could actually do the Canning Stock Route after all … Maybe I still will or definitely try for next year … I mean 92. We could all do it this way if we had time and money. The thing is it is included in a top trip done by an expert new company I found … great food, four w. drive and so on. 23 days of deserts and so on and not all Canning Route … but costs are rather high … but not as high as if I hired the cars and men myself of course … three thousand dollars and a few hundred … But I feel it will be a hard trip for me … it goes once a year and leaves 1st June. Just when I could go … what a coincidence …

I hope Hudsons will typeset the mss. And we will proof it and then I will send them the rest fast from Tahiti … more of that later and then come home, proof it and it can go to press … all this needs careful planning and an iron will … I can’t tell you how hard it is to get people to do as one wishes and explain on and on and they still can get wires crossed … But that is true in all lives … but this one runs hard on a schedule that I have to make work by will power … ‘Tell me about it’ I can hear you both mutter … I know your own lives run on such things too … of course.

Well, the tale of doing the stock route … I know you know some of this … but I feel not having a shower daily makes the thing seem too hard … in my present frame of mind … Tahiti looks easier. Chez Pauline a little hotel on Morea is cheap and has no electricity Niffy says and there I could sit and write and then see the women’s dance festival on the main island I think … and come home.

Now the matter of the launch of Figs[125] … a perfect example of not being on the spot to urge the process on … It is delayed and now might be done possibly really will be in Jan. Writer’s Week in Sydney. Hudsons are vague about it … Sam[126] has gone to a conference in Canberra … so I speak to Nick who has some queer negativity to me … but is marvellously positive about my work … in a paradoxical way … I think it is a psychological thing in him … a pattern I haven’t yet quite worked out. I provoke it … But he says clear clever things about my work that I appreciate and are not simply flattery but insights that are just true but show he is very clever and experienced … Sounds like self flattery … let me give an example … he said I don’t really need to go to a wild place to write like a travel writer might … where I am doesn’t matter. I can make the train trip down the mountain interesting. Now with modesty I think that is not untrue. But sounds vain. But any artist has to know in their heart when someone says something positive that it might be true … sometimes it simply is wide-eyed news and one needs to think it over … sometimes it is simply oily and not meant at all and not accurate … one can mainly tell … not always … but often. You know this yourselves.

125 A book of poems by Kate Llewellyn published in 1990.

126 Sam Hudson.

What a great trip[127] … more than those words … we had … memorable in marvellous ways … hard to speak of … such beauty and lavishness and grand good fortune … never to be forgotten … maybe we can even try to repeat it … but is that asking for too much like greedy unsatisfied earthlings? …

127 A month in Tuscany and Rome.

Must go to post office and Cheryl Anne Florist who do photocopying … and then with luck will send the mss … to you and in time and to Ghilly and John. They are OK but Donna has digestive troubles and so not so easy as Stephie[128] but is getting better … not really serious … just not giving parents a lot of sleep … we know this tale … Thank you for a wonderful trip and for all the work you did organising it and driving and all the rest. I will send a cheque for the photos soon.

128 Donna and Stephie are Ghilly and John’s daughters.

P.S. Have I got a book for you! … Raymond Carver has his selected poems out with Picador … Greater than this there is none …

Speaking of this, Peter Charlton from the Courier Mail has actually sent two new hardbacks to review … one Garcia Gabriel Marquez … it is astounding to me … I owe him eight or more … it is a perfect illustration that if you ignore people and do not fulfill promises or contracts they will respect you and court you …

I haven’t sent a letter since the card of the sick man on the fresco that I sent from Italy as I told you. Please forgive me if a little of this letter is repeated news …

I hope your work goes well. And the judging is good and now over, Bob!

Love. Kate Jilly XX

Love to Laura and Alexander.

P.S. As you see (but am seldom much different really) I am still rather incoherent with jet lag—forgive this—but I am now well!

Leura.

30th January 1991.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you very much for the launch of Figs. It was remarked, Philip, by several people, Jerry Rogers among them, it was an act of enormous courage for you to launch the book. I liked what you said so much and re-read the poems yesterday and saw things you spoke of that I didn’t know about. It was hot and crowded and that made it difficult for you and you bore that gracefully.

Jenny, you read the poems with such a true touch it was a real pleasure to hear you and as I said it’s often not so—your sensitivity is simply enormous!

Another time we will have dinner though I know it was not easy for you to come to Mosman then. We had a metre wide Trobriand Island black platter of three dozen figs open like hearts with prosciutto laid in swathes on one side and it looked so pretty and it was Niffy, who did the cover, who did that of course and who gave the party. It got cooler and we stood on the back balcony for flummery later and got the breeze.

We should’ve taken a photo at the launch of you two and Andrew and Sam and myself! Blow it!

My grandson Jack (our Jack) is here beside me with his doll’s pram, which was once his great uncle’s! Mary has a job and was to move to South Australia and my heart felt broken at that news. So now God saved me that pain as she’s at a publisher’s and has real money now and is moving house while I have Jack. I’ve been shaken to my roots by the threatened loss and the toll with teaching and weird talks in towns is showing. Yesterday I found I was to do a week’s residence in Canberra in March when I was to be on Jerry’s farm. Curses!—but I am glad of the money in hard times!

I am so grateful to you both for all you did last Thursday!

Love from Kate.

Elanora, Queensland.

Friday, 22nd February 1991.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

It is so beautiful here; green parrots among red tropical flowers … all the tropical clichés that I never tire of. Geese on the dam. They chase me at night when I pen them, ungrateful devils … green hills with dark clouds on them and damp hot air here at the house with sudden rain storms and then sun, sun, sun … it is so fecund, green and lush. The cat’s had kittens and hidden them, thank God, as I am not keen on cats, though I tell few, as that makes one slide down in their estimation often … Why? I suppose they love them and think others hard who do not, or, worse, cruel. I’d rather hug a snake.

For four days before this I’ve been in Cairns at a two-day workshop. I stayed in a sort of Somerset Maugham bungalow that I loved. Here peacocks call half the night yet I am in such a good mood I barely resent it … I think their call is hideous though … A fox got a white drake and a white rooster last night … the pen door was ajar when I went down this morning. Something had knocked aside the log and got in. Maybe a dog. I dressed the drake at once as it was dead but unharmed and so it is now sitting on a plate in the fridge. Call me hard if you like … I am not sentimental where poultry are concerned. Alive, I quite like them, dead, I eat them.

I do hope both of you are fine … I saw Noel Rowe at Sydney University in the Holme Building about three weeks ago as I was rushing to teach a class for the summer school. I ran to him and had a talk, as I was happy to see him. He is teaching my dear neighbours the O’Connors (who are seventy) at Aquinas in a class on ‘outsiders’ for the Church. They love him. I have dedicated Angels[129] to these two as they are quite saintly … kind and sweet-natured and good, good, good to me … very Catholic, very dutiful and yet what they do for me seems joyfully done … I am often away and they care for my house and Bill does my garden, too … They are beyond gold.

129 Angels and Dark Madonnas: Travels in India and Italy (1991).

I had Andrew Field and his wife Meg up for lunch here on Sat. I had written him a fan letter about his Nabokov biography and his Djuna Barnes … I sent it to Griffith N.S.W. as I thought that was where he teaches but it got him here in Queensland at Griffith University. He wrote back and suggested we have lunch when I next come to the farm. He knew of my work … I think Meg might have read something … anyway I was agog as I admire his Nabokov enormously … Down they came … he’d rung before and made a time … so I was not pursuing him, I’d merely told him the dates I’d be on this farm and given him the number. He may well, they, may well wish they had not come. I went to a lot of preparation thinking they were elderly and made a roast leg of lamb and a roast chicken and old fashioned lemon pudding and cleaned the house, etc.

Out of a fast low slung racing car stepped she in sequinned jeans, at forty … or if so recently. I thought it some mistake surely and they were lost and at the wrong place and my visitors due any moment. But no, it was they … and I was whom they meant to meet.

They sat at lunch for six hours why I cannot think … I got drunk and am mortified and horrified. How they must wish they had not come … Maybe, they think of me as some mad old woman who drinks herself insensible nightly. As they were leaving, I said to myself ‘What I am saying is incomprehensible to me … how can they possibly decipher it?’ Yet, I seemed unable to stop or even get this idea over to them or even apologise. So I cheerfully waved them off and God knows what they said as they drove fast home.

Figs got an OK review in last weekend’s the Sydney Morning Herald. Jerry rang and told me and I saw it … could be worse, could be better, too … I wanted her to say something about the blooming writing for God’s sake! … not just the topic.

Well, I hope to see you when I get back from Canberra and begin the teaching autumn term at Continuing Education at Sydney University. I am desperate for something to read … reduced to Larousse Dictionary of Culinary Art or some such title … how they kill small birds in France and how they prepare them and other such useless, morbid recipes … But sometimes I learn a new term … what good is it though?

I have read Bruce Chatwin’s What Am I Doing Here? … Sure a sad, ironic title as he is not here any longer. He was dying of some obscure Chinese fungus … when he did it I think … Maybe he is in heaven asking the same question … I hope so.

My love to you both.

Love from Kate.

Woonona.

Wednesday 22nd April 1991.

Dear Jerry,

This letter is not going to get to the farm on time, I fear. Excuse the writing—I do hope it’s legible!

Sheridan’s book is most prominently in the window of Megalong Books and your knitting one,[130] also prominently in The Australian National Gallery, as I said in the card I sent.

130 The Art of Knitting.

Don’t go to a bookshop—I’ve got a book for you so don’t buy til you get it! I’ve 3 cubic metres of wood arriving so am clearing out under the house. Bill’s[131] here doing new shelves & a roof repair of a big leak to prepare for winter.

131 Bill O’Connor.

The G.P. about to give me a flu injection finds I have asthma—I’d thought it possible only a one-off job at Clare—and only 360 degrees of puff when I ought to have 460! So, I’ve got a new inhaler that gives me a headache but I will persevere—it may describe to me why I have such lassitude (laziness) over the years. He says I’ve got used to not being able to breathe and so don’t notice. I pray for a new burst of energy. Then I’ll paint my own roof!

I am thinking of attempting to do a theatre piece on the walk we did on Sunday—Sarah,[132] Betty, Bill, Odile[133] and an ex nun (a teacher) and her daughter, a ballerina, like Sarah. I thought of songs for a baritone—Bill—dance for the two girls, a story/commentary for Betty—not Betty herself, or even the girls, you understand, but people, artists, to represent them—and the nun to teach the child about the beauty and care needed of the world. Does it sound lovely or mad? All these people would be on a journey—walk—you see, and describe it in their own way.

132 Bill and Betty’s daughter.

133 Sarah’s daughter (and therefore Bill and Betty’s granddaughter).

Love from Jill.

Leura.

1st June 1991.

Dear Ghilly and John,

Thank you for the telephone call John. I am so glad you’re not too mad at me for my shameful behaviour. I saw today a photo of you Gils, in the paper for Rigoletto and was thrilled to see it. You have made it I’d say when you get your photo there for the face of an opera … I am sorry I can’t see you in this one.

Jack is with me as I go to Cairns Monday for the month and I felt it’d be a long time to stay away from him. He is asleep at the moment as it’s 4.30 p.m. and he has a big sleep after lunch as a rule. Thank God I say.

It is five degrees here in the morning when I get up now.

I am waiting for Jerry to arrive as she is looking at places for shots for her next three books. The one on The Art of Knitting (that is it’s title) has done well … you saw it at Mandy’s show … a launch in Adelaide at David Jones on 10th June. The Melbourne one was very successful … thousands of people through the gallery …

Two weeks ago we drove down after she’d had a weekend here. We went via Honeysuckle Cottage near Richmond and saw an old shed for a shot for the next European paintings made into knits book … also we got old roses there too. I needed one for my front step a grand rose to bloom a lot and be beautiful and pale and perfumed—you know just everything or rather very, very, very as it seemed on the name tag … very floriferous, very scented, very repeat flowering, very cupped, very hardy, very fast growing … etc. Not sure I have got the right one though, damn …

I have just finished Angels’ corrections of proofs—the second lot and final lot … after this it is too late to save … I had two pages to do about a great restaurant and could not make myself get to it … I just had a complete slump … this teaching stuff ended last Tuesday, thank God. I stayed at Hugh’s for the last three weeks which has been good for me … we had a terrific talk and some smaller ones. I still need, though, to have a decent talk to Mary but she is always too busy. Has been for the last 8 years … oh well.

I had heaps I needed to say to you and now I can’t think of it.

Is it true my letter of apology did not come to Tyrrell Street? I put in a Ninga Ninga poem and one called ‘Stomach’ … I think … ‘Boots’ too maybe … I have done only one poem for weeks, ‘Seersucker’ … I will send this with this letter.

You must think me even ruder for not writing to apologise for Anzac Day … maybe though it did come …

I had Jacqui Kent my editor up last weekend and Suzanne Falkiner a travel writer and novelist whom I like a lot. Suzanne wrote a blurb for Angels, for the Hudsons, unbeknown to me. I like what she wrote.

I have a new floor in the back sun room … all wooden and shining … it’s a big improvement … no curtains too, so lots of light and sun …

I judged the Eleanor Dark Foundation poetry for the residencies advertised for her old home Varuna at Katoomba last week. Imagine my surprise and horror when I opened one all done up to the nines (over-kill plus, plus) to find a friend had written a tale about me of such truly gory horror I blanched. Chris Mansell, Robert’s old girlfriend did it. Told a tale of a balcony at the beach where a woman with long red nails gave lunches where the only topics allowed were money and sex. She only served offal and gado gado … she never ate but tore into the ox tongue with her long red nails after guests had left … horrible and all the food is exactly as I did serve long ago on that balcony at the beach when I had long red nails. Luckily, my ethics were not tested because her story was of the incoherent, meaningless style … but they masqueraded under the aegis of the experimental … they were that alright … and only showed too well, much more was needed if anything was to ever come of this mishmash … enough! … but I have been shaken … I have made this woman hate me to this extent …

I am to choose the poems for my Selected Poems due out March in Adelaide Writers’ Week when I am in Cairns. I was told this by my agent last week on Tuesday when we had lunch … I have four reviews to do too so it will be a while before I start to try to do the stories …

I hope your move goes as well and easily as possible. I hope Stephie’s cold is better …

Love to the four of you.

Kate.

C/- Miss Lily’s Tropical Guest House,

29 Sandwich Road,

Kamerunga. Cairns, Queensland.

Wednesday, 21st June 1991.

Dear Jerry,

I just wrote that and in came my breakfast, a gold orchid, fresh orange juice—don’t slug it down—sip sip! Paw paw and bananas with lime. Also tea. So you see I am kindly treated and well cared for here. I hope you can read this writing—it is my best!

The palms net the sky, it’s bathers all day and shorts—walks to waterfalls and rainforest twenty minutes away—three other guests—

a French pair and a young man—we take it in turns to cook at night. I did cheese and tomato soufflé and treacle steamed pudding at the owner’s request but the poor French pair thought little of it—didn’t care for it though the soufflé—and with a paper collar, yes!—was 6" or 8", maybe high. I thought it a triumph. And I used Jane Grigson’s recipe. I am very circumspect here—can’t afford a mishap.

And you? I hope you are thriving. Your new books, too and your garden. I love the idea of that book of children’s knits. It will sell even higher than the others, I predict. Who doesn’t want to knit something beautiful for a child?

A lovely letter from Patsy came here saying your book was admired and even Tucker read it. She says my mother is still on Cloud Nine and I am not to worry as she wants for naught.

I’ve written four poems and one story and three reviews so far. Never, except after your farm have I been so well. I’ve extended the stay ’til 22nd July & hope to God I don’t regret it. Denise, my host, who brought me up here in February has offered to have me one week when the guesthouse is full. Then I’ll return here.

I am swimming and try to do real laps and real swimming daily. Surely my legs must improve in strength, if not beauty.

Denise and I are to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant in town today—I’ve been on the wagon for two and a half weeks now and it’s great—I even refuse a drink here at dinner each night which is something I had not thought likely.

Niffy rang—she’s off with Ant to San Francisco for three weeks and she will do the cover for my selected poems when she returns. I have to choose the poems for it for first week in July and wish you were here to advise me. Alright.

No word from my children. For Bloom’s Day I began to read Molly Bloom’s soliloquy and found it ravishing. I’ve never attempted Ulysses believing it beyond me. Now why should it be? Shows no faith in my own mind, an attitude I deplore. So on I went—it’s taken five days and I’m still on it. It’s exuberant and taxing and slow work and I love it. So now I feel I’ll read the whole book when I get to the end of Molly. Belinda Maddox’s biography of Nora was so marvellous as you know.

What of Gilly? Did you see Rigoletto? I wonder what reviews she and it got. I wrote twice to John and Gilly and wait to hear. She will sing Violetta in Traviata at The Adelaide Festival next year in the Opera in the Park. Hooray.

I’m reading Penelope Lively, V.S. Pritchett and R.K. Narayan—all stories. All good. I read Kate Jennings’ Women Falling Down—it’s good too. Robert Drew’s The Savage Cross is good as you possibly know—I read so little of Australian men’s work. It’s full of excreta and bums, etc., rarely a few pages where it doesn’t appear. Yet a loving book full of compassion and rage.

My love to Bob and your dear self.

Love from Jill.

C/- Miss Lily’s Tropical Guest House,

29 Sandwich Road,

Kamerunga. Cairns, Queensland.

Saturday, 10th July 1991.

Dear Jerry,

Your prediction came true—I got a card/letter from Suzie. Thank you for your card and letter—I do hope Perth was good. I hope you saw the Evening Princess, no Silver Princess, gums. Great pink clusters with long leaves like vast willows—a tree to dream of.

I leave in twelve days after seven weeks of loveliness and rest. The train trip was rugged but the story will possibly pay me for it and I did see a lot of land. Indescribable really that trip—a mixture of heaven and hell best describes it—rather like life.

I’ve been taking photos, well, my host has at Freshwater for the train story as Tim asked if I have photos. No. So I found where the locomotive was today and the hour due, etc., and rode a rusty bike there with borrowed camera. Mistaken time given. Back to Miss Lil’s. Then my host drove me and we ran beside the train, he taking photos and the driver, delighted hung out the window ‘Your name?’—‘Abbey’—

‘first name?’—‘Sloan’ ‘No,’ he said—‘Abbey Sloan.’ Perfect name for the job.

I am living on fruit. Don’t faint. Nothing escapes my interest—black sopate, custard apples (joy!) paw paw and nuts and yogurt. Suits me.

Angels & Dark Madonnas is out—well Tim has a copy & says it looks gorgeous. Let’s hope it’s free of misprints and people like it.

Next trip July–October 1992: here for Aboriginal Dance Festival at Laura 6th–8th July and then fly out from Cairns. China, Africa or Japan—can’t make up my mind. This time I’d like a bit of backing. But to be free and mainly alone of course. The older I get the more a bag (small) a hat and a ticket and passport delight and beckon to me.

If this book works I could do one a year for the next ten and make a name as a travel writer and sell o/seas perhaps.

Daily I ride the rusty bike between cane fields waving like fields of feathers—Perhaps legions before a battle looked like this (from the view of the general on the horse). I’d love to do that. But on the bicycle I am another soldier—a cook perhaps valiantly toiling along with the rustle of the soldiers around me and another deadly day ahead. ‘Less to feed tonight’ I might be thinking.

I bought a huge book on Ruskin, his life by a German cultural historian Wolfgang Kemp. Jerry, it’s ages since I’ve been beguiled and mesmerised by a book. It’s all Ruskin’s ideas and work described—

a genius and all he said and feared has come true. His vision sent him mad.

I needed this time to rest and consolidate. It’s been superb—and I did two and a half stories, some poems and reviews—not a lot one could say, but it is a beginning and I can see how I need to continue. I’ve chosen poems for my Selected Poems and will send them to Tim next week and Sam[134] after ‘Yes’, then ‘not sure’ has said ‘Yes’ to the launch in Writers’ Week.

134 Sam Hudson, Managing Director of Hudson Publishing and married to Nick Hudson.

I hope you are feeling invincible and that Perth was lovely.

Love from Jill.

Leura,

8th September 1991.

Dear Ghilly and John,

It’s so long since I wrote—no excuse. Alone, at home for weeks it’s been lovely—once a week to town to do a gig all the usual mix of hopeless muddle, waste, flattery, sales, debauchery and exhaustion. One week with Bob and Mandy for the launch of Angels in A.C.T. by Mandy at Tilleys, a reading place, Satendra Nandan who did The Wounded Sea about the camp in Fiji and I read for a half-hour each. We all had dinner before with Satendra and his beautiful Indian wife Jyoti at a Thai restaurant. Since I’ve done two gigs in town one to 200 people at Sydney University Continuing Education where the girl selling for Gleebooks forgot five of my titles (to sell) and had only Waterlily—Angels unavailable as warehouse on strike, distributors on sale, not for sale, etc. etc. I got 20 from the local shop as requested by Gleebooks and took them there myself—then a talk for 1 and a ½ hours. A good audience—all literary and keen but a tough night. I had tears in my eyes beforehand on a park bench opp. in a park seeing the girl had not brought 5 titles and just shrugged when I asked where they were: ‘I just forgot them’.

Bower birds by the dozen at present—It’s like T.V. in the sunroom,—better than it—I’m glued there and so drawn to walk to watch over and over.

I’m reading Kafka’s letters to Felice—it’s lovely—and all his stories in a set.

After a year I’ve gardened for days—I felt scared of it I think—ivy everywhere—where to begin? I’ve moved three maples—no 4, 6 roses, 2 rhododendrons and planted a heap of hydrangea cuttings I struck by leaving in a bowl all winter (water in bowl I mean). Position is everything I now see in the garden, like life and tennis.

Why don’t we all go to Floriade and see the women dressed as Flowers Dancing on Water? The image grips me—Meryl Tankard’s dancers are doing it. Just an overnight trip would do—just an idea—mad possibly.

God it’s bleak today—a foul wind. I’ve lit the fire after three days not—and all blossoms blowing in the wind.

Mary was 26 on Wed. and next Sat she and Michael and Hugh and Cathy will come up for a meal or to stay for a birthday celebration.

I’ve found a new place for facials Ghilly—a genius of a woman at Paradise, Military Road, Mosman—I look 10 yrs younger—its only $5.00 if you buy something. Mandy got tears in her eyes when I walked out to have dinner at her place after I put on the unguents and the makeup. It’s Dorian Gray stuff. Beethoven’s Choral Symphony is just finished—best thing for a vile wind—Joan Sutherland singing it.

The rose scratches the window all night—it’s Souvenir de Malmaison and is to the roof now—a dream and sounds though like Wuthering Heights. ‘Is that you Cathy?’ I mutter in the night. But it gives me a bad sleep—that and loose teeth. God! My 4 or is it 3 bottom teeth are loose I think I daren’t see. Old age is going to be I can see, both grim and hilarious. I do not look forward to waving goodbye to my teeth one by one as they fly out the window.

How’s Stephie?

Did I tell you Hugh and I went to church here at St Albans three weeks ago—a sermon on Samson. I had a version of Samson by my side. Hugh was quite interested and intrigued I think. Said he didn’t know Anglicans had communion! Holy hell—what do you think your father and I were doing out at the font all those years ago? He’s going to the R.C. church with his boss and I think that’s O.K. But have warned him not to sign up for a tough religion full of cruel harsh rules that can send people half mad trying to keep to them—no contraception, etc. etc.—but the church of his forefathers is more likely to suit his temperament and style and needs. (Sounds like a shoe!!)

Well Gilly you’re off to U.K. 18th and Angels is launched 17th. I’ll think of you on 18th as I give a talk at Shearers’ Bookshop at Gordon that night. Then no more talks and bullshit—I’m truly fed up and vow only to do those it’d be destructive and perverse not to do and some of those I hope to avoid too. It’s been too long on the road for this old tramp and these clothes I sell are too tattered and I stumble as I walk and mutter spells in an incoherent way and will shortly shock the bystanders. I can feel a hump growing daily.

We will all be together in Adelaide for Opera in the Park and then my Selected Poems and we’ll have a party!

Lots of love and a kiss or several to Stephie and Donna and one to you both too. Love Kate/Jill.

Oh and I meant to tell you about the biography of Ruskin I read in Q. What a man—a terrific book by a German Prof. of Cultural History, Wolfgang Kemp is his name. Love or art sent Ruskin mad—well, watching its destruction.

The A.N. Wilson biography of C.S. Lewis is tremendous. C.S.L. married a perfect replica of his own mother who with two sons same age as he and his brother were at her death, died of cancer just as his mother did. Like following in shadow—our lives are—either magnificent or terrifying depending on how one views them, in the way, well in my own case, at least, how the shadow marches sternly remorselessly ahead and one follows never catching up or passing (i.e. health) but mimicking its every move.

Now with Kafka—that monk of writing, he died rather than marry and got his stories Metamorphosis and The Trial and others from a host of exact occurrences in his love life.

I had Charmian Clift’s essays sent to me by Hugh and I am very impressed—columns for the Herald originally as you may know, they are beautiful and yet something’s missing. I think it’s a kind of freedom in her to write as she wishes. I’m not sure maybe I’m wrong she’s not arch, but what could be great, just misses—perhaps it’s that she’s talking to many rather than one. But I do enjoy them.

I see now sleeping with books simply destroys them. I suppose I’ll try to stop. What other pleasures finally will I be denied? Is only weeding left—I can’t even water—we pay now for every golden litre that comes through our pipes. This is no metaphor but literal.

The wind’s stopped! It’s still as a drawing out and the sun’s come. A different day entirely. What can it mean? Speaking of that (I suppose it means I could safely get up since it’s 2 p.m.), so many coincidences lately one must believe in God. For example—thinking (as I letter boxed) of John Brack ‘I had a holiday in 1954 and that’s enough!’ I laughed at it and looked at the box whose lid I was lifting. No. 54. My neighbour Betty O’Connor asking for a sign and God knows she deserves one and more with a delinquent 40-year-old adopted daughter who beats her own daughter aged 8 terribly—a letter came from U.S.A. from a friend on the same day a year ago they’d met in London.

What news of your work, Gils? What publicity?

I think low blood pressure gives me lassitude. What else could make me so lazy. Could my character simply be weak? As weak as that? I’m more energetic the day after I drink.

Bob’s just rung—I’m going to surprise Mandy and go to her Ad. launch of her Alice Springs pictures on 25th Sept. Then I go to Ninga Ninga to my brother’s to see the wildflowers, as Bob wants to see Vermont in autumn so they’re off in a week’s time.

Love from Kate. P.T.O.

Bob rang to see if ADFA’s offer of $1,200 for my letters to them was enough—we’ve had a long deal with each other and agreed to sell and share the proceeds.

So if you’ve got old letters flog them! You could buy a painting or a piece of furniture or have a weekend in the country or something—I do not need it in case you misunderstood this to share it at all—will not—it’s yours as the letters are yours. You see I cannot see this interest lasting in my papers and I feel it’s best to take any offers at once. Surely one day the sky will fall in and we’ll find it was all a dream.

Love. Kate/Jill.

Leura.

8th September 1991.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

Thank you for having me to stay and all the hospitality. Also Mandy for the beautiful introduction to Angels. I wonder what that video will be like—they might send me a copy as last time they did.

No word speaking of ADFA on the letters yet. I suppose Lynn’s reading them! God knows what’s in them! Enough to make your hair curl thinking of it! Mine that is—yours Mandy can’t curl more and yours Bob’s wavy.

I’m sorely tempted to come and see the Tankard performance—

women as flowers dancing on water appeals to me greatly—my childhood was full of such fancy dresses and I am very keen on all that in a deep way—I mean—Freudian or primitive I think. I’ve been a poppy, a gumnut, etc in the past and now I fancy myself as a lily. (Suzie Mitchell calls me Lily in her new stories I’m told.)

But I go to Ad. to ‘Ninga Ninga’ with Wendy. Jerry’s not coming as Bob wants to see Vermont in Autumn and a poker club in Los Angeles so she’s off reluctantly in one week.

I’ve begun to garden after a year of not. Feels odd and yet exhilarating. I was actually afraid and didn’t know how to begin and felt so daunted I kept leaving it. But four maples are moved, 6 roses, 2 rhododendrons, all to better positions—I think position is everything—like life and tennis.

I borrowed 20 copies of Angels at Gleebooks’ request for Tom up here at Megalong Bookshop and took them with me, as they were the only ones available. At my stage of career this is hopeless. Over 60,000 copies of my work sold in Aust. and I’m like a newcomer with these petty scenes of mismanagement. Enough! Sorry! I had to talk for 1 and a 1/2 hours straight in a naked lecture theatre a good audience—very literary and keen people.

The other gig a lovely bookshop, Pentimento in Balmain with three poets—Billy Marshall Stoneking who did Sixteen Words for Water read too—he’s lovely an old friend but I sold three books and I intend to give up all these appearances as they are pure tommy-rot—6 hours travelling etc. etc.

So, the new woman—gardening, bird watching, muffin making even, maybe soon, writing. All this pleases me and I hope I stick to it as my life was not as I wanted it and this way it will be.

Mary’s fine and Jack’s in good form and easier by the month.

I’m letter boxing for the local bookseller standing for Council and 2nd lot of pamphlets go out today—a good look at Leura is mine by this. Many, many empty houses about a quarter in all.

Bill my neighbour thinks (and scolds me) it outrageous that I bathe on a sunny day with back door open! I didn’t come to Leura to live like a mouse in a hole with a cat at the entrance.

What news of the Soviets? It is like a dream ‘I dreamt the Soviet Union collapsed’. I feel it is so incredible, Bob, that your pictures predicted the fall of the giants.

The new sculpture park of fallen giants is full of your images. No one will believe unless they saw the pictures before that they were done a year before the event! In this way art forecasts and I can’t think of a better example of that than this.

I hope the Ad. Show goes well Mandy. I plan to try to get to see it—the invitation will poss. come this week with the address. I keep thinking of those paintings of the melaleuca cones on the sand exactly like grenades in the desert from Desert Storm.

Lots of love to Laura and Alexander and to both of you. Kate.

Ninga Ninga.

5th October 1991.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

I was sorry to miss you in Adelaide Mandy. I had planned a surprise, as you will have heard by now. I got there on 25th and all set to go … no phone would answer, I didn’t want to arrive too late or early for the show, and not sure of the address or if it was correct in the book. In the end after numerous calls to telecom and testing of phone I gave up and visited an Uncle in hospital. The best laid plans … etc. I hope the show went very well … Beryl[135] was really charming to me on the phone when I called to see if we could meet.

135 Beryl Martin, a painter and Mandy’s mother.

Now, you two, out of the blue, a cheque from Lynn Hard came for the full $1,200. I think I have to simply say thank you very very much. I accept. It is no good going on and on with this between us, to-ing and fro-ing and though I thought it most inappropriate that you should give me what is yours and what was our DEAL I think it is a wonderful gift and I accept it. It is most opportune as you know and will go into the bank today when Wendy and I go to Kingston.

I am going to send you a photocopy to tell you what it is like here. It is rude I know and you do not need to feel to read it. I want to tell all my friends at length about this place and simply can’t do it justice so you and Gils and John and the O’Connors will have a photocopy letter and I hope will not be too insulted.

Gilly is in London. I think at least we three are lucky as we can actually send stuff off and not have to go with our bodies … well we do go at times for launches etc. but she has to take her lovely throat there … but one day I hope it’s records records all the way … even then she will be busier than ever.

I sent my story off for the magazine New Woman on the last day at Mary’s before I came here and I hope they take it as it is highly paid. It is for their Xmas issue. It is called ‘Brothers’ and later I will send you a copy. They wanted a Xmas story and I gave them a slightly darker one as far as I know. I hope to use it in my book for stories next near, no the year after.

No reviews out yet of Angels so I wait in moderate patience and apprehension.

I hope your work is flourishing and that you both are too and Laura and Alexander.

(Below is attachment mentioned above)

Daily I go out fox hunting with my 10yr old nephew Angas. We carry spears and a bow and I have a quiver of arrows on my back as spear carrier and arrow bearer you understand. He carries a slug gun which can stun a rabbit (if at about a metre range) … big cows and bulls stare and come towards us as we storm across fields carrying big black tubes of polypiping to beat them off with if they strike … We look hilarious … a couple of dogs run ahead … one is Wendy’s black Scottish terrier Bridie and the other a tiny black and white Jack Russell hunter called Tiger.

We found a fox you see, by chance—one morning eating a kill when we went out to find twin lambs from that dead sheep to try to get them to other sheep to see if they would save them (the lambs that is) as sometimes they will give orphans a drink and thus save their lives. No more lambs fed at the homestead you see … two expensive for the milk powder and no money in the end to pay for it as sheep worth so little nowadays. 40,000 killed and buried on this place last year, which is an horrific thing. No bullets can be used, as it is dangerous and too expensive …

The fox, getting back to our find, ate on as we approached and as we were downhill (and the dead sheep having fallen over on its side and not been able to rise was on the hill side) and the wind downhill, carried nothing of our scent to the lovely, gorging fox. Electrified, we stood there, no camera, gun or net or spear or arrow in our hands or on our backs. Off the fox ran when Angas ran up wielding polypipe.

Ever since this event schemes have hatched of increasing wildness and obsessiveness. A net was my idea having been thinking of the netting of one of Zeus’ wives caught in flagrante. A hole, was Angas’ having just read Swiss Family Robinson (as they caught a tiger with a hole disguised). So, with digging and lugging up gear it is a full day I spend. Three times daily we are out. The first hide was dug in the sand and dandelions on the hillside … no, the first, was built of rocks. The second, on that same hill beside the kill. Now we have moved yet again and to my better comfort as it is now in low gum bushes on flat rocks looking downhill where we will place a fresh kill. I take a book of Michael Ondaatje’s poems to read between sightings and discussions and plans as the time can drag, I find. Lying in damp sand in Patsy’s Drizabone (which she keeps in her car for changing wheels to save her frock), is no fun especially as I am made to lie with my nose in the dandelions and am roundly upbraided for my blue beret which Angas says is a dead give-away to a fox. I say he will think it is a beautiful big blue wildflower but this receives cold looks.

Waiting for Tucker, Angas’s father, to get fresh dead rabbits shot to lie beside or rather in front of our hide, we strolled out for a bit of rabbit hunting late yesterday afternoon. I was gun bearer and quiver carrier. Suddenly, in the soft light of 4 p.m. across a green paddock, ran a light quick brown fox. Angas loaded his bow and made many irritable hunter signals to me to lie, drop dead, move round, get out of sight, range and to fire all at once. I raised the slug gun. It was so close I thought ‘This is it. I am going to kill it.’ It ran on, loping across in front of us not seeing us as we were among pine trees. It disappeared a moment in a dip, appeared again closer and another dip appeared. Suddenly, while I was stiff with excitement and bewilderment and shock at my appalling ethical decision, up it ran wagging its tail to us. A manager’s dog. A lucky dog … so close to death from arrows or slugs … But there it is … I did raise the gun and did take aim. I am a person of amazingly weak character. Did I really intend to shoot? Yes, I believe so. I think the game is so deeply affecting that one finally acts within its rules. And is this not so of all games? And is this not the reason they are played? And isn’t this the reason armies march daily even within barracks and playing military music off and on … almost anyone would kill after a few weeks of that.

We are in a house two hundred metres or so from the homestead and most comfortable with a wood fire slow combustion style. The days are cool and often sunny when all the flowers almost glow on the hillsides. The country is a bit like the low green hills of All Creatures Great and Small in the North of England if you remember that country.

There’s a whole two sides of beef in the cool-room hanging and we have been given some of that. The freezer room is simply clogged with food to the ceiling. None of this is exaggeration.

Baby piglets lie in a hessian bag beside a dimplex heater in half of a galvanised iron tank on sand eating when they emerge, and sleeping, grunting and flicking flies with their tails. One has his hindquarters hanging from the hole of entry to the bag, as he can’t fit. How they breathe I don’t understand.

A big white boar, Lord Sims, gets our peelings as salad daily and beside him the chooks are laying one or 11 eggs a day. Next to them are the working dogs in yard not to be spoken to … might confuse them or something, I don’t know. Next to them are goslings, six of them, and their mother and then a duck with 4 ducklings in the next pen. Then a big yard of geese all honking on approach.

All these creatures lead idyllic lives, fed and happy under a wide-open sky with no machines.

I am reading a biography of Samuel Pepys, a paradox you might say as the man wrote his own tale so well. Yet it is interesting, but I am not often found with my nose in it … too much hunting, shooting and so forth.

A maternity paddock has many cows with or without calves. Three times a day a man drives round and tugs out any stuck-there calves. I was out walking the first morning when he drove up to a cow a distance from me and knocked her down in a most perverse way … up she got and off she ran. Over the rocks and hillocks he drove straight at her. Again, bumped her down. Four times he did this and it was only that I thought he must have a reason beyond mere cruelty that I didn’t begin yelling at him. So it proved to be. I saw as I ran up, ready to assist, Sister Llewellyn at the ready, that he had to hobble her front leg to make her lie to allow him to lash a belt round her hindquarters to attach a sort of steel jack which he screwed up more and more having put a small chain on the tiny calf’s protruding legs. Slowly out came the calf, with the manager’s daughter Emma, aged three, standing there calmly beside me, as her father walked around slowly to a quarter of a circle towards the cow’s stomach and eased out the little grey calf. The mother had only the whites of her eyes showing and I hoped fervently she was stunned and unconscious. But up she got as soon as he let her hobble loose, as she tossed and turned at once to be off and he thought her crazed. Off she ran at a pace not looking back. The calf lay there, beyond it, under the sky—gone before it ever arrived. It was drowned in the fluid, Kel, the manager/midwife said. If they labour in the night they stay too long and are not helped in time. So though I didn’t shed a tear, I felt mightily like it, as the calf lay there with the rich life all around, its mother run off, breath not entering its body, and the waters rushing from its mouth. I wondered about resuscitation but did nothing … and so it never got past life’s starting gate and it seemed a sad thing as we stood there. Kel put the birthing machine away and dipped his hands and the chain in a bucket of antiseptic on the back of the Ute. We got in the Ute and drove off and there the calf lay for the foxes and the crows, still warm.

The cows are having great trouble giving birth as they are only two years old and too young and also the breeding now means the legs are long … all this and more I don’t know of. For ten weeks the men must go round the cows three times a day to assist them. It is a wearing business but only ten days to go.

Tucker has made a film of the wetlands with Nessun Dorma as the background music and his voice over in the middle of the film. It is to be shown to guests in a paddock when they come for the open day, a giant sort of picnic, camp, movie show. Think big and multiply it I find is the best way and yet I still daily am gaping in shock and astonishment at him. Great flocks of ducks rise in the film, the sky in the golden light against trees lit in early afternoon sun all gleaming and gold like an early Aust. painting. The ducks whirl in clouds in the sky as Pavarotti sings and you can trust me when I say they float and glide in time to the music! Up they soar and down they glide and at the end, thanks to cutting, no doubt, they land on the lake to the storm of applause from the concert.

Much trouble is here with rising salt for which Tucker is blamed by some. The film is to show politicians and others that it has nothing to do with the wetlands. It is related to grazing and tree clearing. But he gets threatening phone calls. People are fanatical about water and understandably so … it is just like an old fashioned western where the waterhole is in dispute.

Wendy has a bad back and has had to stay in a lot but is getting better. She has had flu a month ago, is getting over that too so she needs this holiday. She is getting a lot better already.

My mother has been very difficult. I feel it is time I must admit she is vaguely senile. But it is so hard to do that. I get so anxious and deny it no sooner than I have said it to myself. More or less a stream of invective, malice, complaint and criticism streams from her. She has given away the things she gave me, the cedar table and so forth, and my teapot collection. I don’t really care, except that it was done because I wrote and tried to tell her the truth gently and to be honest. I have left my run too late. Nothing could have been more inflammatory to her than anything else could but a bent neck and a lot of agreement regular as the tide. It is a perfect irony. I will never have her acceptance or approval now. It is too late. She is livid with almost everyone and those she is not angry with she spends her days bragging about in the most odious way to anyone who will listen.

She wants me to rewrite her book to her new notes and to make it to a best seller as she believes it truly will become. I told her I would not find this possible. This met with stony silence and a relocking of her poor jaw into more resolution and another wall was quietly built.

Patsy is a model of tact and healing and is really quite saintly. She bears all and smiles and with no bitterness or revenge in her heart works on balming and calming. Criticism never issues from her.

One thing that has come from this is that I am trying to be a better, sweeter speaker myself. I see how ugly and troublesome criticism and complaint is and am trying to avoid any of that at any time as much as I can.

I am my mother’s daughter and there can be no denying this. Her goodness I have a tiny bit of, and her faults are all mine too. I feel as Victoria Glendinning said ‘Nothing’s Wasted’, in this case, as it has taught me a sore lesson and a most severe one. So if nothing else comes from it and there’s been plenty of pain at least there might be a bit of growth for me. I had a three day headache after dealing with my mother. I thought I had cancer! It is gone now and I am getting stronger daily. This life agrees with me. But not in the long term, I accept that. I like the change and excitement of the new. There’s yellow wattle and white Geraldton Wax in a jar on this table, a big apricot tree spread out in the soft green under the back verandah in front of this table and a basket of fruit beside me. I have made jars of good yogurt by the fire and eat fruit and nuts too with it. Surely I should be able to work like a tiger shortly.

The homestead is surrounded by native trees and shrubs in full bloom in a most wonderful big display of splodges of colour, pink of the rock rose, bright blue of big daisy bushes of a kind I don’t know, miles of diosma and creamy waving soft things.

I hope you’re all fine and will write again later.

Love to you both and to Laura and Alexander.

Kate.

Ninga Ninga via Kingston, Sth East St.

9th October 1991.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

I hope all is well with you both—it was a treat to see you at the bookshop as I said. I’m here for a month to see the wetlands and wildflowers and work. I’m still trying to do a book of stories. Also I must do the introduction for my Selected Poems due out Writers Week, Adelaide, ’92. What to say—I dunno.

I do love it here—vast green and yellow paddocks under huge blue and grey skies.

There’s a camp/tour on 30–31st October and I’m staying on for it—I will send you a piece—a bit messy—what’s new—on this place, later. I hope you won’t mind it’s a photocopy as I feel if I do a really decent letter to my children and friends I’ll never get out to hunt the quick brown fox nor get a story done!

There are many birds here, a ranger lent to Tucker from The Wildlife and Fisheries Department estimated he saw 10,000 to 15,000 bird nests in one area two days ago. Egret, blue crane, stork, jabiru … 10,000s of duck, rare bearded greave, ibis, acid green grass parrots with scarlet and blue feathers—and more I don’t know.

I do hope you are both flourishing. Later I’ll send you a piece/letter on this place—please don’t be offended that it’s only a photocopy.

Love from Kate.

Ninga Ninga,

11th October 1991.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

I’m lying in the sun with flies buzzing and birds calling—all kinds—not crows though. Deer are by the dozen in paddocks by the home—just to enjoy the sight of & mighty pretty they are too.

We walked four or five kilometres to see a malleefowl nest today—they build it with dirt and plants to make it hot in the decaying and moldering and to hatch out the young and off they run into the scrub. It’s about one and a third metres high and three metres across so a lot of work for a male bird. Feminism is not needed by

malleefowl.

I hope all’s well. Remember that I love you.

Kate

Leura.

Monday, 27th January 1992.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

It was a treat to have you here for our birthdays … I was so happy … thank you for coming … your children were the cause of all our admiration … congratulations … I told you all this but I think it should be said again and again … so often parents get criticism and hardness … very little praise in a lifetime of it …

Ghilly and John rang and had a long talk about two weeks ago … I told you they will try to get a house at Pt. W. and, as you say, maybe we can all go, Bob. I will write to them today. Stephanie starts school this year so that might be good for her … their pool won’t be ready until the end of summer Ghilly says but even so they can swim there as it is warmer … Ghilly was on a horrible cruel diet when I was with them … Jenny Craig … it looked so harsh and I admired her for her endurance but I don’t think it helps to suffer like that …

Pat[136] rang this morning … I hope to get to her opening on 9th Feb … I will make an effort as I do love to see her and would like to see the work from Mungo …

136 Patricia Harry, a Canberra-based artist.

Speaking of Mungo, she says she will put the photos from you, Mandy, in the post … thank you very much … very generous as usual … these things are very expensive …

I need Richard’s title[137] … I will ring you and get it soon … the typist isn’t done yet … took ages … this week they think it will be done … I am now harrying them … Tim has been away so nothing could be done with the mss. anyway till this week … and now I have the prints so all should get moving at last … everything takes so much time and needs so much sheer push to get done … I spend my life on push … shove and push again … maybe you both feel the same …

137 Richard Morrison with whom Pat, Mandy and Kate Llewellyn went on a week’s trip to Lake Mungo.

I am sending you some poems I wrote for the Age who asked for some for 14th Feb … Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s idea to ask poets to send work (about 6 of us) and so they will all be on one page … the company is good so I hope they use one of mine … we’ll see.

I have dug up loads of stones from the front garden and am trying to get order and even, perhaps, beauty into chaos … a tall order here as it is mayhem out there with the pines taking all nourishment and giving lots of shade … Hugh and Cathy may be up next weekend and I have cut a lot of trees back and hope to have help from that big man to do more … and now the roof needs painting! … it never ceases, the need to keep up a property … Jerry calls it good stewardship …

The living room has benefited from the paint though it is not the colour I chose … perhaps it looks altered on walls and in the room’s light … not sure … anyway it’s clean … God this letter is a series of clichés … a long string …

I am gearing up to ride to Katoomba but it is so hot I am wondering if I should … I need to put my pay cheque in the bank in a hurry … what’s new? …

Jerry’s in Q. with the four grandchildren and Sheridan … I wrote and wonder how she is … she is sick of being ill and weak …

I go to Q on April 18th to do a talk and workshop for the Poets’ Union and to do a literary fundraiser lunch for Contact House, an incest/child abuse place … I might be able to go to the farm for a week or so if it is free and if Jerry will lend it to me yet again …

My classes are good … I like both of them as you know … one I call my class of tears … two women cry a lot; just sit quietly crying … the grief of people is enormous … one is the psychiatrist who looks utterly harrowed … she is only about 40 with three small children. I think her husband has left … the other is gifted and has lost her son … I am glad to say she is gifted, as when I told you of her, you heard of her great plans to write the history of Singapore and so forth … well, she has an Hons. Degree in anthropology as well as being a microelectronics expert so she has backing to do these huge tasks she has set … she told me it is the class of her dreams … all she ever hopes for is in that class … I was very calmed and happy and relieved, as you will understand, at that … the other, Kate, who is a PhD woman of 40 too, told me the class is full of the most amazing energy and asked if I am worn out when it is over … I said yes I am but I was glad it came across … she has till Feb. to get started or fail her half done thesis … I am going to do what you suggested Bob, and get them to swap their photos next time …

Well, back to digging up roses which are in shady places or to loading barrows with rocks … Since I haven’t had Jack to stay I have lots of energy and that’s why some things are getting done round here that have lain neglected so long … but I miss him and would like him to come up in this heat as it is cooler than town and we could go to the waterfall and he could leave the tent in the shade in the evening and early mornings … not sure what to do on this …

Hugh is now set up with non-allergic bed linen and I hope this helps him … they won’t be moving now as they air the house and have things that dry it out … before they kept the doors and windows mainly closed … that is no good for anyone … neither are beds that are feather nests …

I didn’t let dear Alexander vacuum that day Mandy, which must have seemed so odd and queer if not bloody minded … but, paradoxically, vacuuming which does collect dust, actually raises it in the action and for some to have it happening while they’re in the house, if they have any troubles in that area, makes them cough and splutter … I didn’t want to say that at the time so then we had the farce of the wet mop with people walking on it … so the poor boy was afflicted from adult management and misunderstanding … apologies to all. It is actually the air that comes out the back of the vacuum that blasts fine dust into the air … it does get it up, but it raises it too …

Cathy is planning her wedding dress … she fancies some black trimmings … I told her that bridesmaids in black Chanel suits would look like ravens attending her and they would be better in white with black braid and white shoes and stockings … weddings are romantic … and so are the clothes …

She and I get on well and talk over magazines and ideas in the most happy fashion … I am delighted at this … I try very hard not to overstep the mark and have told her if I do to say so at once and no offence will be taken … Hugh heard this too so I hope it helps …

See you in March …

Love. Kate.

P.S. I hope the plums in jelly worked Bob! They make great chutney.

This little book is good and maybe of use with plums. It’s just to loan, as I’ve no other.

Leura.

23rd March 1992.

Dearest Ghilly and John,

Just a note to say

We’ve lovely photos of you both at the book launch and I will send them on when I get them back from Hudsons—taken by Lynn Hard—who had no recollection of being there! Lucid and lovely—close-ups and all! Found in his camera by him!

I heard your interview Ghilly and was so thrilled and IMPRESSED! If you ever give up singing you could do those chaps out of a job any day! It was wonderful! Congratulations.

I do hope the opera went well. I lay thinking of you Saturday night listening to an Adelaide Festival ABC broadcast so I was I felt as near as possible.

Here’s some poems I liked by Raymond Carver’s widow who I also admire. What can be done with such grief as this except turn it into art?

Here’s some new poems I did.

I hope you are both thriving—love to you and the girls.

Kate.

Leura.

21st April 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Your lovely card and poem has just come after I sent a card and a copy of Katherine Brisbane’s talk to you. I laughed out loud at the card’s picture. You are a card genius.

Autumn is raging here and I am glad to be here. Jack’s in hospital with asthma—poor boy—poor Mary. She slept in his bed at the hospital and before that on the floor beside him at home as his room she felt wasn’t warm enough so she put him on a couch in the living room. The farm sounds like heaven. John Miller is due and I’ll have his two girls three days while he’s at a psychiatrists’ conference here. I’ve lit the first fire of the season and pine scents the house and I’ll keep it on all night.

Easter was sad but came up brightly thanks to the O’Connors. We had a sublime bush walk on Sunday for three hours on cliffs. I’ll show you the walk next time. Also I went to the Catholic Church and heard Bill in the choir and Betty read the lesson on Saturday. Then with a fire on, incense, hand bells sounding sweetly, blessing of the font baptismal water, the scent of incense, the organ, the choir, first all the lights out then only three or four big candles, then all lights turned on, it was dramatic and fabulous and to me funny as it was so extroverted and appealing and dramatic and theatrical, I almost laughed while being full of relish and enjoyment. Also I had to stand one and a half hours as it was packed.

I went to a few sulky hymns on Friday at our own sweet Hall since our church[138] has burnt down. Few contrasts could have been more marked. Then at 10 A.M. on Sunday to our Hall and what a disappointment—less than twenty people, a sad piano—organ burnt, of course—pathetic flowers and a sermon still going on at eleven and no communion to be had as yet—I had to leave to get to the bush walk. Truly, it’s enough to make you go over to the other side.[139]

138 Leura’s Anglican Church, since re-built.

139 Which Kate Llewellyn later did, becoming a Catholic.

Then dear Annie McCutcheon arrived to stay for a week at Mary’s and came up to lunch here Monday. A wonderful visit. She said as she rose from the table ‘I just love the way you cook!’ Now nothing could have pleased me more in the way of compliments as I’ve lost all confidence and almost took her to Le Gobelet up the street to avoid cooking the acres of food I’d got in expecting Mary and Jack. It was only grilled kebabs and asparagus and a boiled egg sauce and baked apples in sago—nothing lavish. Annie took photos when I cooked as I had the eggs boiling in the asparagus to save the saucepans.

I’ve applied to have four weeks at Varuna in June so I can have Jack here before that. I hope the farm goes well.

Love. Jill.

Leura

15th May 1992.

Dear Philip & Jenny,

I am wondering how you both are and hoping you’re enjoying this great autumn. It’s like living inside a bunch of poppies here. I rang and spoke to Helen a few weeks ago; neither of you were in.

Jenny, I’ve applied to reside a few weeks at Varuna at Katoomba and need a referee. If they consider me perhaps suitable and if then they called you, would you give me a reference? I want to work on the book of poems I’m on at present. (They offer no money, but feed and lodge the writers they accept.)

I’ll send some new poems to you both so I can show you what I’m up to. I’ve got my bike out and a new yellow helmet and tear around puffing and gloating.

Love from Kate.

Leura.

Sunday, 30th May 1992.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

It was a treat to talk to you yesterday … thank you for the phone call … I am glad the trips went well … I hope poor Alexander is better by now … to keep children well throughout winter is a real challenge … after Jack in hospital for Easter he came here for five days and now hopefully he is on his feet and well and truly … I just dread winter though.

I got this paper for Mothers’ Day from Mary … and feel queer using it … she is designing another more modest one for me.

I have decided to leave Hudson’s … after not letting me know they’d had a positive letter back from a Prof. in Africa … I have written to Tim and asked him to offer my work elsewhere … it is for him to tell me where he thinks it might be best. Over the years many people have muttered through clenched jaws ‘Have you thought of changing your publisher?’ I say ‘Often’ … but it suited me to keep on with them as they took everything and we had a working understanding that was quite good but now, put onto the back burner in such an obvious way and for so very long, the worm has turned.

I am reviewing Elizabeth Jolley’s Central Mischief and Angela Carter’s Expletives Deleted … both books of essays. The latter has just died in UK in her early 50s as you may know … what a loss …

I have invited Marion Halligan, Kate Grenville, Woolfie, Hampton, Drusilla Modjeska and others up for a workshop weekend in July. I have had such a wonderful time with David Gilbey,[140] the man who hired me for Wagga Wagga, doing lunch workshops each week here that I am keen to continue with others after his study leave ends and he returns home.

140 Friend, poet and academic.

In June I do a panel chaired by Robert Drewe’s third wife, mother of their baby son, Candida Baker who has done books of interviews with Aust. writers as you may well know … Glenda Adams,[141] and I forget who else, are on it and we are to speak on any topic for 5 minutes … this is so mad and ill conceived I have to laugh … It is as if we are birds and the public can simply come and stare as we open our beaks … nothing sensible can be developed in such a time … squawk and fall silent is the rule … it is a big book fair at Darling Harbour so they can expect thousands.

141 Author and university teacher who died in 2007.

Ghilly’s concert last Sunday was beautiful, Mahler, Strauss and so on … truly wonderful … poor John had to take the girls home to Newcastle as they were tired and at interval he left looking brave but my heart went out to him … he had had them all weekend in town which is a great saving and Ghilly had to prepare for her concert.

I am keen on the idea of visiting the coast in the school holidays as you mentioned Mandy … Hugh is 30 on 13th July so Cathy will give him a party and so might I … but mine doesn’t need to be on the actual day … well, we can’t anyway, have two on the day … sometime that month would do, I think … after the sensational one you attended here on the occasion of the hanging of the curtains etc., I think we should have another attempt at something to set the past to rest … (although it is a funny story now …)

I am going to hear Bill sing in the choir today at the Catholic Church … it is Ascension Day … well it used to be Thursday but they have put it on to Sunday to be more convenient … I am thinking, only thinking, of joining the Catholic Church … it seems so attractive to me, with such beautiful ceremonies, that I am very attracted … also it would not really harm my family, as I am, oh dear, this is awful, past breeding or really influencing them … they can’t be brought up in the church … I mean then, that it would be a decision with more repercussions and a deeper responsibility … it is a hard church to live in, if young, I feel … but at the moment, in its softer time after a harsh period, it is very attractive to me … its rules are softer, it is wider (and yet still has done and does things I truly detest) … yet the shining faith I see around me with the O’Connors, Patrick Pak Poy and others is very impressive … I have always taken from a church, and elsewhere, what I needed and left what I don’t … and in this case, I would hope to do that too … But, as yet I am only thinking it over … I think I could live most gracefully in my old age in such a Church … a safe harbour you could say … shades of Marcus Aurelius …

Last night I went to dinner at Chris and Murray Wilcox’s[142] weekend house round the corner … (She did a film on Elizabeth Jolley) … they have been walking in Nepal and had 6 other walkers there to dinner … old fashioned things like bœuf bourguignon are coming back into fashion I think … warming and good.

142 Chris Wilcox is a film-maker and Murray Wilcox a retired judge.

Niffy and Ant are back from USA and Seville … she rang just after you did … they have a show on at the Expo there and Kris is working in the Oz bar there in the Aust. pavilion.

They are living on the Colo with their Mosman house rented and the mystery deepens daily to me … but they seem very well and happy and very ‘up’ indeed, so that’s good.

Have a good long weekend,

Love. Kate.

Leura.

10th June 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Here’s the poem. I won’t need to use the lovely overalls. I got to K-Mart today and found some others … but it was very, very kind of you to lend me them and to drive us to the Zoo. I went off with rather a heavy heart but the whole thing was wonderful.

The apartment is the most luxurious and Jack and I walked around in awe for a bit with him saying ‘Lovely taps, lovely basin …’

I’ve got two stories to send off to New Woman all neatly typed … they look so good …

Tim had already rung Lisa at Collins but before that I had left my number for Kim, who was busy … but Lisa says and Tim says, Fiona someone would be my editor … they are interested in taking a book on N.Z. or Africa … the former this year I think, the other next … and Tim and Collins will help me get the trip up.

But Random House are interested I am told, not by Tim, and a woman who is from New York has invited me to lunch at Lilianfels Saturday to talk … but with the Czechoslovakian Ambassador so that should be quite Kafkaesque … since she also works for Vogue … both firms are Condé Nast, I believe.

It is three degrees here now and all night unbelievably cold even with a big fire … Jack and I slept together for warmth and so I could be sure he was not uncovered as otherwise I am up and down checking on him.

I read your book all the way home as I said. It is really beautiful … hearty congratulations … political and graceful … a perfect combination and beautiful as well … Thank you for it. I’ll return the overalls and trunk soon.

Hope the garden and drawing all thriving!

Love. Jill.

Leura,

Monday, 16th June 1992.

Dear Philip,

I hope all’s well with you and with Jenny! Here are a few poems and a review. I send the review as ironically, Stephen dislikes it so much it seems the very poem you like. As D. Brooks and Prof. Wilkes also dislike the end of ‘Breasts’ it seemed more, perhaps, than coincidence that these very female poems got on the nerves of the men other than you. Odd, isn’t it?

It’s winter here for the first day—foggy cold and beautiful. The water from the taps could snap your teeth off. The fire is going and I have just bought the most beautiful wood basket made of sticks woven in Manilla. I lugged it home on the back of my bike. It was paid for by Southerly as a cheque was in the box as I came home after seeing the basket in the shop. So I rode back post haste and got it—

my electricity may soon be cut off but I have a lovely basket to hold the wood in the dark.

I’m O.K. I hope you’re even better.

A new insight with the help of the psychiatrist seems positive to me so that’s good. He tells me I have a case (or am a case) of pathological grief. Can you beat that? How odd. But I think he’s right. Twenty years mourning my Father seems enough even for him, so now I must learn how to stop.

Love from Kate.

Leura.

19th June 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for getting the tickets to Rustifali … here’s a guess at what I owe you for them … many thanks.

Hugh and Cathy are coming up tonight … he says he must retrench fifty-three next week … he has got special counsellors in to help the people deal with the horror.

It is icy blue … four degrees (but snug in here). I just re-lit the fire. Bill is due at any moment … it is 7.30 a.m. … he wanted to let himself in while I slept but I drew the line … he is finishing off the dining room (painting) and it looks fresh as you would say …

I ride to Katoomba with a series of five stories I have done and a woman, very sweet and obliging … types them well for me … off they go, not to Tim, but to anyone I think will pay. Simply Living got ‘Country Shows’ … I enjoyed doing that one … ‘Friends’ went to New Woman (more of that later) … ‘Neighbours’ will go to the Women’s Weekly, I think … that’s due today … also ‘Living Alone’ went to Ita[143] as you suggested and ‘Funerals’ is going to New Woman or H.Q. The funny thing is New Woman took ‘Friends’ at once and I got the letter offering $500 dollars for it from the Chief Editor as Jillian McFarlane with whom I deal and who commissioned me in the past has gone … god knows where or why … another sad tale possibly … so with my heart in my teeth I wrote and rejected the $500 explained that I never got less than $1,250 and could not go backwards … and, in fact, my agent would have asked for more. Now I wait … will I miss out altogether? I feel I must act on my own behalf or go under.

143 The magazine published by Ita Buttrose.

Today, and this is what made me think of writing to you at once, I saw your red and blue and green parrots embroidery almost exactly as I walked from the bathroom … one hung upside down from my back railing … the partner sat in the branch hanging above … so exact and lovely … like an omen of course.

I have got Varuna[144] for 1st July to 21st July … what a thrill. Jocelynne Scutt[145] and Amanda Lowry[146] were to be there too, at that time, which I would enjoy … but this is now doubtful as J.S. has to go to a court case in Melbourne.

144 A writers’ centre, Katoomba. The old home of Australian author Eleanor Dark and her family.

145 Melbournian lawyer and writer.

146 Tasmanian novelist and essayist.

I will hold the writing weekend workshop 24th July here and Marion Halligan says she will come and I wait to hear from Drusilla Modjeska and Barbara Brooks and Susan Hampton … she is farming in Victoria.

Forget-me-nots are in sweeps of green everywhere so abundantly … it will be a good spring … Tim is supposed to get the consul for N.Z. onto my trip and to get Collins to advance some money … if they have any … so maybe in spring I will go … but I think I should see some islands, others I mean, as the title is not a pulling one … Islands though is … I must get to the Cook Islands for the South Pacific Dance Festival even if I have to swim. That’s in October, would you like to join me … It will be grand and nobody knows it’s on except, I suppose, a few anthropologists in sandals.

I had lunch with the Czechoslovakian Ambassador and a publisher who had something to do with Random House. The former was a thin 50 year-old woman with husband to match … it was like talking to an oyster … a khaki woollen frock, grey hair, no colour anywhere, no lipstick … cold, grey, elegant, been everywhere, smoking, khaki skin, eyes like cold stones … I felt so defeated in my scarlet outfit I decided to try to get some reaction … the man was half dead … he is either a womaniser on his best behaviour in front of his wife, or has committed a crime wherein he is utterly in her power as a result … nobody spoke to him for hours and if it had been the other way round, and she the wife of the ambassador it would have seemed outrageously rude and sexist … and I think it was … he sat like a grey lizard basking in the cold … I spent the next day in bed recovering … I was kindly treated … the food very mediocre … owned by Tom Keneally … the taste of the cassoulet was as queer as the people I dined with and took hours to leave, the place was called Echoes, … not in Lilianfels[147] but next door … owned partly by Tom too …

147 A resort hotel in Katoomba, Blue Mountains NSW.

Rita, the naturopath with whom I went, gave the women flowers and the ambassador acted as if they were a baby in the most touching and deprived way … held them to her chest … (just a little bunch of wildflowers) in the photos session on the balcony … and would not put them down for ages and then wanted them in the car away from any heat … it was a most sad sight … she is so utterly deprived … it is as if she came from the north pole … and the seals had been hunted out … what a pair … the woman who was the host, Barbara someone, is a friend of Leo Schofield’s and names fell like jewels onto the table … I felt quite bewildered and I suppose I got kindly collected but I am not sure … nobody talked literature but it was excruciating chit chat of what will grow in the garden here … much ill-informed and I did not argue … well, enough … I do not expect to hear from Random House … I think that was a hook to get me to lunch … yet, the woman was warm, warm, warm and even ingenuous and most hospitable. What can one make of it?

I have three books, Angela Carter’s last … and C. Stead’s Letters … really, a wonderful book … she is a wizard … so queer, mad, right, sweet, hopeless … not unlike Jean Rhys in some ways … you know, the hopeless, feckless, blighted genius who good things avoid in spite of her almost starving … but gracious, always gracious … a bed-sitter, no money … Basically, Christina is a woman who married her father and who was mad, mad as you know, who had a funny kind of genius to boot … cruel to women … feminist and scathing of that same thing … feminist in liking freedom, but vile to most women … fawning to men in a way that is quite painful to read in the letters … but generous, encyclopaedic, lusty, and full of paradoxes … her husband Bill Blake was in the fur business for a time … can you believe it … and she left money to the conservation foundation … plus had a white ermine coat … Basically, Bill was a wonderful loving brilliant man whose books did not sell and who had a wife and child for thirty years of their life (his and Christina’s) together while she longed to marry … sound familiar …

I was interested to see the definitions of your dream Jerry … Facts … facts … are you overwhelmed by facts?

I think still fish are sexual … call me one-eyed if you will but I think others think this also … what have you made of the dream so far?

Here is my poem from last week’s effort …

I hope your garden is now thoroughly stuffed with good things for spring.

Many thanks again.

Love. Jill.

Varuna

141 Cascade Street, Katoomba. 2780.

2nd July 1992.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

Well, here I am alone in a gothic mansion … I am enjoying it, though I approached it with dread … I felt it might be so dangerous and frightening that I wouldn’t be able to stand it … not so … I love it … it is most comfortable and while austere and beautiful, is silent and warm … what more could I want? All others fled you see, so I was left alone … Amanda Lohrey, thinking she would be here alone … well as it was it seemed she would be here alone … then Jocelynne Scutt, the feminist lawyer, had to go to a court case in Vic. So it left nobody but me … well I had to go before A. left if you see my meaning … so I was alone more by mistake, than anything.

The place has a chef usually and cleaners and so forth. The administrator, a woman of 30 called Suzie, is here Wed. to Friday, just a few hours a day … so it is quiet since they put the cook off, it not being worthwhile for only one person here. I felt disheartened as cooking and shopping I can do at home … I had a big lot of fruit and veg. delivered and just use the microwave for vegetables at night and lunch too, and that’s that …

The good news is also on several other fronts … First of all, New Woman magazine took a story I did called ‘Friends’. (I spoke of this to you ages ago) … and I did it again (and had it typed by the new woman I have found at a place called Ability Plus in Katoomba … I go there often on my bike from Leura to take and receive the work … this is bliss to me, and gives me much more confidence to send things off in better order than that of which I am capable …) Well, they offered 500 dollars for it … taking my courage up, I pointed out in a jaunty letter that my usual fee was 1,200 dollars and I could not go down but my agent would poss. have asked for more! … thinking and fearing I might have lost the sale, I waited … Here, on Friday came a letter saying ‘Oops! Sorry … of course you can have the amount and would you like to come to lunch?’ Well, I got Suzie to send off the invoice as they asked, just as soon as she could type it … and ‘so let that be a lesson to you,’ I mutter … just of what I am not sure … nerve … possibly … or not cringing for a bone like a dog when one is in need … So I have done six or so stories and sent them off with the first one to other places and wait to hear … I do not expect such luck from all, but maybe my net will get some fish …

I am here until 21st July. On 1st August, I shall go for 12 days to Jerry’s farm. Then I should go to N.Z. I believe. Home late Oct. or Nov. I am due to do the Writer in Res. at Lyn Collins’s[148] Museum, The Mint in Sydney.

148 Artist and curator.

The good news is also that Tim has arranged a two book deal with Angus and Robertson and Collins, all the one firm now, I think … for 15,000 dollars, the first part of which is to be paid in two weeks on signing of the contract … this is fairyland to me … I feel as if silver is falling on my head from the sky … the first 6,000 dollars is paid on signing (to pay for the N.Z. trip which I must now set off on very smartly) … the second part is 4,000 paid on delivery of manuscript … which will poss. be in Nov. when I get back … The next part is 5,000 which will be paid, I forget when, well next year for the Africa trip … I will know when I sign the contract. So now I wait to tell the Hudsons … but can’t yet, as I must be certain it is all secure or I could fall between two stools and land badly.

This means I will not have to borrow money for the trips … as you see, and it will be a great relief to me. Nor will I have to ask firms for funding or help … It also means if these trips go well, and I do good books that sell, I could do more of the same thing which I do enjoy a lot and comes easily to me with the style and attitude being close and natural to me.

I have had a shattering of confidence about poetry … I can barely write it now. I was told by David Gilbey with whom I have done six or so workshop lunches in Leura at Reg’s La Salle (the place we dined Bob, the bistro that cold wet night of big winds on our way to ACT). He was here on study leave from Wagga and is a poet and academic and it is he who hired me to be writer in residence there ages ago … well, he told me John Tranter told him he does not like my poetry. This is a serious blow to me … I have nightmares about it … It is Tranter who did The New Australian Poetry book for Penguin I spoke of to you both … why should I be surprised? … I wasn’t in the book, so I could hardly believe he had a secret admiration for my work!! … nevertheless, it is a blow … it makes me feel as if he might be right and all I write is rubbish …

But we all have struggles and shocks … such is this life. So I must plod on and hope to get the rhythm back.

My ribbon has run out so I will stop. Later I’ll send a bit more news to you. There is a FAX here installed yesterday—the man and I shared a bowl of soup on the cold day—its number is 04––––––– if you feel like dashing off a note.

I hope you four are all flourishing.

Love. Kate.

Varuna,

141 Cascade St, Katoomba.

3rd July 1992.

Dear Jerry,

I hope you are enjoying your farm and the children too … The news here is all good, good, good. I love it! Peace reigns. I am not nervous … I lock everything and my bedroom and have a phone in the room overnight and have lights on downstairs. I feel safe enough … High up among the trees I am like a bird … it is very windy today and blew all night …

I read Cabin Fever at 3 am and felt like you … I like this strange book … I wrack my brains to trace how it is done … but I am lost … I need a writing class … I long for one … maybe if and when the women come to my house with their mss … I will get some help and advice … I need badly to turn a corner … it is worse than knitting a sock … I am stuck on a heel … I am a few stitches off a new way of writing you see … a more connected and yet, fictional way … just can’t do it yet … but I am at it a lot all day it is so quiet here … I am eating vegetables and fruit so it is easy to cook and there is a microwave so, in a trice, a few vegetables are done … it is, perhaps, even better than having companions as I am so used to being alone and not drinking and eating the odd thing I like to eat it suits me and there is much space and time and peace … a veritable dream …

Hugh and Cathy are coming up to stay at my house tonight … they came the last two weekends, as you know … he loves it …

Good news in the post … I wrote, as I said, to Fran Hernon of New Woman with my nerve screwed to the sticking post to ask for $1,250 for my story ‘Friends’ … refusing her offer of $500 … no reply for a while, so I wondered if I had overdone it … but today a letter of apology! … can you believe it? … saying she had made a mistake with a writer of my reputation! … oh là là … and she would be glad to pay the amount and would I like to come to lunch? … Downstairs, the administrator a young woman called Suzie, is promptly typing an invoice for me as was requested in the letter (and as I don’t know how to do it) …

No word yet from Collins; they have my C.V. and other stuff. Tim read out the quote I wrote of the kind of book I planned to write … he thinks it is fetching … I said I am not really interested in economics or politics … I had to say that or else they might fear I would write a downer of a book all full of unemployed Maoris and dejected farmers and high white mountain tops with pure clean winds blowing with two small toy town cities on the islands … which is, in fact, my view of NZ … but no doubt I will be proved wrong … The NZ Consul says he thinks I have a good chance of getting the Australian/New Zealand grant that Tim has applied for.[149]

149 The rest of this letter is missing.

Varuna (until 21st July) 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for the letter and your wonderful green pineapple. I do like it so much and have it here on the fireplace shelf above a great roaring fire … it is cold, a silver day again … but still and bright, very lovely in fact.

I am off up to the typist to get my Yaddo application off to the Literature Board … nothing ventured … etc … but I think it would be a help to me for my poetry to get to America and talk to some poets there … it is not a good thing that as an Australian poet I have never been to USA and only with the great struggle of ordering the odd book, occasional book, I mean, and taking the American Poetry Review for fifteen years … have I been able to keep vaguely in touch …

Yaddo is better than the others in Paris or Rome to my mind, as it has people there to talk to, and that is what I also need. This dropping into a city with a foreign language and nobody there you know is a terrible mistake in many cases … a nightmare; people become suicidal … it is badly done and needs some help to that problem I think … it is o.k. of course, if they come with their partner or family as some do … otherwise it can be hell … This place, Varuna is challenging enough, even though it is my country and my language and I am well used to being alone and even enjoy it … but the hours do need organising or there is a deep silence that can give rise to panic or a feeling of terrible loss that rises like a fume from a lake …

Hugh was up with Cathy for the weekend … he was 30 yesterday. We had a wonderful time and after dinner at La Salle on Saturday they stayed here in a room heated and cosy … this was a treat for us all and Hugh was full of relish and joy at this place … it reminded him of Howard’s End as the windows here are of old glass that wobbles in the light and slightly distorts the view in an beautiful way which was also in the film, he says …

Drusilla[150] and Marion Halligan are coming to my women writers’ weekend on 24th July. I do hope this goes well … nobody else yet, but maybe Jacqui Kent can come … I think a lot about the food, as you can imagine and I hope to heaven I can manage something tasty … all Italian I think … that is my plan … I want it done beforehand, so I am not fussing around … at present I am keen on big roasts of pork leg with good vegetables, as I did that here on Sunday for Hugh’s lunch and it was very good with baked whole apples done in the microwave where they get mushy and not sour but full of their own green johnny apple tartness and flavour. It is not greasy at all … not unless you wish to eat the crackling … and it seems a good winter dish … slightly lavish though it is not dearer than a leg of lamb, in fact cheaper here … but for the rest, well something will come to mind … at least I can do that fig and nut cake you like and a panforte … I’ve done some salsa verde all bright green and that can go with meat or pasta …

150 Drusilla Modjeska, Australian author.

A woman has just rung from Queensland asking if a set of actors doing a show could use the ‘Breasts’ … and vaguely hope for $100 dollars but she is equally vague, so there it is … one can’t hope or demand money from poor actors, badly funded, but if there is some money, she says she will send it … yet I’m glad to be included and hope it is a winner …

The farm sounds lovely … I am looking forward to my stay immensely … Do you think I could bring Jack up there for a few days, if Mary agrees to this? I would send him home on a plane with a hostess and pay for that separately … I think it would be lovely for him to be on a real farm and now that Les is away for three months it would give Mary a break from him.

I go to New Zealand end of August for two months … I have a two book deal with HarperCollins $1500 ‘up front’ as Tim puts it. $9000 on signature of contract and $4000 on delivery of the book on New Zealand or islands, or whatever it is to be … I do want a lot of islands in it to give it more interest to the cover and appeal … Then, next May or April I will go to Africa and the rest of the money comes then … not much left then … but I must keep this money most carefully, of course, to have plenty for Africa. Tim has asked for $6000 from the New Zealand Association, no Foundation … we should hear about that in August he says … He has gone to New Zealand and is to talk with Libby, the garden designer, in Auckland who came to lunch and who has written a long letter full of addresses and ideas and an invitation to stay with her … also, small hotels, all over New Zealand which are less than $30 dollars a night, some only $17 dollars … a chain that are not all owned by one person, but family pubs joined up for this idea …

So the rest of the year will be busy after my visit to the farm.

I have to do a talk for Glen Muller,[151] a bit of nonsense really, I feel full of chagrin! I agreed when she rang, there is no money in it, and not more than 30 people … but I did agree; it is a Sunday brunch … a reading group of women … I will stay four or five days with Beverley Fitzgerald, who is at Mt. Glorious, after I leave the farm … then home and then New Zealand post-haste, or I will not get the book done in time to do the Hyde Pk. Barracks museum job if that does get funding, as that is due in Nov. for nine weeks …

151 A Brisbane-based bookseller.

Funny how all the blockages and frustration of the early part of the year have cleared and now all is flowing and I must hasten and be careful and work hard …

I have told the Hudsons on the phone that I am leaving. They took it well enough, Nick was very polite, being long used to such talks after Heinemann, I suppose, but Sam snapped and wished me luck and slammed down the phone … oh well.

So I hope my contract with HarperCollins does not fall through, as Tim vows Lisa won’t let him down, but she wanted to announce it to New Zealand sales people who were over last week and I was reluctant to tell the Hudsons until I had a firm contract in my cold hand.

Again, I thank you for the lovely pineapple and your letter … I do hope your Bend of the River book goes well … I think it’s a glorious idea and will sell incredibly—it will be famous mark my words.

Love. Jill.

Varuna,

141 Cascade Street, Katoomba. 2780.

Tuesday, 7th July 1992.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

I hope you have a good school holiday with the children … I wonder if you went to the coast … maybe you are still away.

The house was built in 1939 and I was told Eleanor Dark designed it herself, but I don’t think that can be so … it is quite Italian looking, austere 30s style with a lovely staircase … all very modest but elegant, a feeling I like very much and feel very comfortable and at ease in. The house, I suppose, owes a fair bit to Russian Constructivism, as it has a vaguely deco air, and this is apt enough, as both the Darks, Dr. Eric and Eleanor, were socialists. There is a lovely building in the big old garden, full of rhododendrons and azaleas and oaks and so forth, where E. did her writing all set among the trees with her desk there, all as she left it … The combination of bareness in the house with a sort of mulberry paint on the dining room walls with linen-covered curved window seat to match and with cedar furniture is beautiful. All the house has a floral carpet in dark colours … new and yet right for the period of the house … oak furniture in the room I use of a 30s kind and green and cream bathrooms full of tiles and refurbished utterly and sympathetically with no additions except paint and blinds. It has a restrained elegant minimalist feeling of real comfort of a very unostentatious kind. I feel very very happy in this atmosphere. There are cascade falls nearby and lots of good walks … I got lost on Saturday so I have not gone far since … it is easy here as everything looks the same to me … once I get into a street, I mean, or down a hill … bush or houses all look much alike.

Hugh is 30 next Monday and he and Cathy are coming up for the weekend at my house. John Miller[152] rang again looking for Hugh’s number recently and said you were wonderful to them and they had great meals with you and a very good time … he invited Hugh and Cathy up but Hugh, having accepted for this weekend, forgot it was his birthday …

152 Newcastle psychiatrist, husband of Ghilly Sullivan.

I can see green bower birds on the lawn hopping about … they like this garden and I watch them often and now a red and blue parrot has flown into a tree … up here it is like being in a hide … I long to see the blue male bower bird … he must be nearby … they are more shy than the females and the juveniles … but surely this is his harem … I see now six of them on the lawn … Some daphne is out in the garden here very, very early for the mountains. I put some beside my bed … it reminds me of Hugh’s birth as it was by my bed then … I expect your great bush is out … oops, no doubt it got dug up in the alterations I remember …

There is a good little library in this house. I am reading R. Drewe’s A Cry in the Jungle Bar (Picador). I am not mad about this book but will read anything of his to see how he arrived at Our Sunshine … We had a talk at the book fair and I told him how sorry I was he did not get any of the prizes (the Banjo was announced that day) for Our Sunshine. He said he needed the money … When he is dead the country will laud him to the skies and sell his book by the thousands and make a film of it and maybe his son will benefit … but until then, it is slim pickings for him. I read Yacka 3 here and there is an interview with him by Candida and one with Glenda Adams … I feel daunted and yet encouraged reading these talks … if you can understand that … their mad dedication and obsessiveness is consoling and their sheer bloody skill is daunting … At times through this book I felt an utter fraud. A real sham. Terrible feelings …

I just reviewed the new Christina Stead’s vol. one of Letters and also Spalding Gray’s first novel … he is a sort of performance artist, I think … a sort of Laurie Anderson type … he did Swimming to Cambodia at an Adelaide Festival … and I kick myself that I didn’t see it as it would have informed me for this odd novel … a camp romp this book … skilled and wise and ironic and tawdry yet gripping, while I also felt quite repelled at the late 20th century indulgences. An Amsterdam bathhouse gay scene not to be forgotten in a hurry … All rubber and lather and stench and groans and voyeurism … repelling yet enthralling … I have never wondered what men did in these places and now I know. Men’s sexuality (excuse me Bob) is so different at times from women’s, I truly think if nobody was looking they would fuck a gum tree. Or, as Wendy says, they would fuck a chook if they thought no one was looking.

Mary is working from home at the moment and says their office is moving … she is happy and seems well and so’s Jack …

Well, my dear friends, that is the news … I do hope your work is going well and that you have had a good break and good school holidays with the children.

Love from Kate.

Elanora,

4th August 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for lending me the farm … it is wonderful here with Jack. Julie laughed yesterday and said ‘Jill, I get a shock seeing you watching over a little one … I am not used to it.’ She brought over a great basket of toys for Jack who tipped them all out at once … ‘You will curse me,’ she said to me but I bless her as he is happy indoors with them when he is not out with me … at present he is driving a white truck through what he calls cauliflower … which is dolomite, I think around the trees … his white hair and the other whites all blend … then a white peacock walks past … Jack is wearing a little cream straw hat with the lemon ribbon … perhaps it was Brie’s or Natali’s … before he has always used your old hat with the navy and red ribbon … I am wearing something distinguished … a hole in the top … I came, you see, without hats as I came straight from Canberra as you know …

I am outside beside the mango on the little pink dressing table I washed down and a chair with a snake painted on it … quite apt for Eden …

I see Fred[153] daily and we speak briefly … he does not know where the lime leaves are … I used an apple something leaf or two in a chicken curry … no harm done … but not to be repeated, as leaves are dangerous things, I know … it did smell like lime though, and was double … joined at the base I mean, like Siamese twins …

153 A tenant on the farm.

Now my life, after a lot of blockage and stultifying stoppages is planned until January 1994 … with the two books and teaching in January 1993 and the Museum residency November for nine weeks this year and proofs of New Zealand in November 1992 and a launch, I guess, April, before I go to Africa … then in March a talk in Canberra at the Word Festival to the food symposium lunch … what on? … avocados or lemons or something I can dream up … before that, Perth, if they get funding for a talk on something about travel … as you know, these books take not only the writing, but then the talk … you are good at avoiding the talk, but my income depends on these books, so I must go as something, fate or an angel, drives … not, I hope the devil … but it seems like the devil at times, but mainly, I came glad of the chance, though it is a drain at times … you have heard me grumble and groan and look half dead …

I applied for Yaddo in New York State, October–November 1993 when I get back from Africa and get the proofs in … maybe I told you this … I feel I ought to see USA … I am too ignorant.

Your trees are gleaming in the sun pouring down, not a breath of wind … the white peacock displays daily like an angel’s halo … a moon’s bride … an image to faint for … it is like birth and death all at once …

Again, thank you for the gift of the farm … it is a marvellous time! The boy is learning and is happy and well and a most ardent egg gatherer … a bantam brought out two new chickens yesterday. Fred cut off a rooster’s head yesterday and I did the rest … he doubted I could do it, but Julie assured him I was impeccable in that area … my record would make him blanch … Jack watching said ‘Oh gewey, gewey …’ I muttered ‘Courage, Jack, stamina … stamina …’

Yesterday, just as I said to Julie ‘I am going to Africa in April’, I opened the mail a packet from Leura and out fell a book on Africa sent by a man who was in India when I was who had read Angels and wanted to say thanks—he had published a lovely book on Africa, (not by him but published by him) and sent it … what a good chance that was … how can THESE THINGS HAPPEN and go unremarked?

I signed the contract yesterday and sent it off to Tim for the HarperCollins deal. I will not go to New Zealand until the money comes through but expect to leave by 1st September or I will not get back in time for the Museum job if it gets funded … frankly I will be relieved if it does not …

The geese here are in an heroic mood and will not be approached for anything … they are laying, of course … it is a terrifying experience to go down there … one lays eggs outside the hen’s nest (inside the big pen nearest the large bay tree by the river) … so the poor hen is harried off her nest by the brown goose anxious to lay for her own perverse reasons, exactly below that (she’s just on a few sticks of straw). So it is eye to eye for minutes at a time then black hen retreats and returns, no doubt bursting to lay, and so too is the goose … all this when around acres of laying space lie idle and vacant … how like us … the white goose, the mate, guards off all comers and Jack and I stand high on the railing watching and not daring to get a golf ball tantalisingly nearby … we bide our time … A duck, deep in the dark fathoms of the goose yard is in a teabox with about ten eggs as you may know and she is very hungry so we give her a pile of food and how she gobbles … we may be lucky enough to see the ducklings before we go …

Fred works daily in the orchard, bug paste is going on today … yesterday raking the straw went on and putting out dynamic lifter on each tree … I am sure no news will gladden you like that …

I hope all is flourishing at Awaba Street with you.

Anton is here putting in a window downstairs on the bedroom both yesterday and today.

Love and a lot of thanks, Jill

Elanora, Queensland

5th August 1992.

Dear Marion,

Your letter has just come … I was planning to write to you but not sure how to do it … since you can barely read my handwriting, my typing being so laughable, and I wanting to keep some respect from you, and not wanting you to think me a ratbag when I talk about the farm … so putting it off, I strolled down to the mail box, an old kero tin with a wagging lid, flopping in the wind, and your letter was my only one.

I think your submission for our book is a great bit of work … my, what a lucid model of enthusiasm … we are going to get on well … I am enthusiastic but not lucid … one must get into my boat among quite tossing waves and set off, disregarding a rain of ink, turmoil and spray and even, at times, stopping up the leaks with one’s pure faith … but in the end I hope the sunset view was worth it as that was what I was sailing towards … but it needs a trusty sailor to finally arrive … many leap overboard crying ‘Enough!—this way lies madness’ and other such wise but craven things …

By now you may have had a reply to your submission and letter. I will ring you when I get in to town … it is too far to walk with Jack, even though he is a game boy, the hills would do for us. I wait for a lift. We are a pair at the moment in hot sun, he in long thick pants, a little girl’s straw hat with a lemon ribbon and a white singlet. I am in Jerry’s old white shorts, a shirt tied round my chest for modesty and a hat with the crown falling out. Because I came here straight from Canberra I have no cool clothes so must use those Jerry leaves here for work in the orchard.

I am beside the giant mango tree with a peacock staggering round displaying like a pre-Raphaelite book cover. Not even a peahen in sight. Maybe he thinks Jack’s one. Or maybe it just feels like opening a fan (as one does) at the opera on a hot night, no viewer

necessary.

Each morning we run down and let out the geese and ducks and chooks before Fred the caretaker can. Spring being near has sent the geese into a frenzy and I must put Jack up on a railing when I try to get hens’ eggs from their nests, as a goose has begun to lay at the base of a hen’s nest. The poor hen is harried off her nest by the brown goose anxious to lay in just that place, for her own perverse reasons, on a few sticks of straw on the floor … so it is eye to eye for minutes at a time and then the black hen retreats and returns, no doubt bursting to lay—any woman thinking of childbirth would be empathetic, and so too is the goose, standing waiting for a free moment to sit down and complete her fate for the day. The white goose, the mate, guards off all comers while Jack and I watch, not daring to get a golf ball, shot in from the course next door, lying so tantalising close by. All this when around acres of laying space lie idle and vacant … it seems positively human to be so perverse … I am scared of angry geese as they can break your arm easily with their great wings beating … no wonder Leda gave in gracefully …

The river is still and shining, Jack is playing in some dolomite put around the orange tree. A peacock has just leapt down from the handle of a huge cement basket of yellow flowers set under this mango, the

river runs behind and above, his head cutting across the hills with his blue crown erect in the sky.

At night Jack and I have a nightclub time where he plays the piano and sings my requests while I must dance and then stand and clap at the end of the song. His father is a professional musician so I imagine he has seen this scene … he can give a ripping rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ and ‘Little Bo Peep’, hammered out with the deep stormy notes, when she is lost, is a brilliant challenge to my dancing. We wind up with ‘Here Come the Dinosaurs’, a free verse instantaneous performance that sends us to bed weak.

The white peacock is displaying like an angel’s halo … not a breath of wind, and the sun pouring down … she rattles her white feathers like the moon’s bride … an image to faint for … it is like birth and death all at once.

I am so much enjoying Lovers’ Knots … truly, Marion, I am filled with admiration. I think often of A.S. Byatt from the tone and the spare prose. Is that annoying to hear?

I am not as far into it as I would be, having Jack here, and 6.30 a.m. beginnings, the day ends early … but I am relishing the book and I thank you for it. (Why Blimp? Is it a trick?) I think the ‘Bear Slayer’ (?) chapter is wonderful … and ‘Man Has Only Three Questions to Ask’ … that’s a wonderful chapter. All this is done with the lightest touch … it never sticks or stalls, but glides lightly and beautifully. Really, Marion, you know I admire your writing because the thing has a will of its own … or as Christina Stead once said of her machine, jumps like a foal … because long before I ever met you, I said so in print … and you just get a firmer and firmer grip on your style and wide range … no, range wider and wider … also your quite encyclopaedic knowledge is impressive, but not just that, as that would be a bore if it was only that, but it is illuminating and lovely to read and I learn and that’s a real pleasure … mictouricious (?) or some such word … from micturition … the verb to pee … no micturate is the verb I suppose … I barely went to school and it shows constantly … music and spelling were on days I didn’t go.

I am reading The Origin of Species at the same time as Lovers’ Knots and now looking at this peacock obviously rattling and displaying to me, as there is nothing else nearby to cause it to do so except, perhaps the pure pleasure, I just cannot understand how this could have come by chance … even on the wings’ lower edges like a selvedge on a yardage of material, are closely done smaller eyes side by side … how could this be chance … I must read on …

And, luckily you can stop …

Love and many thanks,

Kate.

Jerry’s Farm.

16th August 1992.

Dear Marion,

What news? I will try to ring when I get to a phone soon … maybe at home tomorrow … I am keen to know … you have no news yet.

A coincidence … I read in a book Jerry lent me, Fields of Glory, that St Clare is the patron saint for glaucoma (or is it better that she is the one to whom you should pray if you have glaucoma?) Now that April Clare could possibly join us for the book project, I thought it seemed like a sign … one way or another, we will have something about glaucoma in this book.

I have just been round the poultry to say goodbye with Jack … death and life everywhere … the duck sitting on eight eggs for the whole time we’ve been here, sixteen days, was hounded off her nest and now the geese have made her let the eggs grow cold … life suddenly chilled into death … the goose sitting beside the dam, which is covered each night with a cage to keep away foxes, as I said, hatched out her one egg this morning … Jerry saw the gosling and the mother is dangerous with fear and fury if anyone comes near … but I suppose she will stroll up to the pens soon with it, wobbling and flapping behind her up the hill.

A little blue dinghy which was got from the dump, the wonderful Tugan tip, is pulled up beside the dam now, and Jerry is going to fill it full of marigolds to sit there to be seen from the house … a surreal and beautiful sight … it has too many holes to float but is a famous old design, Anton tells us (he is the first caretaker here and works here still occasionally … a genius for clocks and fishing and building) … there is a fishing rod leaning on this old pink dressing table (which is my desk) which he left there yesterday for Jerry to use in the river had we got back early enough from a trip to Brisbane. I did a talk and we left and went to lunch by the sea with big boats pulled up, a marina at Southport. I ate some Cajun fish … an overrated dish in my opinion … it tasted like something cooked in a shed … maybe it’s an acquired taste … some seem to think highly of it … but like most painfully poor cuisines, the rich adore them and make much of them; Mexican, for instance … a few old corn chips with some melted cheese is not my idea of anything decent.

I’ve just been told by a woman who strode up saying ‘I’m not interrupting you, am I?’, that you can save eggs that have been left unhatched by putting them in a frypan, not to eat, but on cotton wool and down low, turned on low, every hour for a few minutes … out hatched baby turkeys from this method, she said, when she invented it … but they must be kept from the base of the pan when hatched as their feet will burn. I wonder now if I could save those duck eggs … but can Jerry be inveigled into a twenty-four hour frypan watch?

Did I tell you I saw a goose lay an egg? … the peacock is standing again on the basket handle silhouetted against the hill and the sky with yellow flowers beside his tail which hangs down like a scene from Turandot.

A little blue wren which had spent yesterday morning dashing itself against the glass all round the kitchen and dining room was killed this morning by a cat and yesterday a black rat was killed by the same cat … a gruesome business … raw is the word for life here …

Have you read Elizabeth Jolley’s The Goose Path: A Meditation? Jerry gave it to me to read … really, it’s a sublime piece of writing … she takes off like a goose in flight … then glides on over the water.

Did my gloves turn up? I always thought they would appear someday … on a path or somewhere at your house. I lose a lot of things, so it is not important … maybe they fell out of the taxi when I got out later.

Well, this is the last you will hear from me on the subject of poultry for some time … it will be quite another topic … wood, may be, if I write again … or maybe New Zealand lakes … some such thing.

One good thing is, if April Clare does throw her lot in with us, she, at least, has been known to tipple, and in my presence. We both have done more than that … we’ve positively been swigging, so you can rest on that point … she’s a cook too … mostly modern French, of course, having been so long in Paris researching her thesis. Also, I have been thinking about a title. How does Blue Socks strike you? More modern than blue stockings.

If this letter seems more disjointed than usual it is because my offsider here, Batman, keeps calling ‘Let’s go Wobbin’ … and from time to time I must get up and run around with my arms out … a cross between a furious goose, a boy pretending to be an aeroplane and a duck taking off on the dam.

I hope Graham’s[154] pleurisy’s gone.

154 Marion Halligan’s husband, the late Graham Halligan, with whom she had two children, Lucy and James. Lucy passed away in 2004 at the age of 38.

Love from Kate.

Paihia.

Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

12th September, 1992.

Dear Jerry,

It rains here every day but there are bursts of sun so it really doesn’t matter. I’ve been kindly treated. Libby, my host in Auckland, had me for three days. Her garden business is designing and as she’s got four children, she’s very busy. I came here last Monday and went out in a boat to see the islands. It’s a bit like Greece and a bit like Scotland, too, and very like New Zealand.

I ate a whitebait fritter for the sake of Keri Hulme (as she talks a lot about fishing for her whitebait.) It tasted like a pancake, no fish in it at all.

Your garden will be coming out for spring now … yet I hear on the news it’s cold and wet in Sydney … but surely it’s warmed up a bit by now.

I saw a Kiwi bird … the egg is 20% of body weight and that of a chook is 5–8%. Now that’s a bird you haven’t got yet. They’re dopey and feed only in the night so I guess a fox would get it … what news of the farm? I do hope the new couple are satisfactory.[155]

155 The new caretakers.

I am immersed in the manuscript to a degree that’s made me quite hypnotised … I think of almost nothing else … 23 pages done so far … about 187 to go … give me strength … I go to Perth next Friday, 18th, so I might ring you from the airport to see how you are …

I hired a bike yesterday and spent four hours riding … I got bewildered on the way back, took a walking track full of deep mud and spent one and a half hours almost carrying the bike … my heart pounding, as no one was about and it felt dangerous, … luckily it was Saturday and everyone goes to rugby then … all the men anyhow … anyhow—that’s how the women say it here … it’s quite a pretty accent as you know, but I find it quite a strain to hear … ‘it is ebsolutely febulous … unreal’ … that’s how one woman spoke while she kindly drove me round … a friend of Libby’s, another woman, with no career, an angry husband, and nothing much to do … I looked at her and thought ‘there but for the grace of god’ … she was sober, decent, innocent and deserved better from her life … yet she could have made it better, maybe she didn’t hear of adult education or wasn’t interested or felt her teenage sons wouldn’t cope without her there full time … I met another like her (trapped for coffee with them) … I simply stared into her blue grey eyes and her perfect blonded, coiffed, set hair … what passions rise in breasts like these? How do they stand it? None of this, of course, can go in the book … I think New Zealand is so pure and unpolluted and green it must be like England was before the coming of trains and the industrial revolution. Ruskin would have lots to say … he’d like it … but there’s terrible erosion. They fertilise green hills for sheep and cattle and the red soil runs like tears down to the sea. No one plants a tree on these sore hills … yet there’s 60% unemployment in a nearby town … I go back to Auckland today at noon and tomorrow go to Coromandel until Thursday when I get back to the plane and Perth, as I have said. What will Perth hold? The winner of the poetry prize, you might be interested to hear, is a poem called ‘At the River Bend’ … an older woman wrote it … it’s about her time, with two babies, going broke on a farm she loved … simple, lovely poem. It brought tears to my eyes … she’s not sophisticated, but I prefer her to the other one full of angst and me … and he and how it doesn’t work … etc etc … I’ve done heaps of that … one gets tired of it … I am reading Jane Eyre … it suits this place … this has a gothic feeling … it has dark things … many spells … massacres, murders, rapes and dark hills full of storms … if you read the description of St John in Jane Eyre you will find, as no doubt you already have, the utterly succinct description of a male bully; silent, taciturn, angry, sullen, full of mental threat … it is so superbly done and deeply understood … And how the lass stands up to him! … it makes me want to cheer … but then she gives in too … I adore this book and dread when it will end …

When I got in yesterday, I had to hose the bike so I found a tap behind the post office and got the worst off there … my new green suede shoes were brown with it and my green Italian pants I got with you in Queensland were spotted with mud … they were not designed for trail bike style riding through New Zealand mud … I was a spent force, I can tell you … the manager here saw me walk in and came out and got a glass of water … The path went through mangrove swamps a bit and that was the easiest and I only had to stay on the twisting length, but up and down the path was just glug all the way … fifty times I got back on and stopped and clutched a nearby tree … yet I’m glad I did it … it came out at the place where the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed … I’d been there first earlier that day … it is most impressive … a great war boat there and beautiful museum.

14/9/92—I’m at Rarotonga not Rotorua for a night.

Love. Jill.

Huka Lodge, New Zealand.

16th September 1992.

Dear Philip and Jenny. I hope you’re fine—this place is about seven stars on the Richter scale of hotels. I gape! It’s a fly fishing place but none of the guests fish so I do not feel out of place. I’m working like stink hence my silence. I go to Perth 18th for four days then back to do the south island.

Love. Kate. XX

James Cook Central,

Wellington, New Zealand.

24th September 1992.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Last night I dreamt of you—a nice dream too. Here are some poems in lieu of a real letter and/or cards. I must do the book and so am not sending cards etc. very often. I went to Perth and gave the Poetry Prize this weekend. The Lily poem and Islands are New Zealand of course and the rest Perth as you will see. Perth has my heart, New Zealand, my work. I hate the hotel. I hope you both are flourishing and your work going well too. My love to you both.

Kate.

P.S. I go to Cook Island 15th Oct to 2nd Nov. Home 3/11/92.

The Rarotongan Resort Hotel.

Cook Islands.

Friday, 23rd October 1992.

Dear Jerry,

Will this ever reach you I wonder? Things are very vague here. I am working up to nine pages a day—the most I’ve ever done. It’s hot and wet at times, but lovely—all palms and sea and the scent of gardenias to the beat of drums.

The canoes and boats that have been rowed and sailed here from New Zealand and other islands are so moving I cry when I see them. They use only traditional navigation and are greeted with flowers, tears, drums and dancing as they step on shore in grass skirts, leaves and tapu cloth. I hope you are feeling invincible!

Love. Jill.

P.S. Jerry we may not ever be in Paris together again, but if we’re still alive, in four years time, we need our heads read if we don’t go to Western Samoa, as that is where the next Festival is to be. The Marianas people are dancing next, the Torres Strait Islander people have just danced in pampas grass woven skirts, oars, spears and feathers. Much of the time I just let my tears run down. Love. Jill.

P.P.S. Forgive this but if you saw the circumstances you’d understand. I’m on a log in the shade of the edge of a grass hut and have a skirt of red feathers!

Cook Islands.

28th October 1992.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

It’s all drums, feathers and flowers here—it’s like trying to describe a fire to write about it. The book’s up to page one hundred and fifty seven and I only hope it’s decent. Hard to tell at this pace and intensity—a kind of fury—six hundred and eighty performances held in two weeks. Last night, the closing ceremony, all the dancers and musicians performed, marched with trucks covered in green vines, flowers in everyone’s hair, drummers in the trucks, people are I think really usually happy here—it’s not just romantic piffle. A man called someone Christian from Pitcairn Island gave the P.M. gifts from the people as all the other countries did but he stood out to me as it seemed amazing to find Fletcher’s great-great-great-grandson here. I’ve left the hotel and now board with Mrs. Marguerite Storey the first woman Speaker in Parliament in the world—her great grandson is here on the verandah calling me ‘Mumma’. I come home on 2/11/92 and the manuscript[156] is due to go in 10th so I hope it’s enough. How long’s a piece of string? I hope you are both feeling invincible.

156 Lilies, Feathers & Frangipani: Travels in the Cook Islands and New Zealand (1993).

I haven’t had a day’s illness thank God. Speaking of God, last night we were asked to hear many people, dancers, administrators, the P.M. etc. and finally God! So we did. I felt most peculiar and wondered if I should but I did. Church here is beautiful, the hymns are Maori and it’s like being in the middle of a Welsh Choir and Gregorian chanting, lots of Monks. Loud and beautiful! I just let the tears roll down. At every event priests open and close it and when there’s no priest handy, as at the Press Conference by the P.M., the Chief of Police makes an extemporaneous prayer to the journalists who bow their heads with, I think, possibly, amazed hearts.

It’s hot and wet. I hope you are enjoying Spring/Summer and that we will meet soon in the mountains and share a loaf with wine. See, I am sounding Biblical too now.

Love. Kate.

Leura.

Noon. 12th November 1992.

Dear Marion,

Your interviews in ABC 24 Hours are most interesting—I’m on them now in bed in the cold and your talk on the Short Story is by far the most interesting of the three of you—lucid and sharp.

Now what news? I rang and rang you. Boy! Do I know your phone number off by heart! Margaret’s left C. Brown,[157] Tim says. Oh dear. I’ve been home eight days and given up and gone to bed as it’s so cold. It’s horrible and lovely to be home. After wearing a sarong and flowers in my hair it’s cruel to have to lug logs to a fire—lucky to have logs, of course, I realise that.

157 Curtis Brown Literary Agency.

Shall we do our book? I find a push is often necessary to get a thing ‘up’ as they say in the film industry, and I am willing to push and follow this idea through as it should be good and fun and make money and be good to have at last women’s talk instead of only men’s and our talk could be interesting to others as it certainly is to me—and the topics are often concealed, silent, almost invisible, forbidden things—they need air and light and freedom and lightness could come. Who knows?

I’ve been in a red feather skirt with a lei (? Sp?) on my head of tuberoses. It’s a halo, cool like an angel’s breast, scented and soothing, moist and green. One cannot have a fight or have a row in a crown of flowers! Generals should wear them!

All I’ve had on arrival home is rejections—my Hyde Park Barracks Museum job as writer in residence got refused—my Yaddo application the same (Why?) Island Magazine rejected all five new poems! Oh dear. But I heard my Selected Poems is on the Australian Literature course for Macquarie University for ’93, so that’s a consolation.

Wendy Jenkins, I hear, on Writers’ Week in Perth, refuses to have me, though I was invited, on the Travel Panel, as she doesn’t like me, though we’ve never met and a man on the Panel refused as he says I’m too popular. I think I told you this—it’s a damn nuisance—how can one win except to go on doggedly like a draught horse in a storm with a plough in mud and a needy farmer beside saying ‘Giddy-up, Paddy!’ Surely one day this paddock will bear a beautiful crop and those who stood sneering or chucking rocks will turn away ashamed. Mainly I wish not to care or mind at all and sometimes I come close to that blessed state. At others I feel like Lizzie Borden.

I hope you are thriving and feeling invincible!—and have got to work at last and not been too dissuaded by the rest of the world and all the brouhaha that needs to be attended.

Best wishes to Graham and Lucy—I hope all is well with them both and yourself.

Love from Kate.

I’ll call again tomorrow for a talk if I can raise you. I fear the worst from Gwen’s silence.[158]

158 Gwen Harwood, the poet, who was invited to be the third writer of the book of conversations planned by Marion Halligan and Kate. The book never came to fruition.

Leura.

Monday, 30th November 1992.

Dear Jerry,

I was so glad to hear from you. To hear the good news that you are safe was a great pleasure. Thank God.

I know from what you said that you feel you will be all right at home in the first few days. But if you would like, I could easily come down and take a few cups of tea in or wash up or do whatever might be of use and maybe cook a meal for Bob and yourself … whatever … but I know you have Sheridan but just let me know.

I go to Melbourne Saturday for the Montsalvat weekend. I only go out there Sunday as it is so full of poets all day long and half the night I dread a day stuck out there. I always like to be able to escape … the taxi fare would be huge so once there I must stay all day. I go out Sunday morning with Lynn Hard[159] in a taxi that his work will pay for and come back late at night as I am on a panel in the evening and read at 11A.M.

159 Poet and librarian at Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra.

On the Monday I go to Mildura, as I said on the phone, to be met by Mandy who will come down from the desert with her group and collect me.

My own book is with Lisa and Tim has a copy—I have to pay $1200 dollars to the typist for 170 pages of a mss. That was a clean typed copy to begin with, with a bit of pen alteration and some spelling errors, I am amazed … it is $13 dollars an hour. I should have got a price on cost per page, I see now. It is tax exempt though, so I just learn and go on.

Wendy’s Bella’s[160] wedding is 2nd Jan so I will go over about 30th Dec for that and have a week at Pt. Willunga with Wendy after it. Then I teach from 14th Jan for six weeks at the Continuing Education thing.

160 Wendy McBeath’s daughter Annabel.

Marion Halligan is the new Chairperson of the Literature Board though I think it is not yet announced. We had dinner while I was in Canberra last weekend before the one past. I am glad of this for her sake, and for my own as I am weary of enemies on boards who have made it clear they do not wish me well. I must not think of these matters too often as there is no hope if I do … plug on cheerfully is the way, I think.

Hugh and Cathy rang last night … they won’t be up for Christmas after all but off to Bali so I am casting about for what to do. Mary goes to Adelaide with Jack. I am going to Newcastle to Ghilly & John on 24th.

Hugh is a continual joy and cheerful … we go to Mudgee on the 18th December for a fishing trip. Cathy invited me as her playmate to go to wineries … I was so happy, as I think it is a sign she likes me … I think I have told this news to you before … sorry.

Hugh got a big trout from fly-fishing when I was in Canberra at Wentworth Falls Lake. Two and a half pounds. He got one three weeks before that and gave it to the O’Connors, so is keen as mustard … gets up at 6 a.m. and off he goes at the lake edge casting by 6.30 with a cough.

I will pop in and see you if it is not tiring to you before I go to Melbourne (unless you would like me to come and give you a hand on Wednesday when you leave hospital. I did hear what you said that you are OK and don’t need help but no harm in having offers, just in case …)

Well, I must knot a scarf round my neck and hop on the bike and get up to the post office or you won’t get this.

I love you Jerry and am very glad you are feeling better.

Love. Jill.

Leura.

29th December 1992.

Dear Marion,

Happy New Year to you and to Graham and Lucy and James.

I replied to the photo request for the Festival and the biography details yesterday and hope it suffices.

I will be in Adelaide at a friend’s daughter’s wedding and then a week at the beach from tomorrow onwards so thought I should write and say a few things in case odds and ends need tidying. I will give a phone number, as soon as I know it, in case I am needed for something.

I will send you the piece I did on the trip to Lake Mungo with Mandy when it is typed in case it might be suitable for your Minerva anthology … Not sure, but it might interest you, as it is unusual and is about Australia in its amazing past. Mungo woman was the first cremation found in the world. Young, gracile, an entirely modern woman … it put Australian archaeology on the map, as before it had been the study of details of minor changes in tools. She is twenty-six thousand years old and the Adam to her Eve is forty thousand years old, so he wasn’t exactly the boy next door, but I guess for historians age is relative … she was buried in a red ochre pit, very sophisticated and earliest in the world too.

Mandy uses an ironing board out in the desert among the dunes, set up to paint on … a great sight.

I hope the festival goes well … lots of luck with it … I am gearing up for the talks … I have a slant on Carem[161] at last, which I hope is original …

161 A French chef.

Best wishes …

I hope too … lots of hope in this letter … that we can talk Gwen[162] around … if not, so be it … I am still keen and think it will be a book of great charm and interest and, politically, will break stoney ground needing a dig long ago.

162 Gwen Harwood.

(The machine has finally given up on small letters … the desert trip was too much … only capitals available now I am afraid … it gives a rather hectic feeling to any note which has enough of that anyway, so excuse this … maybe I will get another … and be a real devil.)

Warm wishes.

Love. Kate.

1993–1998

Leura.

13th March 1993.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

Well Labor won … thank god … a modern miracle … until the last week I thought they were gone goslings as Wendy would say. All, or many artists will be heaving sighs of relief.

Thank you for having me to stay … what a help you were and the strain of these things is immensely lifted by you in so many ways.

I have now discovered that I live utterly in the present when several talks are on … it is no use looking forward as that is full of worry and to look back is full of regret … I think of things I didn’t say or said and wished I hadn’t and so on and on so no thoughts other than what’s for breakfast … or in our case what’s for dinner is the best way.

I did love Albury Wodonga … thinking it a vast new housing estate as I’d been told ages ago by someone who hated it and that it was rather like Elizabeth, it held few charms for me … Not true … it is beautiful, wonderful old stone houses like all those big country towns, well cities … the river, a good life is possible there … my talk went well enough … a strain as it was in a laminex café with fluorescent lights … but it was the only restaurant other than in hotels in the whole town, the librarian Kate said who set it all up.

It was a sort of scam of hers as she’s a fan so she cooked the whole thing up …

For two and a half hours I sat at a table for four chatting until it was time to speak … I had that working muscle in my eye I can tell you by that time …

Next day after a night in a big very hot lush motel I had lain dreading the morning but at the library fifteen women came and we did a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ workshop where I told them practical things as fast as I could and gave out snippets of great modern writings to inspire them … at the end of this two hour session one came up and said, ‘Oh I don’t think I can do this. I can’t talk about myself …’ I said she did not need to ever and many writers never ever do, it would kill them, but she looked quite unconvinced and wafted off … I feel sometimes one must have a spoonful of just the right medicine for every individual if one is to hope to make people feel enabled and ambitious and hopeful and daring and up to it and willing to give it a try … but that’s not possible, so there’s a feeling of vague disappointment that they can’t see what you’re saying … but I am very willful and want everyone to be able and to feel the weights lift and the pulleys lowered and the engine throbbing and lights going on … and so forth … but it is for the lucky and blessed that this happens, those who are not blocked and fearful and damaged beyond that time in their life … but I am always wanting to stamp and wring my hands … I give them words like ‘funerals’, ‘eggs’, ‘sea’ and so forth to think of a few sentences to get their pen onto the page … enough of this … some do, some don’t. You face this daily, so it is not news to you …

Geremie Barme[163] sent his book and a kind note re the talk, which was a real pleasure to have from him.

163 Sinologist and author.

After this I was invited to go to a winery but though I had no wish to drink from barrels in sips and go from one cavern to another, I did want to see the countryside … but the women’s co-ordinator, Tricia, said as she was a bit late, it was too far, so Kate invited me to a Thai restaurant or cheese and bread under her fig tree … you know what I chose … I was glad as we went to a wonderful cheese shop, the best I have ever seen … specialty cheeses, hand made … dozens of types … Swissfield is the name … Australian but with that dreary name … but it was beautiful and I bought a pile of things … ewes’ yoghurt and ewes’ cheese for Hugh and goats cheese and a vile looking one, port wine cheese … a huge parmesan sat in a fridge like a great grey and cream and white crumbling cliff … about a metre across … the woman took it out to show me … and held it like a big baby in her arms … she said it had taken her an hour to cut it through and into two or three pieces … Italian … I got a kilo of that too.

In the country here you find these treasures … pockets of quality, as Jerry puts it … just astonishing riches … in a flat road a few scraggly trees, a service station, a dog, old fences, a motel, and there you could pass a big front parking yard and, a shop of concrete and glass inside, Aladdin’s cave …

So under the fig we sat at the back of an old stone house all re-decorated and renovated with floorboards … ‘Oh’, she said, ‘we wrecked two houses to get the boards for this’ … a cottage garden full of parsley and chillies and basil … by that I mean dozens …

… that was Jerry on the phone … she is a bit better … says I can stay on the farm on 20th April after I do two talks in Brisbane … she told me of Gay Bilson’s surrealist dinner at the food symposium … you have heard of it no doubt … tripe on the tables, raw … covered in vanilla for the smell and then ‘dead men’s bones’ and her daughter wrapped in bandages under a pile of grapes and figs rising up and all the waiters in bandages … is this surrealism? I wonder … it sounds more like food art … I think a real surrealist would just bring a dog into the room leading a man on all fours with a muzzle on his face … something like that … and the food perfectly normal … but maybe I’m wrong … just a feeling … surrealism itself, seems to me, not for decadence itself at all, just the opposite … nor for great opulence in times of one million unemployed … the food was too rich to eat Jerry said and the atmosphere too upsetting to dine within …

Annabel and Nick[164] the honeymooners have gone home … they left Friday after lunch … that was a good visit … she is so full of her pregnancy, in every sense, that she can talk almost only about what goes into her mouth and what she can and can’t do … all just as is right for that stage in life … the shock of being pregnant has bowled her over, as it did me too … I do not understand how men can hear so much in detail … it must sound so odd … are they jealous or relieved or bored? Myself, I think I’d be all of those things if I was a man … what about you Bob? Not that you, Mandy, were like Bella … and not that it is a crime that Bella is so besotted … it is merely interesting … thank you for having me and all your kindness … and the shoes and the belt and the lipstick.

164 Annabel McBeath and Nick Geramapopholos.

I am sorry I left before the children came home.

The flight in a six-seater to A.W. was magnificent—into the dusk all pink, over mountains—a truly ecstatic experience and wholly unexpected. A rare experience.

I hope your trip to Sydney was good, Bob, and the conference on the weekend. I hope to hear of it when we talk—no need to phone.

Your pink and white painting in the dining/living room is really wonderful—stern and lush all at once—a beautiful thing—very impressive Bob.

Thanks and love to you both and to Laura and Alexander.

Kate.

Leura.

15th March 1993.

Dear Marion,

Thank you for inviting me to the Word Festival. I enjoyed it and I hope the Committee felt my talks were suitable. I admit to being a bit flummoxed and drawing rather a long bow, as I said, on confectionery being the greatest of all the arts, but I did believe that cooking can be said to be.

Your talk with Robert Dessaix last night was a ripper—few are better than that! What a critic the man is—he harvests a book like a great gardener—really brilliant and he brings out such answers from you—I feel you really can respond to his questions as they’re so thoughtful and insightful and provoking.

I like your The Worry Box a lot and love several stories especially the title one and ‘Café Society’ but I haven’t finished it yet. Oh, and ‘Decay’. Great cover too!

Now, about Gwen—my courage failed, as I said. Yet fate gave me another chance, but a plane took it away. I found her at the airport, (as we were both leaving) and we spoke; she made me blush and almost cry and then I stood there staring, knowing I had another opportunity. She asked me to post a parcel and I followed her into her lounge agreeing and began, ‘Marion and I have had a new idea …’ ‘Have you?’ she said, ‘That’s nice’. At this I paused horrified, and we put our bags into the tray. At the other end Gwen was asked to reveal the contents of hers, she blushed, and I fled, hoping I hadn’t missed the Albury-Wodonga flight as mine was in the opposite direction to that lounge. No doubt Gwen feared I’d pursue her to Tasmania. Haven’t we all had those pressing people who, mistaking politeness for friendship or encouragement, stick on like fleas when one longs to shudder but daren’t fling them off. So, short of a letter to her with our new offer, i.e. go to Hobart ourselves, I feel we’re done for.

What of Lucy Frost? What of Rosie Scott? What about Sue Woolfe? Or Dorothy Hewett? What about Kate Grenville—she’s done the book with Woolfie and would, if she agreed, be terrific and a great seller (to be perfectly frank).

I think we could get Varuna for one of our weekends and my place and a hotel.

You must be done in with work—if you have time and energy to let me know what our next move should be, do.

If you and or Graham and Lucy feel like a weekend here with me to unwind, come.

With love.

Kate.

Leura.

25th March 1993.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

I am wondering how you are and hope you are enjoying the beautiful Canberra autumn … it is even better than here, I think … I am sending a few new poems which will say more than any letter … I sent one off to Southerly with some others last week … It was one N. said, when I told him the plan I had to write a poem about lovemaking with asthma, ‘It won’t sell …’ I replied ‘Want a bet?’ Well, satisfactorily in the extreme, Elizabeth Webby, the professor at S.U. took it and sent the others back two days later. So he can put that in his pipe … But now I wish I had waited for a newspaper, as it might be more apt there … never satisfied … but I am really … with just that mean, vain quibble.

I wrote to Barbara and Duncan yesterday … told them briefly of the party in January … sent a photo I had a spare of, of us all laughing and clapping at Ghilly’s jokes … and I hope they have written by now to you. I felt it was most unlike Barbara and must have been that she was busy or just forgot to write … She is normally the soul of good manners and generosity over these things.

I am making apple jelly … easier said than done … what with straining it overnight and boiling and so forth, now today, the sugar gets added and I can see already mine will not be clear!—as I let the puree into the juice … These old skills I thought little of when young now I see are as immense as an alchemist making gold in the study with smoke and explosions issuing forth to the alarm of the household perhaps … Believe me, if you see some jelly at a stall buy it … the contents are worth gold. It goes well with all game and also red meats, as you will know probably.

Mary’s job is thriving I am happy to report … she flies round town with posters she has designed … of the Andrews Sisters Sisters … young imitators … you see, of the famous ones … is particularly lovely … deep blue and gold … very swish … her firm handles these women … it, the firm, is called Hip Productions and she says it has a great reputation and when she mentions Frankie, her partner’s name, doors immediately open …

Jerry is coming up Thursday for a day or so as she is putting Justin’s Leura house on the market. Jerry is sad and withdrawn … I do wonder though, if she is distancing herself from me … I try to be casual, natural and unneedy and hope that will help and reassure her if she needs space, she can have it. I always of course think Mary and Suzie could have poisoned her as no matter how cool the mind, little pellets of poison dropped in regularly can spread, especially if that person is unhappy, it makes a culture most suitable for mistrust and so forth and loss of respect … Enough of this …

Gil’s concert of Lieder went very well she said at the Festival. Then I heard, and wonder if you did, a long interview she did re Traviata and her Opera in the Park on the last night of the Festival … she was very intelligent, informed, natural and buoyant throughout it … I felt like cheering.

But the contrast with the dark saturnine Ghilly I saw, sullen and angry, could not be more marked. That the interviewer was gay was part of her ability to react in the way she did to him.

She has always had gay men around her with whom she is light, frothy, laughing, almost meaningless, lightly flirtatious and glitteringly all surface till I stare in utter astonishment. They provide no threat. I feel they, as they are so camp, adore her, the opera and her lack of threat to them, too. Vapid talk, light laughter is the order of the day.

Ghilly rang after her day with me with John and his sister Clair (who is terrific and calm and wise) with the girls at Pt. Willunga and apologised for her rudeness to me. It had been an astounding day! I was shaken to the core. John is feeling more hopeful now as Ghilly went off to a hotel in Ad. for a week on her own to prepare for the opera and they had a talk—but the truth is all these talks I hear of, never, as far as I can see, lead to any real improvement and I feel in my heart they are only her desperate sad attempt to patch things up but it is all surface and not from the veins … I hope this is not a bore to you, nor too much of an intrusion … I really am so worried … but it will last or not hold and not much I can do … but John does think it will help if Ghilly talks to you, Mandy, as I said before … He is coming up with the girls at Anzac Day as there is a conference here and he will stay with me.

Ghilly will be doing Figaro in Melb. then.

It is lovely here; I was disjointed at first feeling as I’d left much unseen in Ad. and undone, but now I listen to the concerts on radio and feel more settled.

Love from Kate.

I am reading a biography of Shelley by Richard Holmes who was at W. Week … and his latest is Coleridge which I hope to lay hands on soon … This book is affecting my work I see, well, in one poem at least, I saw it … Nothing wrong with referring to the past or using some of its tones, I think, provided it is done only like that and not to mimic or not be aware.

I got the book The Mind of God by the UK Prof. Paul Davis (who lives in Ad., as you no doubt know). It’s terrific and I will lend it to you if you wish.

Lynn Hard’s secretary, the brilliant Faye, has just rung. Tonight is a launch of some compact disc show of Aust. Lit. and Kim Beazley is doing it … Michael Denham has told them they cannot use my old manuscripts to put in a showcase with the book that they led to, and a photo, as I have put restricted access on these manuscripts … so untrue … They are of no interest to me to keep private. Why would I? They are already in print and so hold no privacy or secrets at all … If it wasn’t for Faye, I would be left out and some dullard be in, in that case … They are using Dear You. No doubt some of the hotter bits … well good, if that makes people interested in manuscripts and books and the library, all to the good … and if it makes them want to read the book, so much the better …

I reviewed Cosmo Cosmolino and nearly burst in the attempt … what a tough book … Helen Garner said at the Adelaide launch, ‘I am told the critics will pour shit on this book … well pour away …’ When she has had nothing but front page coverage of the kindest kind and most tremendous reviews, already before the launch, and T.V. stuff and so on and all of this has only had her being belligerent and saying in Ad. ‘My ex-husband is a private person and he should be left alone …’etc. Poor little Helen gets on her bicycle, rides away, dropping her bread and cheese as she is stoned by the populace … So untrue, but that is what you would think was happening, listening to her.

Love from Kate.

Elanora, Oueensland.

Friday 23rd April 1993.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for your phone call … all is well here and I am kindly treated … Sylvia had to change a lamp at South or East Tweed Heads yesterday and took me so I got food and banking done … I plan to heal myself with good food … this place is a haven for the ill as you and many can testify … this is not news to you … I am better … pawpaw and pineapple and mullet fillets very cheap, were what I got plus a lot of garlic which I have craved and been unable to find for days …

Here is a poem I wrote this morning from the people I have here with me, as you will understand … Believe me I wish I had not invited them … I prefer it alone …

I am mulling over the idea of the letter from the goose … I need to have it come out almost fully composed as if someone else, in fact, the goose, speaks through me so it will need, I think, a couple more nights’ sleep to have it form … so I am waiting like a fisherwoman.

The rooster is crowing, the sun beating on my back, swallows twittering and crow, a long way off, cawing … none wake me in the morning; shooting some scared them off it seems …

Sylvia and Koh[165] are working on the dove-cote … he has flu … she feeds the fly traps and gives the poultry green leaves she got from a barter shop she traded star fruit yesterday for good things, plus a load of greens for geese and others … she is out working in her boots and yellow plastic gloves in an ardent way … lovely with the creatures … I have filled the house with good things … seems almost biblical …

165 Short-term caretakers on the farm.

Fiona, the editor at HarperCollins took my manuscript, corrected by her and then me, with her on Friday when I came to Queensland and seemed eager to get on and positive … she is leaving the firm as she doesn’t get on with Tom Thompson … a loss … she will tidy up ends and knot them off for me … I get to see it one more time when my corrections are put in and the reader, an outsider, has checked it … so this is good to hear! … I hope to have no or few mistakes, or is that too much to aspire to? … I seethe at the past … the Age took my Cleopatra poem which pleased me a lot. I am about to try Joan of Arc as I have Marina Warner’s biography on her here to begin … You would laugh to hear of the reading I did with a heroin addict

ex-prisoner, schizophrenic in a blue singlet in Brisbane on Monday night … blood and needles and sexual talk of the boldest kind … a harrowing night … whose inspired idea was it to put us together, pray tell? The organiser is a diligent dill … punctual, honest and silly …

I went to the periodontist and to Holywell Street Bookshop, a treat both ways … but dear Ted at the bookshop, seeing my condition said, ‘stay here’ and snatching $20 dollars from his till went out and returned with vitamin C and tissues! I fear the $20 was his last … what kindness … how can I repay him … he is thinner and tan and has taken up something he forbade me to tell, but it is a form of exercise as he has a daughter doing it … physical for the first time in his life and delighted and ashamed at the same time … we now have the perfect relationship … he shows me books and I buy some of them and we smile a lot … he gets me a chair and water behind the counter … and I admire his stock …

I hope you are flourishing and your painting going well!

Love and thanks. Jill.

Jerry’s Farm, Queensland.

Monday, 26th April 1993.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you for your advice re the talk in the Word Festival Jen, I used it … made the best of a bad job … but the others did little better, to be frank … read poems rather than answered the conundrum … or riddle …

I hope you are both flourishing … it was lovely to see you … but that is long ago now.

I am sure to do two gigs for the Queensland Poets’ Union and am happy to report they are done … the last, yesterday, when I took a bus to Brisbane for a two hour trip up to do a workshop … it was postponed the week before as I went down with flu … the sort where you can’t get out of bed to make a cup of tea … (a real test) … I went to a motel and crawled in to bed … I had stayed two days with a friend at Mt Glorious before the gigs and Beverly Fitzgerald[166] tended me for the first day then to the motel, and then, after a reading on the Monday night, on a bus next day here … here there are pawpaws and limes and these things with garlic galore, seem to have helped … so, too, the warm (hot), damp air and the peacocks and river and blue hills and blue skies and sudden downpours of rain … all the air and peace of the place makes one well at once, in the mind, if not body …

166 Writer and gardener, retired social worker.

I went to my favourite rare book shop in Roma St, Brisbane before coming here and got some Russians … hence the poem I will put in with this …

I gave Fiona Inglis, the editor, the corrected manuscript of my new book, Lilies, Feathers and Frangipani with her corrections put into it (of the islands book) the day I came to Queensland and so, now it will be reset and then, I see it once, before it goes to the printers … so the worst is done … now what of your book Jen? I spoke to Peter Rose[167] and said your message … (the typing delay and that it was on its way) … (Oh this typing is as woeful as ever … please excuse it … make of it what you can and leave the rest for the birds) …

167 Poet and memoirist, and later editor of Australian Book Review.

I had Jack a week over Easter and that was good, but nothing got done so I have work to do … all of the kind that one must start oneself, which is ever so with me … But here it is easier to start and easier, even, to end … Curriculum vitae for the publisher, for instance … these things drive me mad … I think they are the devil’s invention … I have seen others pile high in a life of so little achievement, (of the kind that it boasts of) it is simply hay stacking … nothing, not one needle in the end, inside, this chaff raised high … who can bear to go over one’s life … all the oddities, eccentricities, evasions, failures, luck and queerness that makes a life … frankly it seems bad form to me to even have a c.v. But I know I must do it … Hugh says he will help me so I will leave it till I see him; but I must have an outline for him to work on. (It is even worse if one leaves it to others … madness results in that … I saw that when Hudson’s wrote a most excessive one once for me and gave it out to the press … I seemed to be a woman who turned her hand to so many things only a whirlwind could have matched her … the fact is I am basically lazy and prefer staring out windows to almost anything else.)

You may think me coy about this … it is not that I am utterly ashamed of everything, but I think it is for others to judge not one to tell others of everything even sometimes, they have practically what they ate for breakfast … I think they are an odious invention of the 20th century … very related to business and all its crudities … not that I am really against business … I see it is needed … it is just that it looks ugly to outsiders who reap the benefits … like myself, for instance … I mean Hugh works in industry and his life is interesting and challenging and has a deep moral focus …

I am outside under the mango tree … a goose has come up as it does daily wanting, it seems, to type … it pecks the back of my chair and trembles when I speak to it … so tame and staring … we greet each other, goose and woman, eye to eye over an abyss … its eye is midnight blue, not brown or black as I had thought … at first I thought it was a reflection of my blouse, but next day in white, I saw, indeed, it is blue … the orange beak and the deep blue eye … Jerry has a blue dinghy down on the dam’s bank which she plans to fill with marigolds planted in it … Marina Tsvetaeva[168] had a friend at school, a black African girl, who had blue lips and who ate violets …

168 Russian poet.

I read at the Queensland Poets’ Union (which is a flourishing, wealthy concern here, P., you will be glad to hear) … with an ex-prisoner in his blue singlet (an old man from the waist up with young legs) … ex-heroin addict, schizophrenic … now, who, pray tell, had the idea of putting us together? Well, losing his poor papers, fallen over the floor, going on and on, over time, with poems of the most harrowing type … sexuality of the boldest kind … blood and heroin being described in a way to make you faint … I won’t go on … everyone who listened needed to be a hero to bear it … God must love these people most of all … they are so cruel, yet tender … pick up a half-dead sparrow types … terrible to be near, harrowing to all around them, deadly, damaging, sad, tragic, pitiful and yet wonderful … humanity gone into rocket trails of feeling, comets blazing, they sweep over us all … appalling, terrible and beautiful … perhaps he was a genius but perhaps he was a raving one …

I can’t tell … too hot to handle—one needed pincers. The effect of all this was to make everything seem polluted for a while. Coming here in the bus with all the sleaze of the Gold Coast added to the feeling of life being hopeless, seedy, ignoble and horrible … I can tell you I drove in the taxi up the drive here feeling like a Roman general in a triumph such was my relief to be here where things are clean and only geese and bantams peck away at the day … the hills stay much the same, though it is true houses are building up on the other side about to spill over the top like milk from a jug’s lip … and then oh dread the day! Jerry has ‘Sancho Pancho’s Last Stand’ written on a cross of wood in the orchard … she knows it is all threatened, doomed, really, but not until we have wrung the best pleasures from it. Until we ourselves, are old and dry and unable to come here … and all the children and their children have had years of joy … even now the Jacks and Bries and Jakes (her two grandchildren being these latter two) come here.

Well, dear friends, this is it … signing off … hope you can make some sense of this tangle of typing errors … I come home in about a week and hope to see you both soon after that … don’t forget to call me if you feel like it …

Love to you both.

Kate.

Leura.

13th June 1993.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

It’s snowed overnight. The world is whitish … there is snow as deep as the width of a hand on the posts and rails … and a pink dawn came with it … I watched from my bed, with my nose tucked under the sheet.

It is lucky that you have put off the trip here, Mandy, as Jerry asked me if I’d like to mind her house from next Thursday for one week … I would like this, to be warm and to see friends and have a change … so I will … she is in Q. (privately) to sell land to pay bills and Bob is going too … she will be there one month and he will be there one week …

We went to Salome on Tuesday night … it was good … very good … wonderful … like a red and black coal … later it burns and stays … it is a round set … a circle like a ball … that is … all black and red with Salome as a white peacock … the dance of the seven veils was done with the aid of seven dancers … all men, later we saw, but they seemed women at the time … we walked back to the car park by the sea sparkling under the stars with the bridge shining in the moonlight with the ferries and she says it is better than New York … and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I’d like to be able to tell … no hand poking out through boxes … I guess she meant snatching at your skirt … begging etc … I stayed next day and saw the sales in Mosman … Carla Z is selling all winter things half price … it has been a terrible winter for shops, Jerry says … for Bob’s shops too … only this weekend has the cold come … I feel the wonderful sun and days of ravishing weather seemed somehow ominous and threatening … as if we didn’t deserve them … but Jerry says we all forget … it is always, well often, so, and on the long June weekend the ski season opens and that is when the first cold comes … well, it has been exactly so this year … she prophesied most accurately … here is the snow …

I have C. Stead’s biog. to read in three days for The Australian Book Review … Rosemary Sorenson rang on Friday evening asking if I would review it in four days’ time for her as she gave it to Professor Michael Wilding and he sent her that day such a rough review she felt she must put another beside it … she says words she cut were libelous! ‘How odd’, I thought, but then later remembered that if a thing is savage … (as she explained for ‘rough’ she did not mean just tossed off … but savage) … anger is involved … now just why was that? … Well, he, I recall, was one of Christina’s lads … she flirted with men a lot, as you know … I saw letters to him that were of the embarrassing hue, flattering in the extreme … she was much given to this … loved to have men at her beck and call … well, who doesn’t … but Christina was a legend and the book says so … so this can not have been pleasant reading to Michael as we all wish to feel unique … I am only guessing, but this is my feeling so far … I have spent a morning ringing round to buy the book here which was a coup in itself to get it in the end. The seller, A & R Books, Katoomba, brought it to my door on his way somewhere instead of the taxi I asked him to send it in. I began at once … couldn’t stop to clean my teeth for an hour or more … it is a very gripping book … well, at least, it is to me … huge too …

The trouble is, the writing is pedestrian … the problem is unless one is gifted no matter what brilliant research skills are in the kit, when the subject of the biog.’s own writing is put in the text, the biographer looks dull in comparison …

The sheer weight of the material of a long life has weighed Hazel Rowley down … and it is amazing to me that she did not buckle … thank God I gave up … it was never my job and I saw it late but better that than to go on … I learnt a lot doing it anyway and had all those good visits to you.

I am going to the Simpson Desert. I have booked for nine days in August with my brother Bill (for half price) … it is from 13th August … and in outback hotels part way … for three days he said in answer to my hard questioning (on the phone when he rang back after my letter enquiring) … there are no showers … each is given an ice-cream container of water to do with in one’s tent as one wishes … I stay awake trying to think how I can wash my hair and rinse it with that and then wash my body … and I think I can … three days is long, but with some water it is bearable … Philippa and I were to do a few little inland forays to see 19th c. houses at Bathurst etc. and soon in her new dark green elegant 4 wheel drive Rover … (she has only just learnt to use all 4 wheels she tells me … I think it is a device.) … Anyway this was to prepare to go to camp in the Warrumbungles which was my idea that we could do and enjoy soon … I rang and said that instead of these little inland trips, how would she like to begin by going to the Simpson desert with me … she asked where it was. Well, I do not know, but I feel it is near Alice Springs and Robyn Davidson travelled across it with the camels … so I think it is west … well, wherever it is … it is huge and I want to go … so does P. so we will go, all being well. I can get it half price, my brother says … it is one thousand and ninety nine dollars all up and half price seems good to me … I told him in my letter if he had any trips going that he would like written about for a reduced fee, to let me know … so this is it … I will offer it to Ita … Then I hope to use it for the book I might do that I told you of on travel pieces in Australia.

I hope your party for Christy went well … I hope Laura had a happy birthday … I am putting something in the post to her …

I spoke to Marion Halligan on the phone and she is still keen to do our book together … I am inviting Beverley Farmer to be the third party … Marion has put off her book on France this year to do the novel she has a contract with Heinemann (who were to do the French book) … she has a good sense of priorities … the book will be done next year and ours will be done this year we hope … Beverley wrote that she is going to Tibet in July … I go to Melbourne in Sept. to publicise, well launch, the Lilies book at the Melb. Writers’ Festival … so we will meet there. Beverley is to be invited to launch it …

Our book, though, I think will be done all in the mountains as I think they are flavour of the month and romantic and people buy books for romance … ideas of how to live and what they dream of doing … i.e. books about dreams … longings, and so forth …

Neither B. nor I have any money, but when has that stopped us for long?

Lately there have been rumblings in the cage here … there have been rustlings, groans and shuffles … it means something is stirring and wants to be off …

Love to you both.

Kate.

P.S. Granta has come, Bob, many thanks—I read Krauts. I love this magazine. Kate.

Leura.

Saturday 19th June 1993.

Dear Marion,

Well, I’ve sent the letter off to B.,[169] beguiling as I could make it, I’ve been reading U.Q.P. Eight Voices of the 80s, do you know it? B. is in there and in my opinion knocks spots off all others with the exception of H. Garner. When B really gets going she is wonderful!!!

169 Beverley Farmer, an Australian author who had been invited to take part in the planned book of conversations.

It snowed last weekend. I was locked in for four days (didn’t go out the gate) reading the Stead biography by H. Rowley for Rosemary Sorenson for The Australian Book Review. Rosemary had such a ‘rough’, as she put it, review by Prof. M. Wilding on the book—even libelous—she needed one to place beside it—not necessarily positive, she said. Well 646 pages later, I rose from the couch a changed woman. No one is normal after such a long read so fast—I sent the review in time for the deadline. Then, so enraged and incensed by a drawing of Stead as a devil with horns and long talons in last weekend’s Australian and the review, calling her monstrum extremum—I did a 4,000 word piece on Stead and the way Australia treats its artists. So now, emerging like a snail blinking after winter, I am able to say I’ve written at last to B. Have you yet? I am keen to get going—time flashes past like silks on jockeys past posts. I offered B. anything I could think of—snow, fires, money, Lilianfels, Varuna, my home, rainbows etc. If I could pick up Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I’d have put them on a plate like St. John’s head and offered them too. I went to see Salome two weeks ago—it’s wonderful—all red and black and a ball—(stage set shaped round) It stays in the mind like a hot coal—they made Salome into a white peacock—it makes you gasp to see the sight—a great fan like a tail waving over her—talk about cher cher la femme though! What a tale. Our sexuality is one of the most disruptive, frightening things men have ever tried to quell. Might as well try to quell the Nile though (I’m listening to Aida).

Would you consider launching my book Lilies, Feathers and Frangipani in Sydney on Tuesday 11th September? Do say if it is not suitable to you or agreeable or convenient—I won’t be offended and I know you are busy!

B. is launching it in Melbourne on 10th September (I haven’t spoken or written to her on this, HarperCollins did it for me).

The trip to the Simpson Desert is on 13th August and I leave here to meet the safari (at set-off point in S.A.) 10th August. With any luck in the event B. agrees we could begin in July—that though is partly when she’ll be in Tibet or our agents will need setting up time for contracts which I find take ages. We will have to tell them it’s urgent and get them all to agree to rush it through. But I can already feel in my bones it will be a push. But few things come and sit in your lap, I find, when you want them. Only things you don’t want land there with alacrity licking your face like an eager puppy. But I am prepared to press on! I already sound like Burke to Wills. Since I am going over some of their journey. I am making megladarra (sp?). Do you know it? C. Roden[170] says it’s a version of a medieval dish—I feel it’s even older—three rices, wild rice and lentils, it’s very like the stomach contents of Bog man and Ice man if you ask me.

170 Claudia Roden, author of several cookbooks and a cultural anthropologist.

Yours in the Muse.

Kate.

Ninga Ninga Station,

Kingston, South East,

South Australia.

11th August, 1993.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you very much for the life-saving loan! I hope if I get to a bank before posting this to put it in otherwise at the next bank stop on our trip.

All’s well so far. Philippa is a good driver and we got to Tooleybuc—a pretty river town Mandy had recommended at 4 p.m. next day without tears or effort. We laugh a lot and I am relieved and grateful.

Tucker has gone pig shooting up north. He left Monday morning so now Patsy is alone with Angas and us and her gigantic amount of work. Philippa helped her unload a pig the butcher had turned into ham and bacon yesterday afternoon after our trip to Robertson.

Robertson was so cold we couldn’t walk but drove around. We had lunch there. The woman who saved her farm next door to Ninga Ninga by rearing 400 day-old calves who I told you of, showed us around her farm yesterday. The calves were out in grass and are now waiting to go to feed lots. She drove us out to see them. They lined up like a school parade all black and white faces like uniforms—all they needed were straw hats … they are tame as they think she is their mother.

Angas drives us round looking at deer in his new mini moke although he is only fourteen. We see lots of kangaroos at dusk. Two boxing on one occasion. He shot a fox on our family picnic at Water Valley sale yards on Sunday. This is a paradise that Tucker owns. Tucker, Ben and Angas drove off to see something that Ben must do while Tucker’s away and they came back with kangaroo legs for the dogs and with the fox in the back of the ute.

I am happy to report Angas and I found our old well and set to with a candle, jar and string exploring once more. The ground is full of limestone caves you see so there are holes everywhere. Luckily I remembered the measurements of where it lay as I had just written the story Civilisation is Curiosity and had plundered my old text from two years ago when here with Wendy which had exact measurements. So my short term memory reputation, or in this case, long term, has risen even if falsely.

I’m fighting off a cold and I curse as I dread the trip across the Simpson Desert if ill. Out in the moke the wind is cold—we don’t walk much as the stags are rutting. Blue crane are on the wetlands and black swan but little else as it’s the ‘rawness’ as you put it, of the newly made wetlands perhaps. Philippa though in Europe often has never been past Cowra out from Sydney.

A shearers’ quarters has been made into a hunting lodge now—a sign of the times and it’s quite beautiful. It is spare and elegant. So these deer will earn their keep as everything does here.

I hope you are painting well and learning a lot and mastering techniques and you’re still well and getting sun.

Love and thanks. Jill.

Birdsville.

20th August, 1993.

Dear Jerry,

We’ve crossed the Simpson. A trillion acres of wildflowers! The Fields of Heaven.

Bill’s[171] a great host and wonderful driver. Philippa and I are having the time of our lives.

171 Bill Brinkworth, Kate’s brother.

Love. Jill.

Leura,

16th September 1993.

Dear Jerry,

Welcome home! I hope the farm was wonderful for you as ever. I rang from Canberra and found you had gone, so I went to stay with Hugh and Cathy, which has been lovely. I am home for twenty-four hours and go to Newcastle, then Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, then home. My launches have been good … Beverly Farmer was very tense but gracious in Melbourne and then Marion was quite brilliant in Sydney.

I have the most beautiful cover I have seen in ages as a consequence of all this tommy rot … dear Tom[172] in the Mall (who did my last book), set to on eggs for the working title of the book Crosshatched … and did an old master style thing of a rumpled sheet in golden light with an open book, a pair of glasses with gold rims and three eggs with shadows coming a triangle of light on the page … it is breathtakingly lovely. I had tears in my eyes. So I will use it for my poetry book to come.

172 Tom Folwell, artist.

I tell you, Jerry, it is a pigsty out there. I like it here with the sound of the wind rattling my window, midnight blue hyacinths in my glass beside my bed, pink pansies, nasturtiums, forget-me-nots and blue thimbles.

The garden is full of flowers … Hugh has been a tower of strength … so has Tim.

But my own life is good … the selling of the books is going well … Susanna at HarperCollins works hard and is in touch daily and is good, clever and enthusiastic … so I am in good hands there. The word is HarperCollins will not publish any Australian people now with the New Zealand man coming but that is what Louise Adler told me at breakfast … but Tim says that is not likely … they have made money on us … but Louise said they have not … but Tim says there is no reason to worry.

Hazel Rowley thanked me for the review of the Stead biography. The Canberra Times took and published my piece on Stead last weekend in their magazine section I am told … so that is good for me, I think.

My desert trip piece isn’t done but will be when there is a quiet time to rest and think … Ita says she will take it if all goes well … not a sworn statement, you understand … Susan Kurosawa will take my Mungo piece at last if I cut it, so Fiona Inglis at Curtis Brown (my ex-editor on Lilies) is doing that for me now. She is very good … I am pleased with what she did to Lilies. Though at the time I had real doubts (as you will remember) … but it is a better book for her to work on it …

Now what about your Bend in the River book? I do hope things are going well for you with that and all else.

Your plans, farm, poultry, friends … everything … and all the fruit coming in well … I am looking forward to seeing you and talking about the desert and a lot of other things too … I hope you are feeling invincible … all those years ago when you said that to me at the beach … this machine is almost conked out … won’t do an Ahh … the letter of that sound … stuck … so the desert did for it … sometimes it will though … I have hopes for it yet to recover.

But I see I’ll have to get Rowena[173] to type this for me … you can’t read my hand and this machine is no use.

173 A typist in Katoomba.

Lots of Love,

Jill.

P.S. I am at Hugh’s in town.

Leura.

1st October 1993.

Dear Marion,

Thank you for your message card and letters—least said soonest mended my mother often said.

I’ve got a piece of fabric that I found so lovely and intriguing, and, knowing your interest in fabric and embroidery, I’m enclosing (it?).

Cynthia came to a talk I gave or didn’t give as too few there. (Oh! Perth you’ve always been a beautiful city to me!) at the W.A. Gallery last week. Since then she’s sent this—you may be able to help solve the conundrum.

What I didn’t say in my reply at Co-op is that you have a great gift for reading a text—I can think of no one who matches you on this—it’s the equal only, I think, to Elizabeth Webby on poetry. I regret losing my way and not saying this publicly.

Drusilla is at Varuna and rang yesterday to call in. But I’m judging boys’ poems and prose and have the fear of the devil in me so couldn’t see her. But she’ll come to lunch next week. I told her the trio book has been cancelled. She said she felt it’d be a great deal of work.

Pressing wildflowers from the Simpson Desert and putting photos in the album of the trip are more beguiling to me than judging or trying to sell stories/pieces—cut them—get photos back from magazines and deal with all the mishmash. But I am keen to get to finish my book on deserts. Also, there’s a two-thirds poetry manuscript done—and I long to finish.

If I called it Crosshatched would you be agreeable? I quite like the idea and can see eggs, as I said, but it isn’t my idea, it was yours first.

I hope you are finding time to do your own work and are feeling invincible!

Love. Kate.

Leura.

2nd December 1993.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Here is the review I said I’d send. Hope it’s O.K. (I fear not).

Hobart’s Salamanca Festival last weekend was wonderful—hot and happy. I loved it (for once, I usually feel confused and miserable at these things lately). Fay Zwicky[174] did though launch into a huge attack on me after my public interview in a hall with Andrea Stretton as part of the programme! She said The Waterlily was not honest, as it had no malice in it. I felt bewildered—did not defend well. Amazing scene—such aggression!

174 Western Australian poet and academic.

On Sunday there as part of their theme One Continuous Picnic I did Sheridan Rogers’ new recipe book lunch picnic—Artichokes, Yabbies, Potato Salad, Apricot Savarin and did the poems to be the ingredients. Here they are to show you.

I hope you’re both fine and the heat bearable and Christmas looming like a cool iceberg for tired penguins.

Love. Kate.

11th April 1994.

Sofala. Near Bathurst. NSW.

Dear Marion,

Thank you for your card and message, which came to me in Adelaide. I thought of you and Graham over Easter as I went to Newcastle with Bob Boynes. Mandy and Ghilly Sullivan went to USA, a trip I was to do but I pulled out for want of money, to put it plainly. So we decided to let fly with a rip roaring Easter to say we were able to cope alone. Well we did. The pool was warmed; the sun hot and I fell in love with the place. The upshot of it all is I am putting my house on the market and when and if it sells I will try to buy a house in Newcastle. I looked with John Miller, Ghilly’s husband, and Bob, at stone houses there and thought they looked very fine. So we shall see …

Philippa and I got here yesterday to this parsonage we booked. It was built with local bricks in 1868. It is called Riverview. Well, once, perhaps, the river was visible, but now blackberries and trees block it. But the hills in front of this verandah are Brett Whiteley women’s bottoms outlines against the sky. His sister was in the house yesterday and left the fire burning for us very kindly. He worked in this area so we know it is not a coincidence that the hills are this shape. They followed his line obviously.

I sleep in the Bishop’s suite … a purple swag of horrid cloth above the bed, curtains back and sides, that matches the purple nylon blanket. The house and all is filled with 19th C. bric-a-brac of the ugliest kind. But all in all we are pleased with ourselves for this find and this holiday. But I am to work on my story … essay on water. But at present, I am a hen circling a nest pecking at the straw and arranging it to her comfort and ease of mind.

We climbed the biggest hill today, huff and puff, with Nellie, P.’s collie and got a bag of blackberries. Yesterday I picked a basket of yellow quinces, which I smelt first from the bridge over the River Turon. Such a strong smell. I sniffed like a rabbit. Philippa is rather suspicious of all this gathering but is getting the hang of it. She said today as we bent to get a basket of walnuts under trees laden ‘I have never eaten walnuts from a tree before.’ I said they came from nowhere else, but I knew what she meant. One old lady gave me a bunch of zinnias she was tossing from her old plants into the street for the goats, which are everywhere. In fact, I think this tiny town where not one building stands erect, but leans like a person into the wind, has only goats and tourists for income. A baby goat is bleating as I sit here and a crow calling. The goat is tied to a tyre and bleats at dawn and all day. But we have slept well. I felt as if I had jet lag but that is just because of the scramble to get here.

I hope all is well with you and that your work goes well.

12th April

I have begun a long poem called, I think, Sofala … it is full of, no, not full of, contains … it is about death, art, the resurrection, a unicorn, Homer, Anzac, Della Francesca, stars, angels, orgasm and a few other things. It is audacious but I feel I must try a few wild throws. Maybe this is madness … we shall see. There is a lot of we shall see lately … I have a book of poems coming out in June, so that is why I think I should try to be more ambitious … more like a man, as somebody said. It is not true I can’t spell, Marion, my machine can’t.

I hope you are enjoying autumn. Don’t feel this is a letter needing a reply … not at all … I know you are in the thick of things with work and the Literature Board. I did enjoy Writers’ Week in Adelaide, didn’t you? I swam in and out of it like a fish and took what came my way, be it seaweed or krill, but no bait, I hope.

I must say your sister Rosie is one of the most beguiling and charming women ever to grace any Writers’ Week.

Warm regards to Graham and Lucy,

Kate.

Varroville House,

St. Andrews Road,

Varroville. NSW.

9th May 1994.

Dear Jenny and Philip,

I hope you are both fine. I look forward to seeing you next week when I stay at Sheridan’s House …

There’s plenty I can do I am sure …

I’m beginning to feel like a cross between Emma Bovary and Gatsby’s Daisy in this house with this unaccustomed luxury. Sometimes I think of those who fought for the King and were suddenly rewarded with whole counties and castles and became overnight aristocrats. This hasn’t palled yet but I am trying to keep a grip on things as I’m a bit drawn to space, luxury and the easy life.

At dusk last night a swan flew above us looking like a black angel drawn along by a snake. We walk the German Shepherd Hector with little Nell the collie over the hills where there are sometimes hundreds of green apples strewn on the ground for the three hundred or more horses which belong to the riding school or are adjisted here. Sometimes the apples lie there for two days and next they have vanished. I don’t know where they come from but I suppose they could be spoils from a market.

Hector chases rabbits into prickly bushes and Nellie tags along looking exactly as I do when I don’t know what is going on, but like to pretend I do. (For instance when in a library.)

There are four dams here one is shaped like a teardrop and was made by Captain Sturt. I think convicts dug it perhaps. At night the silence is so deep and the orange velvet curtains and green shutters hold out all splinters from the stars and moon I sleep so deeply. I have wonderful dreams. Perhaps it is not that at all but because the rooms have had such a long life full of people, birth, death, love, fighting, conversation, stories, that I simply plug into some of this and away I go on someone else’s story. There’s wit, laughter, wisdom in these dreams, which I try to hold in the morning like water in my hands but no matter how I try they run away. Each day I go to sleep hoping to hold my fingers together tighter in the morning. I never cry. I am a better person at night than in the day.

I have lit a fire in the living room with wood from dead trees cut down to clean up the garden. Philippa works all day pulling out Farmers’ Friend a weed I don’t know. I asked if this was irony this name and she explained it has a prickle that sticks to your clothing.

I have a wing to myself and have lots of baths. Each bath is deep and narrow as they used to be and some have been relined but even if the bottom’s rough I don’t care. I didn’t know you could get baths relined. New baths are designed by people who take showers.

Tomorrow we are going to begin practising croquet. Yesterday sixteen people came to lunch and had a game on the lawn that’s been reclaimed from weeds. People stood around watching, talking and laughing and I thought it seemed a game that in spite of its reputation for viciousness and cruelty is really one that actually could help marriages in trouble. I saw two playing who otherwise might not have been so happy and today they might be telling others, laughing at what they did together. Swaying a bit with drink, mallet resting on his shoulder, the husband leaned over to me and said ‘Quite a good game, don’t you think?’ He leant from time to time on his wife while they watched their opponents plan and seemed very soft and chummy. Conspiratorial. Themselves against the world and not each other.

When I lived next to Victoria Park in Adelaide, I used to take the children for walks over to the croquet lawns and sit on a grassy mound looking down at old ladies playing, listening to the clunk of the ball and one calling ‘Hit it Olive!’. Although it had an elderly air at that time I was always attracted to the game and thought I’d like to have a try at it when I was elderly. Now that time is close and the game’s fashionable again.

Today Philippa and I climbed Mrs. Macquarie’s hill, which overlooks the countryside. She remarked on the view, naturally enough, when she climbed it. It’s a curious thing to discover in this way just how fit someone long dead must have been. In spite of the clothing women wore, if not exactly hooped skirts, at least long ones and the path more overgrown than now, if there was a path at all. And stays, and lacing and those hot bloomers, I have a real respect for the woman trudging up and making elegant statements on return.

More and more I can see that control is the enemy of art. Paradoxically, of course, art needs tremendous control if it is not to be merely chaos. But where to put the basket, where to hang the clothes, all this is subtly crushing over a period of time.

I think work in structured places, the law, bureaucracy and other places like that is really a killer to art in many ways. You must have a daily struggle against it. I think it’s perhaps why it looks so self-indulgent and eccentric to others sometimes to see artists refusing to take other jobs. But deep in their hearts I think the artists know the work is so vulnerable that it needs to be protected like a newly hatched chicken and before that, is a hatching egg so easily killed.

I have not done a jot of work since being here and I don’t suppose I will now.

However, to hear horses’ hooves thudding past and riders, some askew, some horseriderless, and to know this sound was the only one here for the first hundred years of the house except boots on grass swishing or shoes on gravel crunching is a real pleasure. Maybe we could have museums of sound.

Looking forward to seeing you both next week God willing.

Love from Kate.

Leura.

3rd June 1994.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

It was good to talk to you today Bob so I decided to write as it is a long time since I have. I do hope the Pat difficulty gets solved … I am reading books on the physical … Discoveries by Daniel Boorstin who you introduced me to … also Much Depends on Dinner and another on food by Margaret Visser … Now one on stench … a French translation The Foul and the Fragrant by a Prof. Alain Corbin who teaches in Tours … it’s lovely to see the French world as the base of ideas and not our own or British just for once … adds a zing to it all … Authors I have never heard of are referred to constantly and artists too … I think there is a modern fashion for this kind of book perhaps. And it’s plain from the text the way the French think differently …

My news is that Crosshatched is printed and looks good. It should be in the shops soon. Its cover is good and David Gilbey wrote good, wonderful things for the back which look even better in print than when I was read them by the editor at Pt. Willunga. I got a little of The Odyssey wrong as Telemachus hung the maids not his father but it was at his father’s instigation. Having no books there and the book finished really but me squeezing the last in as I wrote one or two daily, this is the result … but unless some smart classical scholar is the reviewer it may pass. The headings on each page are messy and unnecessary, but they needed to use their designer as Tom did the whole cover and the design dept. meant well I am sure but it blocks out the titles at times. Less would’ve been more. There are actually no misprints so that is a great pleasure and I hope it does well and people enjoy it.

I am trying to make yogurt with the water cut off and a cool day it is not so easy … at present it rests on the back step with the sun helping … I needed a wood fire for this but didn’t want to do it.

I have finished an essay on the weather … it was a real pleasure to write and last night my first call from Angelo Loukakis who is notorious for not phoning … as he is the head of the dept. I answered his questions with alacrity. I said I would go to South Africa at the end of Sept. as I leave Perth about 23rd and could go on to Africa then as the poetry prize I’m to judge will be over … I also asked my deadline for the essays and he said Dec. This means I need to do 50,000 words or maybe 30,000 the latter I hope by then plus the book on Africa.

Scenes of unbelievable intensity took part in the sale of this essay book. Nick Hudson went into a frenzy and with letters, faxes and phone calls daily I got tired of him … it was not for me to say anyway … it is up to Tim. It ended with Nick threatening to have a publisher come out in public and support him in his grievance case.

On one occasion at Varroville when I had invited Philip Martin and Jenny Gribble[175] and Andrew McDonald and his new wife Diana to lunch while Philippa was minding her granddaughter for 12 hours, Nick rang four times. As I was giving this lunch without P.’s knowledge I was tense to put it mildly … she did not wish my friends or children to visit you see … but I will not be defeated in some matters … Philip being in a wheelchair was just dismounting from the car on the first call. I ran back to find him fallen into the garden with a broken branch of gardenia (for which the dog will be blamed) beneath him. It added a certain urgency to the calls and as it was Saturday I thought it inappropriate to be ringing and trying to send faxes and so forth. It was 7 at night when he last rang with a new list of ideas and madness … I never asked anyone for ideas or topics and short of hanging up could not help listening but have never used his ideas … I found it a bit patronising in fact … but now Nick says I used his ideas … this is among his grievances … As I had to get the house back into order with no sign of lunch nor of wheelchair marks on the drive or on the carpet or the boards, I was running … finally P. walked in and I saw a loaf of bread on the bench that had not been in the house before so I sidled up to it and stood in front of it … then brushing my face nervously assuring her I had an idle day I found I was wearing earrings … which I would not do alone on a day in the country … also I had on makeup I realised. Earlier on the phone I had found I was wearing a blouse I would not usually so dragged it off and stuffed it into my briefcase in the study where the phone sat … it makes me see how hard murders must be to accomplish without being caught … All next morning I was scuffing out wheelchair marks on the carpet like a Chinese waiter dragging his feet as they usually do.

175 Academic, and wife of the late Philip Martin.

Nick rang having lost the contract to publish the book, for a long call one evening this week. I listened and inside the dresses shuffled and giggled like schoolgirls being hectored by a headmaster … It took half an hour and it helped me keep my temper while I watched the news. I have never seen such a frenzy and though it could be flattering it is not as he is almost deranged and has driven poor Tim half mad with his complaints and accusations. It makes me see how easily court cases arise. His view of events is so far from my truth as he would not listen and only heard his own heart and made up such great plans that he claimed he was ‘feeding me ideas and he had to keep me working.’ A big white cockatoo has just flown over past the window … I have turned the calendar for this letter to the giraffes on my Africa calendar and they seem, like the bird, a good omen.

Last week I stayed two days at Jerry’s and had all her usual wonderful kindness … she knew I was low after Varroville which was a trial to say the least … We went to the Tibetan art show at the Museum and with didgeridoos, and gongs and monks chanting OOOMM, it certainly was calming. I also saw black angels in one of the paintings … there are not usually angels in Buddhist art … they were black men with wings so they must be angels I think.

There was a show of dinosaurs on there too and as angels, (as has been remarked), have had such a renaissance in art at the moment, I wonder they don’t have an angel show … have some skeletons and some angelic music with a background of clouds. It would be lovely and very popular and timely. This show of dinosaurs was an extra ten dollars after the ten for the art show, so I was asked to leave that as I wandered in not realising … or did I? Paying for everything in museums seems wrong to me … families can hardly afford it … even if some can.

I have been invited to be a judge on the NSW Premier’s prize for poetry. My own book is out too late to enter so I said yes. But their dates and mine need to synchronise and I wait to hear if they can wangle it all with the other judges. But I was glad to be asked.

I’m home for 6 weeks now and then go to Queensland and after the Flying Art School have three weeks on Jerry’s farm … all being well and my house not having sold by then. I don’t think it will till spring anyway.

Do hope you are both thriving … and that Laura has many happy birthdays as I know now Bob she has three at least.

Love from Kate.

P.S. I did three gigs at Cowra—beautiful vineyard motel—right in a vineyard and freezing … Orange and Forbes last week and wore Ghilly’s new earrings you chose, Mandy. Many thanks for that. Kate.

Mt. Isa.

21st July 1994.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Thank you for having me to stay. The Flying Arts camp was great—we launched my book of poems, Crosshatched under the stars and never did a book have a more moving or beautiful launch. We sold 80 copies—sold out and took orders. People in the outback are so hungry for books! We are now at Gunpowder. Camped at Gunpowder Creek with four women artists. Mandy is painting on her ironing board she travels with. Pelicans flew up and cattle in their 100s drank as we drove in. We sleep in swags—no erections on this trip, they said. A big moon drives into your forehead. ‘At this rate,’ I thought ‘I’ll be mad or holy by dawn.’

Love. Kate.

The Farm,

Elanora, Q.

25th July 1994.

Dear Mandy,

A great and memorable trip! Here’s some moments of it. I thought it might help to have something that blends with the dust.

Thank you for all your help and kindness—I’ve got the trip’s mss almost done—did 8 pages of my notes into type yesterday—I’m sending it to Tim for offer to a magazine before we offer the complete set as Swags to HarperCollins.

My piece on ‘Memory’ was in Aug. Ita thank goodness. I hope your ABC interviews go well.

I hope Bob’s show’s doing well!

My love to you both. Kate.

P.S. I wrote to Angelo Loukakis and Tim Curnow with a full report of the launch you gave the book and said, ‘Never did a book have a more beautiful or moving launch.’ Thank you!

Love. Kate.

The Farm,

Elanora, Q.

25th July 1994.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

I have been thinking about you and wondering how things are. Here on Jerry’s farm a blue wren is on the windowsill. About to come in. Swallows fly around the kitchen sometimes. There’s a red tree out beside the verandah and honeyeaters knock themselves out flying into the glass door. Some fall in love with their own image and exhaust themselves.

The camp at Lake Julius for the Queensland Flying Art School was really an experience. It was five days that began at six and ended at 11 or 12. Plein air painting for the participants on most days. Mandy and I gave talks with three others and when she painted I lay on the sand or rocks or logs and read to her.

The material I got for my book on deserts is golden. Local volunteers did all the cooking for fund raising for The Royal Doctor Service. They drove out with one ton of food and used more. We were in huts called dongers. Luckily Mandy, Tracey Moffatt and I were together in one. Tracey showed clips from her films. I had seen Bedevilled at the Adelaide Festival, partly because it was one of the few things with a title I could understand and I knew what a film was. Most of the other events were so opaque and bewildering I never could tell if I was to see a dance, a riot, an opera, a love-in or a symphony orchestra. Some I hear were held walking on water and that seemed appropriate.

Tim Johnson the Painter and Ross Gibson the social historian and filmmaker from U.T.S. were the leaders of the forums. After the camp, Mandy, Kim,[176] who organised it all and whose idea it was went bush with two artists, Nell and Robbie (who had driven ten hours from her station at Charters Towers to be there). This was for Mandy to paint. We had a great lunch picnic at the base of the weir at Lake Julius on the first day and talked over the camp (post mortems) … Then Robbie and I in her air-conditioned four-wheel drive and the others in Kim’s truck drove to a small pub at Kajabi. Just galvanised iron, some old men dancing, a bar, a barman who had not discovered deodorant, tall felt black hats, an eerie threatening air. Bush gothic. One old man dancing with a stick, some sort of cross cultural musical instrument, painted in many colours and covered with beer bottle lids which trembled and shook noisily as he stamped it in time to the country and western music coming from the juke box. Mandy asked them to play ‘In Your Arms Amanda’ or some such title but they didn’t oblige. A donkey arrived at our tables on the verandah looking exactly like a customer dusty from the trip and thirsty. It stood there at the doorway switching flies, ears forward, patient, eager, sure they knew what it was there for. All it lacked was money. (It was fed cracker biscuits from our complimentary dips and kindly given but awful grey cream for dipping.) It was so appealing, alarming, disturbing, charming, disgusting and astonishing, did not know how to catalogue it. Much of the time outback I felt like this but less so. I had to keep the focus very tight and narrow as so much was going on on so many levels it was like being underwater all the time.

176 Kim Mahood, author and artist.

Crosshatched had the most beautiful and touching launch any book is likely to have. The head of Flying Arts from the University of Southern Queensland, Professor Leon Cotrell, introduced Mandy as we stood, visiting campers, participants, one as far away as Thursday Island and from all over Queensland, rocky red hills with a veil of pale green trees were in a ring around us, the Leichhardt river below us, a pink almost full moon and a huge pink evening star came out. He said Mandy had altered the direction of Australian landscape painting. Mandy then launched the book in a longish thoughtful talk. She wrote the talk in the back of the mini-bus as we came out from Mt. Isa three hours earlier rocking along over gullies of red rocks with ant hills in the road itself and all around it. She and I drank some beer, the bus lurched so much I fell off the seat, it was hot, long and exciting as we did not know what we were doing or going to do or where we were going to be nor what would happen, etc. etc. Before we got on the bus we picked up a box of the books at the post office HarperCollins had sent by Comen the courier with the help of Ray the driver. Then we asked him to help us get wine. He took us to the Irish Club where he is a member. He said when he saw Campbell on his bus that Lloyd my old friend, who owns the service, was as close as the radiophone hanging in the front. So he called him and spoke and he said he’d come round in ten minutes. Together we chose wine for the launch and shoved the boxes in the bus then had a drink. We got the others who had been getting the materials they needed and left town.

We served the champagne to the guests at the launch and the stars came out. We sold the lot. Nick Hudson did not manage to get the books I ordered there, which was a pity as The Mountain was part of their reading kit, a quote of a few pages I mean. But that’s how it is—those who send sell, those who don’t send—don’t sell. People in the outback are so hungry for books. They took over eighty and ordered more. After that we went in and saw Ross Gibson’s film based on Eric Rolls’s book A Million Wild Acres. Great shots of a feral pig shoot … Then we had drinks in our huts …

So I feel very lucky to have had the book given such a memorable launch. Three days before the launch at Lilianfels had been OK being a literary lunch, but I know which I prefer …

I will try to get a photocopy of some of the stories the two wonderful volunteers Mavis and Mary gave me. I set up my machine by a telegraph pole outside a hut with a plug in the side for lights I think. After breakfast each day I prevailed on them to come and sit down and talk … they were always laughing. Mary had had polio and a severe limp. I saw her on the first day lugging cakes and plates uphill to the kitchen from outdoor tables where they gave us afternoon tea on arrival … all these cakes were home made by Mavis over the month before and frozen. Everything was delicate, decorated, coloured with green, pink or white icing brought out over that unforgettable road. Mary said her husband had ‘Arthuritis’ … and she was glad to come away sometimes and have a laugh. He, on the other hand was not at all keen for her to go. But she said she had got the fundraising bug. They cater for rodeos, cattle drafts and balls. They are true heroes.

I have just walked into town to get a ribbon for this machine. No luck. I curse myself for ten times a fool not to bring several with me … but I had no money when I came away. Tim put the advance for the essays in my bank when I was north … so I am fine now. Then I had to get ink … I will leave this bottle here as I have had to use Indian ink as nothing else was available at Mt. Isa … it clogged my lovely pen … I need ink spots all round the country. If I come here again the ink will be here with luck. It took three and a half hours to get there and back as the hills slowed me down … but I did enjoy it. I got papers and saw a review of my book that was not bad at all … wonderful in fact … a delight to the eye and heart. Thank you Heather Cam, I love you too.

Reading the paper makes me see how happy I am to be away from the spite and derangement of life in the literary world. Here I feel safe and free. The goose Squawker (otherwise Georgina) wrote ‘Letter from a Goose’[177] about his sitting on a nest of her eggs. Now that is a new twist … I had her as a hermit of the orchard, an artist at life, living alone enjoying the orchard. But some gander found her, she’s given it up for goslings, with any luck, and for him now, for the rest of her life, as if you want fidelity, marry a goose.

177 A poem by Kate.

Love to you both.

Kate.

Macquarie ACT.

23rd August 1994.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Spring is almost here. I am so glad! This weekend or Monday I go home to Leura.

My mother died 2/8/94 and I went to Adelaide to the funeral. Hugh came over for the day. It was all wonderful for her to be released and have a beautiful funeral for her I think. She was 92.

I had two more weeks on the farm and got so well and did more work. Did thirty pages on the desert camp at Mt. Isa on which I wrote you. Then an essay of thirteen pages on Fruit.

The Professor at the Flying Art School rang (Leon Cantrell) and asked if I’d be writer in residence at his Southern Cross University next year. I said, ‘Um, um, well YES!’ but not for twelve weeks, nine is my limit. He says even if the Literature Board won’t fund it (and I have a feeling they do not fancy me) it will go ahead as the University will. So it will help my parlous $ situation as it’s $9000 and two and a half days a week work, they say, for those weeks. Also it’s Aug/Sept so I will be escaping the cold if I am still at Leura or even if I am at Newcastle—no word on my house sale yet. People are not keen it seems. I feel O.K. on that as packing it up before Africa and Perth (20th Sept.) would daunt me.

My host Bob[178] has his head over a basin with a towel inhaling a brew—the end of winter—I am so lucky to have had six weeks of warmth as I am now ridiculously fearful and dreadridden of winter at home alone lugging in the wood and worrying about its dwindling size. So I admit I have over-reacted (what’s new?).

178 Boynes.

I do hope you’re both thriving. I have a new towel to replace your loaned one, Jenny, as I had to give yours away at the camp.

Lots of love.

Kate.

Tanzania, Africa

6th October 1994.

Dear Bob and Mandy,

If this gets to you it will be a miracle … some things work sometimes. I sent two cards to you. Mt. Kilimanjaro is behind me, Mt. Meru in front … this house is beautiful, Dutch white painted cement.

2nd October. A camp between Mt. Meru and Mt. Kilimanjaro by

a river. Zebra meat is being smoked or grilled, I can’t tell which, by the two African drivers, Michael and Francis. Julie[179] and her niece Karrada (about eleven) are washing clothes in the river. I am on a camp stretcher beside thorn trees under my tent’s verandah.

179 Masai wife of Hadley King from Melbourne who runs a safari business in Arusha, Tanzania with his brother Simon. They were Kate’s host on safari.

Three zebra were poached, shot, last night. The manager of this Government Station and Francis found the poachers seeing their car lights as they came in late. They chased the poachers off who came back later to finish cutting up the zebra. Again they were chased away. It is this meat that was given out, some to us.

Leopards are bountiful here and Simon (my host) and his brother Hartley plan a semi-permanent safari camp here to view leopards, birds and a very rare antelope, the kudu. Hartley is renting land here to stop the people cutting down an acacia forest. The desertification of the area has been caused by cutting down the acacia forest for charcoal. Tragic to see, it’s all dust and goats. Hartley will grow flowers for seed on the land. The soil is good and the river will irrigate it. Later today Julie, the children and Simon will go back to their house in Arusha and Hartley will take me to the farm on Mt. Kilimanjaro’s slopes.

The men went into town for a few hours after breakfast. ‘Come, let’s go for a leetle drive,’ says Julie. So I will.

Later. Hartley’s last words to me on leaving were ‘Just because you don’t see any animals it doesn’t mean they are not around. Don’t go for a walk on your own. If you go for a drive take Michael, Francis will get lost.’ So naturally we took Francis. That’s just the way it is. We got lost. No tracks except hooves. I said after a while, ‘Where are we going, Julie?’ She said, ‘We’re going back’. ‘Are we lost?’ ‘Yep!’ No water, three children, no sign of anything but trees. Wonderful. We found a track, as you can see and got back to the camp crossing the river. On arrival at the tents, Julie said pointing across the river, ‘Masai women.’ ‘Have they come to visit us?’ ‘Yep!’ They were cutting with long knives at the big acacias cut illegally and left there. Forbidden by the manager to be touched as they were cut after the edict to stop cutting was given. Yet it seems cruel to stop them now. I said to Michael, ‘Aren’t those trees meant to be left?’ He nodded and looked blank as a black stone. So I shrugged and left it at that. Then minutes later he and Francis walked across the river and pointed to the women to go away and spoke to them in their language. When we go no doubt they will return. And who can blame them? Good dry wood for the taking.

The baby has just spilled his Fanta into the dust.

As we drove over the dry bumpy plain with Mt. Kilimanjaro on one side and Mt. Meru (the fifth highest mountain in Africa) behind us, we saw eagles gather. They were in fact vultures I soon saw. We drove over. They were eating the last of a carcass of one of the zebras. Only ribs and part of one leg remained which dropped from the tree as they flew off. Half a kilometre away more birds had gathered. There a pregnant zebra mare lay, its legs stiffly half up to the sky. The sun on her side. Only her head was gone, the rest was perfect. Nearby another zebra lay, just as it fell. Their hides looked like ribs from a distance. I don’t know why they hadn’t been skinned for their hides.

A Masai man tending a flock of black headed white sheep with new lambs walked over. He stood talking to Julie and Francis while Julie held the sleeping baby in her lap. He was carrying not just the usual stick but a bow and arrows. I was truly astonished. The last time I saw bows and arrows was when Angas and I went fox hunting as a game. Soon afterwards another man stood watching his flock with a steel pointed wooden spear shining silver in the sun.

I do hope Bob is having a good time with Alexander in U.S.A. and Laura’s arm is better and the opera and Melb. trip were good … Excuse so little mail. I am working madly on page 70 now … things are very rugged … but good …

I am off to Zanzibar for four days then Arusha, then a driver and a cook and alone to the Serengetti when the animals migrate back from Kenya on 17th Oct. This farm now on West Kilimanjaro is lovely … taps with water and electricity! Love to Patricia,[180] Peter[181] and you all. Kate.

180 Patricia Harry.

181 Peter Haines, curator.

Patricia, we can have a zebra recipe for the book! Love. Kate.

Kampala, Uganda.

4th November 1994.

Dear Philip & Jenny,

I hope you’re both enjoying summer. I will be home 26th November—to do it too—I’ve been to see the gorillas in Uganda. Almost a mystical experience. I met a Jesuit (67 year-old—USA) working with refugees in the Sudan. Here’s what was on his T-shirt: ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.’ As we went on a boat on the Nile among hippos, he said, ‘You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve; you don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by Love. Dr. Martin Luther King’.

Love from Kate.

P.S. The book’s title will be Gorillas, Tea and Coffee.

Leura

6th December 1994.

Dear Beverley,[182]

182 Beverley Farmer.

Welcome Home. I got back last week thank God.

Your letter of 17th August has just risen up in a pile beside me. I did reply I think.

Because I have just written the last four pages of the book on my Africa trip I feel it’s a good sign to see your letter. A letter from a friend. I am now free to write letters. I hope you had a great trip. N. said you were in Kent with him and you all had a wonderful time there. I am so glad you did. He sent me a terrible review of his new book by Michael Sharkey in the Australian which came today. God that man is cruel. I recall some nonsense he wrote about Seal Woman. Luckily it was so stupid it bordered on the incoherent and so almost nobody would have read past the first three lines. ‘Pushing aside the flagon and dismissing in half an hour the work of a lifetime …’ as my friend the poet Philip Martin writes of these critics … I, too, have had my day with the likes of Mary Rose Liverani who is notorious … But I did not mean to write to you on such topics. It is a summer’s day. The garden is green and white with green walls. Garden means walls I think. At last I have walls. It only took nine years … so I won’t sell the house just yet I think … I did want to live at the beach and still do but … the coolness and the peace here … come up and see … A magpie woke me.

I am finishing a book of essays called The Floral Mother and Other Essays. During the last, the title essay, my mother died so I am to finish it this week … But instead today to avoid the Africa book, which is called Gorillas, Tea and Coffee, I made Gay Bilson’s roasted tomato chutney. I wish you were closer and I could pass you a jar over a fence as my mother used to say. Before that I pickled boiled eggs in vinegar and spice for Christmas. Short of weeding now or filing, I must do the essay. And you? Are you writing the stories you said you hoped to do? I sure hope so. Your new book must be due out soon … I see from your letter you were waiting for galleys. Yes, I do know Elizabeth Jolley’s story on geese. In fact, by chance I went to the launch of the lecture theatre named for her when I got into Perth from Johannesburg … the worst city in the world … Carmen Lawrence opened it and the whole complex there … Elizabeth, on being asked by an old friend of mine who is now a professor there, Ian Reid, if she would agree to lend her name asked ‘Will I have to clean it?’ Pure Jolley. My favourite café in the world is in Perth. We went to Oriel … my friend asked as we walked in ‘Aren’t we too old?’ He might be but I’m not. I’ve had all my hair cut off very short … feel like a boy. I see you have a fax so I will try to use it … And I hope it is not an invasion. My fax is my local bookseller’s. Do not feel you need to send me a letter or reply. This was just for my own pleasure.

Happy Christmas and a happy New Year … Have a swim for me … you are wise to live by the sea. It is good for women …

Love. Kate.

P.S. Please excuse the letterhead. I did not design it—my son bought 1,000 pages, so I use it.

Leura.

13th January 1995.

Dear Ianesco,

In December we were in Canberra on the same days … but you were working … however there may be other times … and the one before was a treat for me … lunch with you and the studio visit …

Happy New Year … I hope your work thrives this year and the way is smooth …

Louise Glück’s poems are here beside me … I am using them for my summer classes … when she’s good she’s very good.

Also a card of the purple and lavender Sissinghurst garden has risen up like Lazarus … it makes me see how lovely slate is in a garden although Jerry tells me it is hell in fact as it slips under the foot or the foot slips on it more accurately … she would have all hers dug up if she could be bothered. But it looks good with lavenders … and anything I guess.

Our Jack is here with his friend Jack Gorman … and they call each other their full names and always have … they are climbing trees. I would like neither the tree nor boy broken I said and was told the boy cannot be. Would it were so. I see these two lovely creatures and think of the Russian boys lying dead in lines … a few years ago … etc etc. and their mothers, their mothers and fathers … and for what … for nothing they even think worthy probably. And the cold the bitter cold. Anybody who has a son who escapes war is blessed indeed I think.

I’ve been having my portrait painted for the Moran Prize. Tom Folwell who did my last two covers is doing it. It is as big as the interior of a taxi. He must scale this mountain. Ron Radford the judge says it is better now than the Archibald but then he would, wouldn’t he?—no insult meant—it may be—I don’t know.

My book of essays The Floral Mother is finally in but silence since … the pages are numbered thrice and so with no certain beginning and no decided ending … I do like a creative editor … it may disappoint them. Silence can mean so many things. A writer’s life is full of it.

I went to hear Ghilly sing Mozart’s B minor Mass in the Concert Hall at the Opera house last Sat. The birthday party Bob Boynes and I have shared for over twenty years is on this weekend and it will be a picnic in the Domain for the concert … Gilly was to sing the lead role of The Pearl Fishers … but as it is so popular they decided to change it from opera as so many loved it better and do a concert … she sings most but is not billed. The life of art …

I am casting about what to cook … as it is a long way to take things … and unless there is plenty to eat which there will be … I worry that I will get drunk … sitting those long hours packed in …

We had a week at a little beach Maloney’s near Bateman’s Bay … new to me … Hugh and Cathy his new wife invited Jack and myself … kangaroos in the block next door … fish boiling round Hugh fishing in the water … peace … a beekeeper next door. He lay on his back under a caravan and filled a jar with honey for me from the sump … a cockatoo who screamed much of what we called and yelled when we played baseball.

I am reading Gathering Evidence by Thomas Bernhard … a memoir … and other things … this is so dense, brilliant, screws the eyes to turmoil, I can’t read it all the time … also essays by several edited by E. Ann Kaplan. Postmodernism and its Discontents, theories, practices. Not easy going. My classes have many M.A. people, a video maker, these are fine arts workers … they will tax me … but I don’t teach much theory. I try to do them no harm mainly. I also try to save them time. Not bold ambitions, possibly even achievable. I shake when I see talent in bundles lying around like old sheaves of hay disregarded by the owners … undirected, unambitious people … dreaming of a future as a writer … like a beautiful house put together without a nail or screw. I teach ambition. I cannot give it to them but I can sometimes show them that it is necessary and they will need to dredge it up out of some swamp where it may lie rusting … but sometimes I think it is not there … or rusted away to nothing … same thing in the end … gone and lost … I could weep and gnash my teeth … they have more gifts than I … it is easy to see, such facility they have … I am, when I teach, a madwoman full of hope and will and despair and exultation … as if I am showing them heaven and all they need to do is prop their ladder against the wall and begin the climb … but some stand and stare … some of course cannot climb … they do not have the flexibility in the limbs and that is not good either but not as bad as those who can but won’t.

The book Gorillas, Tea & Coffee is done … let’s hope it’s good. That trip was rugged. It cost a pile too, $12,000 for nine weeks and that not all in hotels … so, although I got a decent advance from HarperCollins, I hope the book is alright and sells. However, it was a privilege to go and I did meet some wonderful people. The Jesuit priest for instance who when we stayed in bandas, mud huts, on the Nile in Uganda walked over and introduced himself as Jack saying we were to dine together that evening. His brother also from USA; he and I were the only visitors. Then I discovered in spite of his Aust. t-shirt which he’d won on a boat to Ireland, his vocation. He works now in retirement, well out of retirement, at 67, in the Sudan refugee camps … there’s not many tougher places than the Sudan … he wrote a marvellous letter to me … I can tell you Africa was good for my character … it made me feel humble … one Aust. Woman, under thirty worked alone without training as a tourist lodge manager in the jungle and spent her time mainly fixing up wounds and burns and sores and scabies on local children and adults … all untrained and from her own pocket. A diving instructor from Hinton Island … a long way from home, all alone. Put her scissors on the ground between patients, rubbed the ointment in with her fingers, said she was trained by a local nurse, (who also was not trained it would seem,) but did wonderful work and better than nothing … but with Uganda with a so-called one third HIV population, could it be true? … I wondered if her luck would hold … an Australian hero, this Stephanie Milbrook … the African angel. I cannot tell you of her loneliness and hardships … she had her little bottle of Promite there and they called her Sir Doctor Stephan because, although she had long blond hair, the people are used to seeing backpacker men with pony tails and she wore old khaki yakka shorts, a shirt and a waistcoat so looked boyish … the people are not used to female doctors anyway and are not used to women being on their own … I did not actually kiss the earth but I felt like it …

I’ve read African Laughter by Doris Lessing but often she’s a writer I can’t take much of. A stroke of dark righteousness is in her that is hard … sometimes I think old or ex communists have this at times … the idea that they were right and the world so wrong for such a long time made them somehow unforgiving … it is something that I could be wrong about but there is a whiff of it in people I see with that background … I think there is a lot to be said for perplexity or bewilderment. Certainty is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I dreamt about you last night … pleasant things … like our walks when you took photographs round the Harbour ages ago. The night before I dreamt I went flying in a small plane with Mandy who flew the plane and we did this daily and each time we read poetry as we flew … now that was a good dream.

The book that really gripped me is John Cheever’s Journals. I did not know at times if I should be reading them, it seemed even prurient. But I had to keep on reading … and to think he wasn’t even trying … just did it for himself … every page is pure snow white style the top of the sacred mountain … dashed off like an angel … and honest too … sizzling honesty. Fire and ice.

I hope Patrick[183] is thriving … and that you are having pleasure in your work … art is the way we empty ourselves … the Jesuit said he was working in the Sudan because, retired, he still asked the question ‘How do we empty ourselves?’ But the problem with art is that it has fame as a hook in its mouth and only the wise, sane or good can avoid that madness.

183 Patrick North, Ian’s son.

Love from Jill.

Leura.

4th April 1995.

Dear Ianesco,

It’s great that you are coming north with us. Even to the day we will be where Mitchell[184] was … you already know how happy I am you will be there. I hope you have a wonderful fiftieth birthday … more of that later …

184 Sir Thomas Mitchell, Australian explorer.

I got back from Bathurst where I was writer in res. for a week, on Saturday. Cold bright garden, the tree tips are already flaming. They have asked me back for a day’s work in May and October and I was glad of that … because I never feel I have any real knowledge but just this dark trumpet or tunnel through which I look and shout, unaware of so much that others know and understand … I only know what I know … so I say it because when asked I can’t do anything else and have to earn the money … but my real aim as you know is first of all to do no harm … so this conflicts with saying anything much and I can’t speak without passion, so full of feeling about the matter … so you can see to be invited back is lovely. I have a pile of manuscripts to read and comment on. I make these comments brief and as positive as possible but say nothing I don’t think is true. There’s a lot of talent about … a young Aboriginal gay man is our Edmund White in the making if he can hoe the distance. Bathurst has a drought, all the clouds have been unable to get up over the mountains and fall on us for days and days …

I have my front garden redesigned … four people came, a man on crutches the leader, they put down a curved bark and wooden stepping stone path and now there are white hydrangeas in terracotta pots under the pines and white primula doubled around the path … there’s to be a window box full of pink schizanthus … well, in the fullness of time … not nec. in my lifetime perhaps … but the site is ready and it does look good … no longer will anybody peer over my fence and say, ‘I’ve been down to see your garden … it’s nothing much.’ People take what is written down in a book as real life and as if anything can be as good or beautiful as their imagination when they are reading it.

Jerry came up for the weekend before I left for the Word Festival. I was too sick with a cold to go out so she went walking and took a book as she couldn’t stop reading … it was Anne Truitt’s diary of her life as a sculptor … she went to Yaddo … and I have yet again reapplied … cap in hand even with a c.v. of sorts … that is as far as I will eat humble pie … the c.v. is of my work not my personal life which I think has naught to do with them … nor my time nursing nor anything else … I do not know why I resent these things so … they are such an invasion … when I want to tell somebody something I will or not … journalists can be the same prying … once I left the room … one wanted to know about my marriage and would keep on so … alone pen in hand I hope she reconsidered her situation.

As you know I found Mitchell’s three volumes of journals in the library at Charles Sturt University … odd that both these names are of explorers … a good touch … Mitchell’s duelling pistols are at Wagga Wagga I am told and his theodolite was on campus … but I had no time to run and see it … I am trying madly to find in Volume Three, the site of Lake Salvador where we are going … but it eludes me … Mandy says it is in one of the copies of a lithograph I sent.

I cannot understand how I have allowed myself to become busy. It is a frightful mistake. Never before have I not made my bed … my room is awash with papers and clothes … the essays for the book … problem was I never did see it as a book until last thing … I mean I knew it was to be one, months ago, but as I had dashed off many of those essays in a shameful and trite way, jolly hockey sticks Girl Guide tone I abhor, then when it came in the express bag and I pulled it out it was like having a bucket of ice tipped on me. I rang Tim knowing there could be trouble as I needed to remove the first essays at least … then the dear editor who took the news calmly having informed me earlier that only punctuation and a few words could be changed when it got to this stage … and we had sat side by side a month before and put in or not all her suggestions she had written in pencil on it … and a few of my own … so my essay on Lake Mungo was on the back of the Australian the weekend before in the night

I remembered that and faxed that in bits and they put that in … so I was grateful to providence and all gods of the muse … but it remains a queer idiosyncratic book; funny, I later found in spots, but critics could go mad as there’s plenty of room for cruelty … but I wouldn’t want not to be vulnerable.

I am hoping to change my prose … a style like Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean … ‘sober, stately, lucid and melancholy’ is what I aspire to … only one essay has that, called ‘Portrait’ … about my father. But then I would want some flaunting yellow imagery from time to time and then sometimes something accidentally howlingly funny … I mean not strained towards.

We begin work on Gorillas, Tea & Coffee at the end of this month. Then when it has been done I will try to write something. It is almost a year since I wrote a poem. It is as if the lion slept and I creep past its cage alarmed if I hear it snuffle or turn over. I haven’t got any energy to feed it. If it is not fed it can’t roar. So I want it to sleep. Prose is my zebra … running about tossing its head, happy on the grassy plains, blue sky over head, the herd around, some hunters at night, but a life of openness and energy.

I saw three zebras, though; shot by poachers in the night somewhere in Tanzania miles from anywhere near a small river where the family I stayed with camped. The babies were bathed in a pan in the river with some hot water from the fire to make the water warm … screaming then playing for hours tipping in gravel. As Julie the Masai mother and I drove out with a driver we saw vultures and drove over the yellow plain, there one lay legs stiffening, a pregnant mare. Perfect, striped like a painting tipped over … and above, the birds. At a tree covered with birds half a kilometre away another lay torn by gorging birds … and again further out a male, not a mark, nobody skinned them. Maribou storks dragged their great pink pouches around looking handsome and vile. A man in a blanket with his stick and necklace like a plate of beads walked over and talked to the driver and Julie … the poachers had been frightened off by the manager of the farm but had come back and shot and then fled without the animals … but then no one can know what they took. We got lost on the way back as Matthew the driver did not take Simon’s advice and keep to the tracks, so with Julie’s breasts full for the baby we went round and round among the bushes and a hundred tracks until something happened and we saw the river. Later I saw great hunks of meat on sticks by the fire; the drivers were drying the zebra meat while the blood dripped from time to time onto the dust. Then it was hung in the thorn trees. I sat and wrote a letter to Jerry. Then Hartley the father of the two babies, Julie’s husband, and I drove off to his flower seed farm on West Kilimanjaro. As we left she stood beside the river, David, their three-year old in the water, baby on her hip waving … and he was moved and said he would stop smoking … who else could look after that family if he wasn’t there? The answer I suppose is his family in Australia and Simon there. It was a sight though I won’t forget. All the washing lay drying on bushes, Julie had scrubbed in the river half a day.

Jack’s been up for a week while Mary finished or is finishing her book on young successful women; it’s interviews. It rained a lot. It was disastrous for our wicket but we played every day between the rain. I hear W.G. Grace’s mother bowled to him for hours and hours, day in day out. I am very happy doing this, not being very good at hitting, and the more he hits the better he gets, he can open his shoulders and hit fours. And we scream and laugh and run and he gets bowled out which he does not care for.

Your Patrick being a good cricketer no doubt had many balls bowled at him by you … One day he will come on a trip with us too I hope … I am glad Richard Morrison[185] is coming, he has a compass and is scientific as you may already know, a good man out back. We had a great time with him at Mungo … his accuracy is useful … not interfering, erudite, calm, humorous, devoted, polite, what more could one want … doesn’t even work so is at hand for advice and help … doesn’t need to borrow anything unlike the rest of us as he has a complete Italian outfit himself … everything works … so I’m glad …

185 Canberra-based archaeologist.

I have piles to mark as I said and now they tell me my NZ book is being reprinted and they want to have all corrections put in today and they let me know yesterday. I must get a copy at the shop and do it … I have always had a calm life in the mountains and am determined to wrest it back …

It is outrageous that you have so much to do … nothing can be done about this I suppose it being the nature of universities nowadays but I count it a great loss, whatever happened to musing, staring out the window, chewing a pencil, having long lunches. etc. etc. rambles by the river, a decent life of contemplation and work? … hey ho … this will be ours in retirement and roll on the day.

Love from Jill.

Leura

5th September, 1995

Dear Ianesco,

A thousand thanks for your letters and all the p.s.s and the wonderful photos. I am exultant to hear from you so lengthily and warmly and with the photos to boot … as booty …

It is Mary’s 30th Birthday … I have been flapping round all day and sent her flowers and spoke to her …

I have a letter here unposted to send with this and I am relieved the poem made you laugh … and made Mirna too … I had many a laugh writing it … it calmed me … what a woeful time … and how much roaring glorious rollicking laughter Mandy gave us.

But what can one make of it? ‘She has gone,’ Bob[186] said on Sunday when I called him. Gulled and gutted, that’s my darling Robert … my heart sank …

186 Robert Boynes.

I am relieved as the poems I spoke of in my letter, the Floriade ones are done … I got going and typed them this morning … they are faxed to the Nolan Gallery in ACT. Now of course I worry that they are alright. What happened to my famous rhythm I ask? Have I written too much prose … is it gone forever? … do I lament it? … I do … is it a new phase and possibly a growth … not like cancer but a new branch? … myself I think I cannot have two mistresses, (they are not my masters) a woman needs a new word for this … I think prose may neglect me, I will turn away …

Well you ask was it as bad as we thought … and I am in a way glad you still think it was … because I do not want to belie the truth of it and say we imagined it or were so cruel we were unfair. I think the trip was amazing in the way our friend behaved in such a demented way. If I could I would avoid her altogether until I get a handle on how to deal with this. My real feeling, and I got this from a wise social worker who is a friend, is that there is no use speaking to somebody in the grip of a mania or a set of behaviors so wild and unruly … they simply turn on you … there is no appeal possible. I do not like thinking of this in life at any time as if we have no words we must be lost … but I suppose we always have silence and that can be a tool too. God what a conundrum it was! I still feel startled when I think of it. Thank God you were there to share it … to help me bear it and to laugh … I did enjoy that. The day you drew sitting on the swag in the sun mulling things over, the sun on our backs was a happy half hour for me indeed … very wonderful … old and lovely … like our friendship.

Now off to the post …

Love and many many thanks.

Jill.

Ninga Ninga Station,

Kingston Sth East S.A.

27th September, 1995.

Dear Philip and Jenny,

Soon I think you will be off on the grand trip … I do hope things go well. I have come down here for twelve days with my old University friend, Wendy, to my brother’s station.

We have our own house amid flowering wattle and red flowering gums … just as well as we down the claret and shriek and a lot of laughter … one night she stood up and invited me to dance … it was unexpected … I stood ready, I thought, for perhaps the military two step, she was humming some tune as our music, no radio or TV here you see (—they use radio-telephones and the only thing on them is ‘Where are you Jack?’ ‘Down at Tilley’s Swamp, Tom. I’ve got that big mob in.’ ‘You’re in the wrong paddock!’ etc.) so, humming along, I faced her, arms lifted for the dance, mistaken, I found, she was ready for Greek dancing which we did for a while until she tired and said she would retire. No recollection of this at all next morning … no wonder I love her …

Wendy and I have been here ten days down in the Promised Land as my mother used to call it. The deer and the antelope play … great stags stand on low hill tops holding up the sky with their antlers … they hide in the low scrub when we come closer … a herd of leaping deer, small, pale fawns rush and take leaps over the green grass … a doe lay dead yesterday morning there when we got black big mushrooms in that paddock. Too cold, Patricia said, or too much changeable weather, not enough sense to get into shelters, all or some of that … they lay low in the sun and I was sorry they got up when I walked down the cream winding road that has no fence … the roads lead over hills and are made of pale stone. Two deer are hanging in the cold room … Angas and Tucker shot them the day we got here … Where are you going? I asked as we pulled up beside them while they filled their ute with petrol from the tank … For a drive, came the cryptic reply … I knew I had asked the wrong question … there aren’t many right ones to ask Tucker …

Angas, my nephew aged fourteen, took us out in his little yellow mini moke over the hills and far away … the deer in small groups watched us haughtily with anxiety … emu ran away … this is land I did not grow up in so is not deeply familiar to me but I love it. Great bulls stare at us as we pass gingerly poly piping in hand ready to swat and run. Last visit a herd came towards us and to get Wendy’s Bridie, a small fat Scotch terrier, over two fences of barbed wire and a strand of electric wire and us in between was a fussy feat of fear …

I think my wits have gone … this is a ratty letter … I was so worn out with the struggle over the Africa book, Gorillas, Tea and Coffee with the publisher and worry about paying back the money my brain went to jelly … in the night I trembled … I know now the book is the best travel book I’ve done … but to have a book so attacked and that they find nothing of merit in it is horrible … but worse has happened to better. I am waiting to hear from Margaret Sullivan of Random House … no word yet … if she takes it, life will be better … a new set of trouble perhaps as how to tell Angelo Loukakis without him asking for the money back? They are a crushing lot of mean devils in there, no imagination, no manners, greed and a tough rough cut the cloth to any fat monk’s back way of doing things, then sack cloth and ashes for anybody who asks for what would only have been a civility. It is a great mistake to take publishers seriously and to have them interfere in your work … better ask the tractor driver to cast his eyes over the thing as he drives by on his grader with four blue cranes rising from the water beside us … he’d be more reliable and decent. I bet he dreams his dreams under that great wide blue sky reaching like the angels of heaven’s collective umbrella … At night a single star hangs like a diamond pin on the chiffon scarf of the night … then the gums are silhouetted black and torn …

The little Jack Russell dog, Tiger, got a rabbit in our back yard yesterday as we walked in to hear the squeaking … I took it in a barrow to the homestead and said as my brother rushed past ‘I’ve got a little rabbit here that needs skinning.’ No notice … On he went …, I told Patricia who said, ‘Archie will skin it for you, ask him, he’s laying the floor in the cool room.’ So Archie, a younger man than his old beard and hat let on did the job briskly at a tap and home came the rabbit. This is not Peter Rabbit, there are great numbers here breeding and no good will come of it.

I have had a big talk from Tucker on hunting and nature and the fact you can take any creature, say a topknot pigeon he said and add from two hundred of them another two hundred you could take half of them out and unless you alter the habitat, (increase it), you will have at the end of two years the same amount as were there at first … This seems amazing to me but he tells me it is so … Hunting does nothing to diminish the numbers but does make people increase habitat. There are about a million birds here that were not here before he came … but the rainfall has been two hundred and fifty millilitres a year instead of six hundred millilitres or centimetres or something … I read one of the scientists’ papers on this and the wetlands yesterday … so the water from Mandina lakes system has almost gone, the great weirs he has built span nothing but dry clay, bark and leaves … the scientists use this house and have lovely photographs of the lakes and the sedge and melaleuca and low gums. They trace on opaque paper over them the patterns of the growth, the bush, water and the shapes so they can measure how things are … it is ingenious to see and makes me look at things differently when I am out among it.

I have some new boots from a shop here that make me walk like a boy, Annie McCutcheon said, who came down for the weekend.

We had a barbecue of venison at Watervalley sale yards where the bull sales are held. It is lovely there with bigger white gums and spreading lush soft green grass and yards and yards, all it lacks are the bellowing bulls and the yearlings by the thousand, the din and dust and the men in hats, the women cooking in the cookhouse. Wendy thinks it is very Wagnerian, colossal wooden tables with benches in the big shed, huge logs lie around for chairs under the trees.

Last night a tremendous electric storm hit Wendy and me in her little car as we drove back on a rough road from Willalooka where we went to get wine … the lightning covered the sky edge to edge and these are edges of about two hundred kilometres … the rain came down so we drove slowly looking for our gate, I saw a road but then it seemed a river then around we went again and it was a road, then around again and it was a track but not ours … all this then on the highway and a cattle truck, two-layered, enormous, rushed past like an elephant passing a dung beetle in the dark. To calm us I had to tell the Odyssey with us as heroes as she drove!! The grey eyed Goddess held the wheel disguised as the Princess with the long red hair from Old Canowie Station while beside her in the chariot Princess Blasphemy stared through the storm Zeus with his whip of stars had flung in fury, the silver knives of lightning on the chariot with the jet black horses, wet manes lashing their necks as they took the road to the great house of Odysseus there in the green land of Ithaca!! Etc. We were laughing and shrieking from fear or helpless laughter it did not matter, a recipe of both perhaps … ‘and then the great gates loomed ahead, the row of pines led to the beaten copper door and there the gentle ibis brass door knocker, an image of the birds who rose in great flocks in their tens of thousands by the day, who sheltered that night from the storm in their trees growing in the lakes’ etc … I will stop now … you will be relieved to hear … sufficient … the story got us home. Patricia had been into our house and built up the fire, brought a load of wood and other such kindnesses … she is almost nun like in her purity, Wendy calls her the Prioress … and says being here near Mary MacKillop’s Penola ‘There’s more than one saint down here you know …’

I have regained my nerve as you can possibly tell. I was a small ruin when I came down … it is a year since I have written a poem, Africa almost did for me in its strain and horror … then my mother’s death so hard for her to accomplish and so on … now all the delay with the will and problems, how it drags … I sound like Sylvia Plath … ‘My back drags …’ or some such … or my lag’s back … or my backs lag …

Well, I am going outback … Mandy Martin my friend the painter, Kim Mahood a woman artist from Mongrel Downs Station in Fink who hired us both for the Queensland Flying Arts last year for a camp, Professor Ian North from Adelaide, a photographer and old friend, Sally and Geoffrey, she a sculptor and he a cinematographer who works mainly overseas … but whose father explored the Simpson desert, his name is Simpson, and Richard Morrison, a cousin of Mandy’s, an archaeologist … and Paul Sinclair, (a historian of the new kind in steps of Paul Carter of The Road to Botany Bay fame … who is to do a museum show with Mandy next year for outback places like Bourke … they have a grant for this from somewhere …) we have two weeks … I go in Kim’s truck and we meet at Cobar … let’s hope it works … I will work on my book on the footsteps of the explorers etc. called Swags … Then three weeks at Jerry’s farm and then nine at University of Southern Cross in Lismore as a writer in residence. There is a phone at the farm from 15th July just in case you need it, not a hint; I just like friends to be able to call if they wish.

I do hope the diabetes, Philippos, has been got under control by now …

Love to you both.

Have a wonderful trip! Kate.

Leura.

7th January 1996.

Dearest Jenny and Philip.

Thank you for the card from Malaysia. I hope the trip was bearable or even good … I think of you often … I hope you are settling in to the beautiful Oxford … lots of luck. This fax I hope will reach you … some written 15th Feb., some as you see … Happy New Year. I hope you’ve had a good holiday … The water here has flooded the summer, turned it to a moat. Inside my castle I gloomily stride about trailing a dressing gown, not sulking but pining perhaps as it has been dull, but I’ve had so many visitors there has been action as if the castle had many riders pound over the bridge … shaking off their feathered hats and hanging up the wet cloaks … you can see my mind’s turned sodden too. But with Mary home cooking Italian meals every day, a Christmas tree John Miller gave me the decorations for, and a nativity scene of dolls I bought, all knitted and so odd and sweet and Australian. They are bizarre and beautiful on the lamp table.

Jerry came up for two days last week and though the wet and fog continued, we read as blithely as possible and took walks, gothic in the mist and silence. Black cockatoos zoom above like bats.

I am at work on the diary book … untitled.[187] A couple of pages a day as a rule, sometimes ten but not often. If people are around it’s only two otherwise I talk to the page and it does not answer back, nor argue, only sense and tact and dullness make me cross things out at times.

187 This would become Burning (1997), published by Hudson Hawthorn.

The Africa book corrected typescript came two days ago with eight pages of notes, then two more pages yesterday … the job is ahead of me … but as yet I am not ready as I am dull witted and I want to gear up to be sharper. So next week I will fly at it … a hen scratching looking for grains … it is a colossal job. But I am kindly treated, Nick Hudson has edited it and the amount of thought and care is very gratifying and helpful … he is erudite and clever though he is his own worst enemy when it comes to dealing with some people … but he has a good heart and is honest … very honest. It is due out in April and the cover is lovely, and will possibly be a wrap around loose cover on a paperback … the back is a dark green marbled effect … and a gorilla on the front is a photo of one slipped in between a shelf of books, all of this is painted in super realism by Tom Folwell who has done my last three covers or so, he lives nearby in The Mall.

Lately I am more and more interested in the phenomenon of the unhappy vicious older woman. A sort of harpy. Several of these have come my way in the last couple of years. It is astounding that people who were once neither bad nor mad seem to have turned so savage, so wicked, and I mean the word, that they seem lost to everything but their cruel ego which drives them with a whip of evil. This is not all that rare I think, since I’ve seen three, there are no doubt more, in fact it might even be almost common. What has caused this … is it hormonal, surely not, yet that could be a factor, is it loss of sexual power, is it just jealousy, is it possessiveness, or self-loathing, perhaps it is sadism in its true sexual sense. Sometimes I wonder if it is depression that causes it. Grief, anger and then depression can have subtle and tremendous effects. Whatever it is it exists and is very powerful and dangerous. At present I am swept up and half wrecked from one visitor who has the syndrome in full fury. It is all the more perplexing because I love these three women, they are not unlovable. But I can’t be near them at all … That’s become very clear to me. If I do allow that I can blame nobody but myself. It might be a similar syndrome in myself to that in women who want to reform men, know they have good inside and that with enough love they will be alright and will feel better … and be healed. This of course is madness itself. So why do I think I can be friends with somebody who has the syndrome … what this ought to be called, I don’t know … the Harpy syndrome … this is a feminist problem as to even name it and call it into the open could look as if it’s a betrayal. So I am thinking it over. It is an area I don’t plan to do any research other than when comes my way, say overheard in bus conversations, or trains. Odysseus’s harpies were terrible, and I must have a look at them more closely. Homer knew plenty. The type is also there in the grandmother in The House in the Light.[188]

188 A novel by Beverley Farmer.

I have stripped the beds, flung open the windows and aired out the furies from the house. Not a scrap of dust holding these feelings will remain before this day is out if I have my way. Swish, swish goes the mop.

Every writer I know is relentlessly busy. Last year I let this happen to me and knew it was a great mistake. If there isn’t some indolence in my days it is a loss.

When I go to Port Willunga at the end of February for two weeks holiday I want to start writing poems again. It is good living in the country you know, away from the race to be noticed and the gossip … I hardly hear anything here and it is better for me … I am often eager to be noticed and that’s very tiring so not to be seen at all is better for me. I can get more work done and happiness lies for me in working which seems so odd and a miracle, a great luxury.

My grandson went to the little Catholic school in Katoomba last year for a term. Mary and I went to the end of year mass. Jack took a sheet and I asked if he was to be a ghost but no, he said, ‘I’m a tribe of Israel.’ Then, unused to the emotions of angels, Mary and Jesus in towels, sheets and drapings, halos and crooks, during a hymn he collapsed in tears and had to retire sobbing on his mother’s lap. An angel’s silver tinsel halo rolled down the red aisle like a hoop. It proved to be significant and an omen. More of that later. I am in a web of conspiracy on that subject but not forever.

I was 60 on 15th Jan and John and Ghilly gave Bob and me our traditional shared birthday party on 27th when they got back from holidays. Heaven blessed us with such a night, the moon, and a sky above so midnight blue.

I have just discovered that the Milky Way the Greeks said was milk from the breast of Hera, wife of Zeus … I must look it up … well, half an hour later, I am no wiser … I have two books on myths … both very good. One 1907 Myths of Greece and Rome … a brilliant book, perfect scholarship as far as I can see, reissued in 1947 so it is a real classic … and the other Goddesses in Everywoman, a New Psychology of Women by Jean Shioda Bolen a Professor of Psychiatry at University of California … she is on the board of Ms. Magazine … foreword by G. Steinem.

Nick Hudson came up for last Thursday and left Sat. at noon … we got the editing done in good shape and in good array … Tom and Jude, as Tom had done the cover, came to dinner Friday and Nick asked Tom to do another cover for a book of quotes he is publishing. This is terrific news as I hoped he’d use Tom and is a real thrill for us all. They have such courage; anything else falls away in comparison.[189]

189 Jude was battling multiple sclerosis.

I am planting pansies, poppies and dianthus and moving roses to the sun … pansies I have been told are all year round so I took out the old and put in new …

Hugh and Cathy came up with Sophia Rose last Saturday. Cathy bathed Sophia in the big bath which was her first real bath and a consequence of this or perhaps the air here she slept and slept … we walked up the street and bought plants and they went for coffee while I walked with the baby … then we went to the baby shop and they bought her a navy and white dress for when she is eighteen months … Hugh took photos all the while … Sophia in the shop … with her Grandma, with her mother, in the bath etc. He is ecstatic.

Cathy asked if she could come up next week when Hugh goes to Melb … this was a real pleasure to me … as it is a first … The christening is Sun. 18th Feb, and after it I go to Adelaide and then to Busselton on 14th March for the Writers’ Weekend then home 19th March.

Again thank you for all you care and kindness and best wishes for U.K. and your courageous wonderful trip!

Lots of love.

Kate.

Leura.

25th March 1996.

Dear Marion,

It was a treat to see you in Writers’ Week … thank you too for your kind offer to have me to stay when I come next week … I hope things are now settled for you if they ever are with writing books and publishing them … and that Lucy is better … please give her my love.

I hope you are thriving … autumn is creeping in here like a red sleuth; red and green parrots were pecking away and flitting in the apple trees yesterday when I was lying sucking a pen trying to write a poem about strawberry jam.

My new tenant, a chef, Ian, came and sat beside me quite oblivious that with Pericles on the radio and a pen in my mouth something might be brewing. So this is a small thing I must sort out soon. Body language is powerful and I must use it thoroughly. I wonder if the bank would accept body language in lieu of payment? Sometimes I am very tempted to sell the house and get out of debt. My mother’s unit is still, after seventeen months, not sold … so I tread water and every now and then get a taste, a nasty mouthful of something very salty. When I got back from Busselton Festival, I walked down the Mall in the chill and felt I must sell and go where it is warmer. It becomes so melancholy and affects me subtly week after week, I think … but do also truly love it here. These are the dilemmas of the rich in truth … I am celebrating my health since so many of my friends have been really ill.

I loved my two weeks alone at Robert’s before Adelaide Writers’ Week and re-did the galleys of Gorillas, Tea and Coffee … it is done now and I will only see the final book … in about a month or so. I will send a copy when it comes. My poor friends have had to listen to the difficulties of this book for too long so I hope it gives joy when it comes. Being so far away, Africa, and the failure of phone and fax means details are hard to correct so there is a lot of hit and miss going on. Anyway, it is not a textbook, but for a feeling, mood, a set of snapshots, not a spelling test. I hope the critics will be merciful … but I never saw one who did not rejoice in correcting somebody’s spelling or a date and that is fair, I suppose, but I am a sitting duck for this. Speaking of ducks, my brother took me out to see a twenty-five kilometre drain, a sort of creek he is digging five metres wide to drain salt from the land and with guns behind our ears and one across the seat with telescopic sights, I was cocklegged among it and sat gingerly among the dust. Then we came to a gorgeous sheltered place among great gums by a lake he’s made and there the feathers were piled half a metre high about twelve piles of the wing blue and brown purple sheened feathers from a shoot two nights before. These ducks would not exist if it weren’t for him flooding his land, but it is something to see and I am not sentimental and it is not yet breeding season and I do eat poultry … so I am not pointing the finger at him, but am perplexed, I suppose, as I can kill a chook, and did recently on Jerry’s farm, axe in hand puffing and muttering with my fiercest look … but shooting is a thing like an addiction, a deep joy and one I am sure I could catch … so I don’t want to be puerile about it … but nonetheless I am intrigued and perplexed. But it is like an act of nature, a force of nature, to see the feathers … a mystery.

I am writing my diary book called The Golden Boat and it is going well enough. I hope to sell it soon to Hudson … but feel I ought to wait till Gorillas is out before I try … they are keen they say.

Next week I go to Canberra to do a poetry reading at Café Neruda, a new venue Geoff Page[190] has organised. I wrote poems in Perth after I thought somebody had shot my angel … but the angel recovered and now hovers over my page, even though he lost a few feathers … (I mean my poetry muse … as you possibly understood, but I feel I must not speak of violent things without clear explanation in case it is thought to be not metaphoric … heaven forefend!).

190 Poet and academic.

I minded Sophia Rose[191] on Friday as soon as I got in from Perth … it was a good day. I fed her in a park on a bench and though she did not actually enjoy the bottle (who would after a breast?) she took it graciously enough … and slept under trees at home while I watched her from a window. I dolled her up in pink and booties made of pink ribbons knitted … extremely wild things, like a pink baby chicken on each foot, and with a blue rug covered in pink rabbits and roses and teddy bears, she was the kitschiest child in Newtown and I marveled that passersby did not gasp at the glory of it … instead they crossed with the lights looking serious while I wheeled this rosebud in all her glory round the stinking streets, blue with fumes, wondering how the world came to be so poisoned and yet full of love and even possibly wisdom among the noise and chaos. I met an elderly Salvation Army money gatherer on a chair by a bank, a gothic figures with the longest nails and a brown curly wig beneath her bonnet who proved to be one of the few interested in the child in her voluptuous setting, sleeping with her long brown lashes curving on her moonlight skin. We had a chat about the Blue Mountains and I found her wonderfully engaging, charming and alarming, but full of what’s called the milk of human kindness … she said she was going away singing soon and wanted the group to go not to Victoria but to the mountains. So we shall have singing in the mountains because this woman had a childhood holiday here about sixty years ago. I have never understood how people can be so unaffected in public as the Army when it sings and plays its music. And what would it cost to wear a bonnet. But, like duck shooting, these are merely quibbles because the fact is there’s the force of ardour in it all and it is ardour I love more than almost anything else in life.

191 Daughter of Kate’s son, Hugh, and his wife Cathy.

I hope we will meet in the A.C.T.

Love. Kate.

Leura.

19th June 1996.

Dear Marion, Lucy and Graham,

Thank you for having me to stay … and for taking me to the train too. It took seven hours to get home … so I am glad I didn’t know that before I set off.

I hope you got good sheets. It was especially helpful to be with a writer when the dashing review came out … I appreciated your understanding. Hudson tells me even Steinbok (?) is spelt in my book the way the Macquarie Dictionary prefers but even that J.M. finds fault with. I suppose it is mission impossible to please a white South African in such matters unless one writes a lay down rave about her country. But thank you for your kindness.

The artichokes were a real pleasure. I made scallop and artichoke soup and will send the recipe in case you are interested and not familiar with it as I was not. The combination is lovely. The skins don’t come off very easily so I gave up and it didn’t seem to matter much at all. It’s just fibre. There is of course no need to use the yolk if you use less stock or add another potato. A quarter of a kilo of scallops will be enough for two people. Not chopped up too much is better I think, whole they were lovely. All this in case you have some left and feel in the mood.

When I got home your kind invitation to stay was waiting so it was a pleasure to have and maybe that’s why I rang up. There’s more to things than meets the eye, I am convinced.

I’ve been reading the psalms and began to write in that tone yesterday to my amusement.

Quinces are here in a bowl and I am searching for Sheridan Rogers’s recipe for them baked with black rice … I lent the book …

Jack and I are going for the school holidays to Queensland to my friend’s farm for two weeks on 28th June and I hope to be able to almost wind up Stardust,[192] this book I’m doing. I bought Woolfie’s book thanks to the PLR cheque and so far it is wonderful … a great pleasure. I think if this keeps on she should win some big prizes and bring glory to us all. It’s very original and audacious.

192 Later called Burning and published by Hudson Publishing.

Well, thank you again for a very happy visit. I hope in the spring you three will see your way clear to come up and stay. The trees are wonderful and you would have a very warm welcome.

Love from Kate

Jerry’s Farm,

Elanora. Queensland.

Monday, 8th July 1996.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

I hope the life of art goes well … and that you are flourishing …

It is lovely here, and I am with Jack, my seven year-old grandson and Natali, Jerry’s granddaughter who will be seventeen next week. Doing the poultry, which only means putting in the food and keeping them safe from foxes but seems to take half the day with Jack playing with two goats in the pen … getting golf balls from the orchard, cooking and cleaning, the days pass happily and quickly.

So I did not write to anybody and just kept the Stardust typescript going by daily attention … but I wonder if anybody will be interested … this is the problem of such a self-centred kind of book … it is diary writing taken to a lengthy degree and one cannot but question the selfishness involved. But I feel the personal is universal … and it is looking at the life of another we find richness and consolation in our own.

I am reading H.D.F. Kitto The Greeks … and a mighty book it is. The trouble I had with finding who was the mistress of Zeus is at last solved. It was not Zeus, but Hephaestus who made the fine net to throw across his wife Aphrodite when she coupled with Ares. So all the time spent looking for this not obscure story was a wild goose chase but I had the wrong god.

I needed this anecdote for a story I did The Truce, which Random House accepted for Women, Love, Sex, which I badly wanted to be in. Mary told me she saw the cover at the Book Fair with a list of contributors and yet nobody who had been invited had been told so that is what I heard.

I took some trouble with this tale so I am relieved, greatly relieved.

This sunny warmth after being so cold the last few days at home is good. I felt quite cold and wizened. Two can be warm together and feel, lighting the fire, they are heating the other, but heating one comes harder after weeks of it as the cost is high and it seems so truly self indulgent … so it is in my mind the trouble lies but that was ever so with us all.

I can’t tell you the pleasure the Kitto has been … Natali found it in a 2nd hand shop and is reading around her topics for the HSC … we share it … she has been a real joy here … laughing like a gutter full of fresh rain after a drought, it is the loveliest laugh I ever heard.

Jack brings her posies from the garden, bought her lapis lazuli earrings if you please real ones, oval shaped and set in gold from the Currumbin bird sanctuary where I took him … thinking they were for his mother I lent him a grand amount, well grand to both of us, and found they were for Natali which I do not begrudge … I asked why … he said, ‘she bought lollies for me and has been nice to me …’ Then later I saw that he was utterly smitten … stares at her raving beauty and laughs when she laughs … She plays La Boheme each night when the sky drowns in the river and both turn pink, rose, crimson, mauve, magenta, … it is wonderful to see. I take a couple of shots of tequila and enjoy it all the more.

I hope things are well with you … and that winter is not a hardship at all but that you are warm and well … I don’t ring from this phone for the reasons you know … but with a teenager in the house I shudder at the bill Jerry will get.

Wednesday, 10th.

Today the two new goats got out onto the golf course. We have just come back from leading them home on ropes. Julie the Franciscan type animal loving caretaker who lives on the property bought these creatures to eat the grass growing in the goose overnight pen. They will eat the orchard at any time and are hair raising to me as Jerry loves her trees above almost all else. Pretty, useless, dangerous things; they terrify me having seen the desertification of Africa … nothing is safe. But Jack had a great adventure catching them among golfers. We walked them home by the green river with cormorants rising.

Byron Bay has a monthly market so we went with Julie’s son driving us on Sunday. Among the beautiful youths with their matted hair, naked children and lovely bare arms, the scent of pot wafting round, it seemed another age. Rebels without a cause Natali said. Nothing to buy but rat ends of things … but a wonderful sword swallower … it seemed so lost there. Fatuous vapid art, rings through their noses like bulls and as easily led. It made me anxious. Fortune tellers abounding, religions around that have stood the test of time and with a beautiful literature, disregarded and instead, palmistry and crystal gazing beguiles them.

A perfect and sunny day today, the pigeons got out of their house so the crows will get them … talk about tooth and nail and claw … but for us, the lucky ones, it is a life of pleasure watching the little blue wrens at the window, the peacocks displaying to a goose convinced perhaps it is a peahen. I feel so lucky.

On the way to Byron Bay I forgot to say, we saw four whales far out at sea, a pod perhaps, travelling north, spouting water with their tails which glittered in the sun like wands.

I go next Monday to a friend’s cattle stud at Ipswich for a week or so because I need to do some publicity for Gorillas in Brisbane. Then, who knows?

When I see Mt. Warning Ianesco, I think of the other side of the mountain from where we saw it on the trip from hell …

I hope Patrick is doing well and thriving in all he does … and both of you also.

Love from Jill.

Elanora. Q. 4221.

9th July 1996.

Dear Lucy and Marion,

Thank you for a wonderful visit—I had a very good time with you both—a big treat. Jack and I came here Saturday and have walked to town—four kilometres or so and swam in the Olympic heated pool—I was very anxious that he could be bored, stuck in the country, but so far so good and he made a little speech to me before we got the plane, saying, ‘Dod,[193] you don’t need to worry about me, I’m very happy not to do anything.’ We found two golf clubs in one of the bedrooms and the orchard’s full of balls hit in from the courses on both sides of the farm, so we take a basket and gather plenty of them. Jack attempts to hit about fifty balls into a tyre set down hill among the trees (but with a straight avenue between them). I watch, and then we gather the balls and begin again—I would never, or at least rarely, have had the energy and interest to spend the time like this with my children—I was too set on my own business—but I did fly kites a lot with Mary.

193 Jack’s name for his grandmother.

Mary has rung twice from Cambridge and at first I think was a bit disappointed as the conference was full of U.K. academics who were not friendly but today’s e-mail says it’s better—she was off to hear Jenny Diski—my favourite, as I told you.

There are four peacocks on the verandah that I can see from this couch—soon the sky over the hills will turn pink at dusk—we sit and watch the bend of the river turn pink and the new lake (drain) with a tiny island in it where the wild duck land.

I’ve made eight jars of marmalade—one lot cumquat the best of all, and the other lime which is ‘deelicious’ as Nigella says—not her recipe—there isn’t one—just, in this case, a method—cut, soak, boil, add sugar—boil, bottle.

There is a clutch of guinea fowl here—the prettiest, silliest birds with a cheep cheep noise that follows the flock as it proceeds round the house.

Did you see Mary Moody on Australian Story on Monday? It was set in Frayssinet le Gelat (sp?), not where Jerry, my friend is, as I said—she who lent us her farm—so I was very interested and also I knew Miriam, Mary’s mother at Leura after whom her daughter is named (who spoke very well on the programme, I thought). Is that a sentence I wonder. Perhaps reading Iris M. is leading me to longer sentences or different ways of placing the words—hers are not very long, but often unique. I’m onto The Red and The Green at present and finding it hard to get going as it’s set in Ireland in 1914 and has her usual vast cast, each introduced at length—as if I.M.’s on stage and telling the audience all about the people before they appear and one needs to keep one’s wits or people’s names and characteristics and place in the tale or the family slip away—but the great thing is to trust the writer, I always think and in I.M.’s case the trust is utterly well placed—the good horse which will take you to the end of the book safely and wisely and in comfort. Your books do it Marion.

Love Kate.

Leura.

15th February 1997.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

Greetings. Silence from me because I sold my house in December and bought one on the South Coast at Woonona—which nobody has heard of. Today we exchange documents or something and a deposit is paid to the owners of 19 Railway Parade, Woonona. 2715.

It was a great pleasure to have your post cards. I am so glad your trip is accomplished. And delighted you stayed at the Imperial Hotel. India possibly has a few more like it and could do with them but I don’t know them.

I did love being at your home. It will be good to see you both again on our great journey North to the Painted Desert. It is a small desert by any standards and you may know that but I would not like you to expect a large one … but it is truly exquisite. I have been on the phone to Bill my brother re the weather and roads. Also, to Rossie and Peter who own the William Creek Hotel. Ros says no four wheel drive is needed for the roads even after the floods while you were in India. But, she can only have us on the night going up and on the way back it is all booked out, my brother and somebody’s 40th birthday party booked the lot … so it can only be Sunday night. Now this may spoil all our well-laid plans, as you may not be able to afford the extra day. We could possibly go home via Roxby Downs and book somewhere south. Let me know and if this is needed I will phone Bill who is experienced and he will suggest another route. But for the time being I booked for the Saturday at Ros’s and the following Sunday, 27th, just to secure the places.

I long to be warm. To be near the sea will be a luxury. The little house of extreme ugliness and cleanliness, dark shiny chocolate brown paint everywhere, is 400 metres from the surf. There is a blue painted cement sea pool by the sea side (a type of Australian Thirties architecture I love) and a train in front of my house with a line of sheoaks and the station about six houses away. So I have bought for position rather than bricks and maybe the house will be beautiful after 6 months or so. I am bringing Dunsinane[194] with me in the form of 40 big pots containing trees, roses, rhododendrons and azaleas. I plan to plant flowering trees and fill the sky with flowers so if it is not to our liking on the earth we can lift our heads and be happy. I will learn about hot planting, I mean plants for heat, a tall datura lily outside my bedroom windows, long bells scented, and some daturas are white and some pink. Cecil Beaton photographed women in front of these plants … Jerry has one two storeys high outside her bedroom. I’m putting in a white magnolia which grow well there and a pink wisteria-like tree called Robinia which has scented flowers … it only blooms for a fortnight but is a dream when it does. I’d like a fig and lime and lemon, a jacaranda and some myrtle trees. Myrtles are now here in white, pink and purple, tall short and medium with wonderful smooth trunks. German brides always wore myrtle in their hair and Queen Victoria brought via Albert flowers on dresses and hair to Briton along with Christmas trees, as you probably know well.

194 The castle in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

I am waiting to hear from Hudson about my book Stardust. Peter Goldsworthy is due to launch it in Darwin at a big conference there the Government and Education Department are doing on 4th July. Sometimes I think it will be abandoned and sometimes I don’t care … but I guess it will come out … and then Swags … in the Footsteps of Australian Explorers is almost done but a big typing job needed for the last trip of 28 days completed last September but no time or rather energy to do the job since.

I will begin writing poems again soon. I think of the titles … say ‘The Eloquence of Towels’, or ‘What Sophie Doesn’t Know’ … and so on … and I let it slide. I wonder if I lost heart or strength or simply became lazy. I was so kindly treated and the odd thing is I feel passed over but maybe that is true. I ought to have worked harder maybe. It is a puzzle to me. Before I was a waterfall, never this trickle with a few trees withering on the sides aching for the spray, the lush roar to begin again.

I am making plum chutney and apricot chutney and tomato chutney. I don’t know why except the fruit is good and cheap too and perhaps it is because I feel a cellar full is needed because I don’t know what I’m going to do. It is the oddest house I ever bought, a sort of zigzag that I can’t decipher. So I ordered two superb couches from a Canberra firm called Wai Wurri with some Maori workers as I feel a matching pair of something wonderful will strike a note of the expansive and unexpected, something opulent and elegant, something uplifting and a bit mad. I’ll lie on one and suck a pen and write a poem or two perhaps and get going again.

I am staying at Melba for Thursday night of the Word Festival at Greg and Beverley Fitzgerald’s and two nights at University House and then Sunday night back at Melba and thence to the first day at Woonona and the roar of the surf and the sound of digging and trees going in and floors being sanded. I will camp in the garden until the floors are dry guarding my furniture like a dog.

Don’t be surprised if you are weary a while after India … it strikes you sometimes when you get home how tired you are … it is normal … just go to bed as often as possible even when it’s not.

Love from Jill.

P.S. In the far Nth. S.A. 11 inches fell in an hour! So my third brother, Peter, says wild flowers should be out after the flood! Bill says one creek, the Neule, he saw from the air (once a thin stream) was 2 miles wide. 30 k. of rail track was washed away. J.

Leura

Tuesday, 10th March 1997.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

I am in full flurry of starting a new garden at 19 Railway Pde, Woonona … it is, by the way, about ten kilometres north of Wollongong and has a semi tropical climate hemmed in as it is by sea and the tail of these mountains which make a tall green escarpment that my house faces. This can’t be built on because of slippage and bush rules and fires so it is wonderful to be able to ‘lift up mine eyes to the hills …’ I am putting in a pergola over the gate so ordering climbing roses galore and a grevillea called Marmalade for obvious reasons … hibiscus thrive there … some blue ones are in the garden and white too … yellow also. (I don’t move in until 25th March, the Tuesday before Easter).

Friends, this is happening to the wrong person. I am so wild with the stress from the advice I am given on all sides. I simply want to move into something decent and start work. It is difficult for women who do not work to understand that house decorating and moving and putting in a new kitchen and bathroom is not the be all of my life and I cannot wait to find the perfect solutions but hastily wish to tear ahead and be done. Amen. But no doubt when installed and calm I will be happy there as the sea the lovely sea is only 400 metres away as I told you and it is a rolling surf with a pink golden sand for miles. This is paradise.

I hope you are both over the Indian weariness.

With love, Jill.

19 Railway Pde, Woonona. 2517.

27th May 1997.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

At last a table a machine and time to write some letters.

I am looking forward to the 18th July. We will need to hire (that is the others in the group not you who already have transport) an extra vehicle. Jerry will probably be in Turkey but maybe my good friend Beverly Fitzgerald, a poet from Canberra, who is doing an Australian and American Literary course at ANU. She is a senior psychologist sort of trouble shooter who works on Tribunals for the Govt. trying to get poor devils money when they spent it or gave it away, for instance, after being awarded big amounts … that sort of rather heart wrenching thing.

I’m sure she would be most interested in reading my job description! … but it is to relay an idea of what a good friend she is. Patricia Harry is coming. She has just had a show at Olsen-Carr gallery in Paddington … Giles Auty was there and I must be the only person in Sydney who likes him. He is funny and sweet but nobody agrees. So we three will hire a car and you and Richard[195] will fill the one you booked. I hope this is agreeable to you. I think this will be a far better trip, the timing was awry in the last and I am glad we abandoned it. I like a bigger group to be honest. It’s more fun. Kim Mahood called for the day here and brought her boyfriend Hamish who is from New Zealand. We had dinner and they drove off in her blue truck to Kangaroo Valley where Hamish is and she is nearby at Berry.

195 Richard Morrison.

I think you will both like it here—more of this later … do come and get a little house you will not regret it I think

I have been thinking of you a lot lately … meaning to call, but at night I am often too tired. Hugh and Mary and Jack love it here which means a lot to me.

The work on this house proceeds. A sun deck was built out from the kitchen and I am painting it with oil daily.

The living area is now painted shell white with a seed pearl Dulux whitish trim … the dining and kitchen the same … all the awful wallpaper gone all layers … it took a master painter eight and a half days just to clean and paint those three rooms but the work is perfect. And worth the $1,900. Now the rest of the house the three bedrooms and passage await but I feel it best to pay and be patient. I don’t want a slap dash job and it’s all bearable anyway.

I am looking at the sea … still and bright saxe blue the colour of a ribbon I used to have on my plaits … it’s deeper blue than the blue sky which has no clouds. I am telling you this of course because it is such a contrast to where I used to sit to write letters. For weeks I thought it a mistake to buy this house so odd, small and queerly situated so close to the road and rail. Yet riding our bikes last week as Jack and I swooped on the long path to Wollongong with the sea sparkling, the surf in long white lines with boys in the sea like seals waiting for a wave, I saw it was a good thing to be here. Then the house came into shape a bit more and so I am settled and calmer and feel jubilant. It is so warm. At home at Leura it is four degrees (my neighbour calls to tell me) and here I hardly put the heater on. I am deeply glad for the move.

Coming here was quite tough because I lived in the garden for four days and the sweet neighbours found me, fed me and insisted I come in and sleep. I did too. Almost everybody smokes, the women walk about with steel hair rollers on their heads in short flowing billowing dressing gowns. I have been lonely. But now there is a new Robinia tree, my children loving this place, all of this is wonderful

I planted four olive trees, hibiscus, limes, gardenias, six camellias, two lemons, seven climbing plants (blue potato vines and white ones) and twenty lavenders … anything grows here they say. The soil is black and has fallen down from the tail of the Blue Mountains that this house faces. So it is not sandy at all though the house is only 400 metres from the beach. At first I was in a state of shock at the lack of privacy, the backyards with clothes hoists. I walked out in towel one day and was startled to see my neighbour at her sink … I slunk inside feeling like a beaten dog, trapped and chained. That was part of the time when I felt I had made a terrible mistake … but now there are latticed screens up … and white bougainvillea to grow up them I hope. It is an incredibly lovely area with the mountains that fall down to the sea and it is like Greece or the South of France … the people had once worked in the coal mines, a pall of dust hangs at sea some days … they are afraid of trees I see now this is because trees can make work by dropping leaves and entering pipes … and when one is exhausted from brutal work no doubt the thought of any in the garden is horrible … so they don’t plant … they like lawns trimmed and roared over weekly in a fume of blue smoke from the mower and his machine. The people are obsessed with drains and low fences and no maintenance on anything. They are happiest with tabula rasa … a house sits, ideally on a green lawn like a white stamp on an unaddressed envelope … that is happiness to many. I like an envelope scrawled all over with a stamp indecipherable from ink and inside a letter that is full of repose and serenity … can I achieve it? Some days I think it is almost here.

I am to organise a writers’ festival at Bathurst at the Charles Sturt University in October and so talk to them almost daily … the manuscript of Stardust … the diary book is here waiting to be fixed from the new editor … the editor does not like me it seems so from the letter she wrote to Nick and he sent on and this is a good thing as she will save me in some ways from others who don’t. I hope you are both well and that work goes smoothly … especially for you Mirna after the trouble earlier. I back you to triumph.

Love from Jill.

Thursday, 29th

P.S. I didn’t call you in Adelaide when I was over as my brother’s attack and illness—a stroke came after the operation—I was just focussed on him. He’s home now and well—lucid with fine speech—modern skills have performed a miracle!

I sent him the catalogue of Tom Robert’s show at A.G.N.S.W. for his 60th birthday. Saw the beautiful Murandi Show—bottles on a table serene as moons collected.

Woonona.

17th November 1997.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

I am sorry to have missed you on the second trip to Adelaide. I called round to see you as I said and rang the bell a lot … just on the spur of the moment. Now I have an apology to make. I did not get to see your show Ian as my plane left at 11 a.m. I rang to see if the director lived above the gallery if he would let me in but he wasn’t there … so I am full of regrets … and hope you will let me have a studio visit when I am over for Writers’ Week.

Now the idea of the trip north appeals … and I hope you will be able to come even for a few days … it is a day’s trip … not too far … Parachilna and then turn ‘when you come to the end that’s our place’ says Patricia my sister in law … it will be sound, lean, big, bare, basic and beautiful … that is how they do everything … vast scale, thick legs on all they make or build and meant to last 100 years … but without any frills or furbelows … and a waterfall as I told you Ian … in that hasty call by your car.

Jack and I were swimming in the sea pool Friday when a pod of whales swam past spurting and frolicking or doing what whales do as their business … and beside them inshore was a big school of dolphins as if to guide them or play or to keep them from the shore … a wonderful sight …

I badly and keenly want and need to tend this wild garden … so much to do here … there is a small meadow of white cosmos and pink roses with blue salvia … among this is a lot of Italian parsley and nasturtiums with the new lemon tree flourishing and the bigger pink crepe myrtle … and on the fence three pink climbing roses … two were dug from beneath the big tree as sticks and turned out to be that old rose pale pink with thousands of flowers in clusters … it’s just called the cottage rose … a sort of weed the nursery man Colin told me who is an expert on old roses … Philippa has done a great job holding the weeds at bay here … but one bed is in bad need of work and yet I can’t get to everything what with unpacking and cleaning etc.

The Financial Review took an excerpt for their lifestyle pages of Burning. Also for them now with their new weekend edition I am to do a piece for John Newton on my talk in Adelaide but can’t yet think clearly enough and hope to God I can remember what I said … as in a state of holy terror I made it up on the spot …

Megalong Books at Leura are talking of doing a launch of Burning at the Bakers or with the baker as the shop is in my book (no pun intended) … maybe we can do something at the bakery itself in Katoomba which would be a nice change from restaurants … though I am not at all against a restaurant myself … the new cover they say is nice … but I wonder.

We launched the book at the Writers Centre at Wollongong last Friday night … and were locked out in the heat for over half an hour … then the director rushed up with a bread stick in a plastic bag and some cheese in a bag and then she got a cleaner to let her in … we straggled in all fifteen of us … (all this paid for by Peribo, the good distributors who did the post out and letter addressing, as asked, by the Centre) … The woman who I was told was to interview me, said she would just launch the book and that I would talk … so, startled, I did as told but it shows what a muddle it all was … it is funny really, you write a book and struggle for the quality of it and then stumble around the country publicising it in the most bizarre way imaginable … it is hard not to feel stupid to be even trying to help publicise the book … It feels like a delusion of grandeur by a five-year-old thinking their finger painting a work worthy of Picasso … but the world lets the five-year-old quickly know what they think and chagrin arrives or worse if one isn’t careful. The whole publicity business is a dangerous matter as it is polluting and debauching and certainly deflating … But I am lucky to have it as many write better than I and don’t get published at all …

I hope you are both thriving and that your work goes well … I did write from Bathurst to thank you for coming to my talk Ianesco … but didn’t post it as I began on the tale of meeting Herb … who is barking mad in my opinion … and felt it was too silly so didn’t send it fearing to bore you.

Herb, to put it plainly, wants to come and see me and says he is free … which is so far from the truth and so much of what caused grief in the past that I am surprised. We met by chance coming out of the Writers’ tent with Marisa[196] and her friend Bob Evans on our way to lunch at Marisa’s and she invited Herb … and the poor fool came. I wish him well but it is clear he has learnt nothing from the past and lives a life of delusion … It is not true he is free and never was nor will be … so it was wrong to say so yet again.

196 Marisa Raniolo Wilkins.

You said on first meeting Herb, Ian, that he was a con and I thought of that when we met again … I am over him and hope we do not meet … no hard feelings …

Love to you both,

Jill.

Adelaide.

10th March 1998.

Dear Jenny and Philip,

This was a good Writers’ Week. Next time us all. Hot and 1000s. Barbara Hanrahan’s diaries made the headlines in the Advertiser—what a book! No one can drop a bucket on a person with such accurate spite. It’s a cruel, funny, tragic, brilliant book. Wait, I’ll lend it to you.

I saw The Songs of a Wanderer dance show and wept and cried Hallelujah! at the beauty—three tonnes of rice fell from heaven in a golden light.

Love.

Kate.

Woonona.

Friday, 28th March 1998.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

Life may be a bit quieter for you now … I hope Puss is better.

I wrote a poem about him but it is not ready to send yet … needs work … a queer poem … hope you like it when I send it.

He had an effect on me as he has on most … I am sending some new poems to show you what I am up to.

I have just got back from a heavenly ride to Wollongong which you now know Ian, I ate the same sort of roll we had on the same bench and thought of that happy day and looked up and lo the building is still with its band aid on the window. I went to get my rates adjusted and fixed up and it worked well so I came out triumphant, ate the roll, got a pen fixed, god bless David Jones and rode home gloating that the sea is so high, wide and deep with great white waves curling like a bowler’s arm and the arm of hills flung out to sea and a white egret stalking in a pond and a grey one or maybe a blue crane, not sure … just a joy, the whole thing.

Is the Big Picture Show on at the gallery yet Ian? If so I hope people like your picture and you get good comments … I hope Nexus[197] is now easier for you Mirna with the Festival over and that you have some time to recover … it was just wonderful to stay with you both, … a real luxury and delight so thank you from the bottom of my heart … it could not have been better … and if we go to Writers’ Week next time we will go together with any luck and enjoy it all even more …

197 The art gallery of which Mirna was the director.

I spoke to Ghilly on the phone for an hour and a half today and she is the only one I have spoken to for two days … the silence is good but so is a good talk …

I went to the Salon des Refusés with Jerry for the Archibald … oh woeful pictures … really a shame to show them … a real waste … I heard Louise Adler’s ABC radio critic Bruce somebody give the Archibald a real drossing … or is it dressing down … and when I think about it, no amount of bread and circuses can really make it reasonable to put so much brouhaha into such vapid paintings … the trouble is the trustees do the judging and that I think makes it all so woeful …

I am still reading Anne Michel’s The Weight of Oranges poetry book … a gem … a real inspiration … she is possibly a real genius … says things as deep wise and profound at times as Emily Dickinson but in a different way … not abbreviated and plonked down on the page like sticks of dynamite but more like swathes of flaming truth …

Love,

Jill.

Woonona.

14th September 1998.

Dear Ianesco and Mirna,

I hope you are coming over for the Biennale. I know you will be rushing so don’t really expect to see you … but I hope you enjoy it if you come … I met Nick Waterlow[198] yesterday … he is in good shape … seems serene … is at peace since Romey’s[199] death … he is one with faith and it has got him through. I think he feels strongly that the dead are with us. As Sophia says of God, ‘He’s under the bed,’ her word for invisible … I suspect the dead are just the same … we all get signs too.

198 Art critic and director of the Biennale.

199 Married to Nick Waterlow.

Jennifer (the daughter of my friends Barbara and Duncan Campbell who had me to stay in Rome and in Vienna and who are retired here now as you no doubt know) died from heroin last Thursday. She was about thirty-six I think … worked for the Australia Council. It is like a mediaeval plague, like smallpox taking our young. She was found by her boyfriend who came home later than usual from work. He was not an addict. They met at a yoga retreat in the Blue Mountains.

I went to Jenny’s funeral yesterday with Patricia Harry. The word I kept thinking was havoc. The sheer all sweeping havoc of her death. Barbara and Duncan were at the church greeting people when we got there early. We had been to a florist and Patricia got a big bunch of orange gerberas with dark blue irises and tuberoses. I saw the florist make this with ivy leaves and hellebore leaves into a wonderful thing … from the centre she began like a hay stack with the stems at the bottom going out like a teepee. So the whole thing was a big tall circle graduating down to the edges. I saw what can be done with fewer flowers than you would imagine. It gave them all space. I want to learn how to do it.

Duncan was ashen at the church door. It was a Catholic Church. St Candice’s in Bayswater or is that Kings Cross or Potts Point?

I didn’t recognise Barbara at first. She was like somebody who had seen a mountain blow up. She was by the coffin and walked around very easily … I think the secret to this ease to be by the body, is to have had time with the dead beforehand and to be unafraid and to have defeated horror … it is the horror that undoes people I think.

Barbara might have been in her own living room … walking around quite at ease, upright, pale, nun-like, gracious, she hugged each person while they wept. She said to me, ‘I am surrounded by love.’ We were near Jenny’s coffin which was rosewood with a wonderful bright diamond-shaped arrangement of crimson roses and yellow gerberas on it.

Why am I telling you all this? I have to tell somebody … also I think preparing for more funerals as we grow towards our own is useful. If it is all blocked off and silent nothing can be learnt.

They played Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Vanessa, Jenny’s sister, Barbara and Duncan read from a lectern. I do not know how they succeeded. They never bent nor leant their head on each other’s shoulders through the whole long service.

I am not used to this. They were like royalty upright and calm. I also think it is important to have time between the death and the funeral as this gives people a space to come to terms with the loss. It gives them a chance to learn to stand upright for a while. Things hurled together in a hurry don’t go so well … sometimes I think people just want to get it over with or else are harried into a quick funeral far too fast before planning and some order can be arranged. I must remember this.

We went to their friends’ house in Woollahra and had sandwiches etc. Duncan did a curious thing which seemed startling at the time but now I think was good … he said he was going to read a piece of doggerel … they had a set of steps a sort of home painter’s ladder for changing light bulbs … and he stood high up on that and read a long poem he’d written about Jenny, quite loving and funny and honest.

I spoke, because Barbara asked me to, to Jenny’s father, John, a diplomat who had come from Washington. It was interesting … he blamed Barbara in that he said Jenny was like her mother … Barbara had told Patricia that it was because John had withheld funds for Jenny to go to a course in Europe when she had gone there to do it. Nobody it seems could bear it and needed to find a reason.

I think now that drug addiction is a form of mental illness … it is not to do with the character … some of it is luck … but if you have been dried out or clean for a year or so unless you were daft you would not go out and get drugs … that form of destruction is a form of illness … I like this way of looking at it … it takes away blame … and the whole thing is the deepest mystery … it is a sort of riddle for our times … not that it is new … it is just that the numbers of people affected are new … but Susan Sontag or any person could think till they are blue in the face, Thos. Moore himself and what can anybody come up with except the metaphor without a mirror to hang itself in … I know it is a metaphor but I can’t find the mirror … it is so perplexing a huge question … talk about a search for meaning … there is an answer but it is around the corner and won’t show itself.

I went with Michael Carr, Patricia’s son, and had a glass of Bollinger while we waiting for them to come back from the cemetery … and met Ed Campion[200] who is a sort of Daniel Thomas of the literature world … I introduced him to Michael and they were soon reciting names of popes as they both love Church history. Ed taught it for years … and it was Michael’s favourite subject … then Ed said, ‘Michael would know of a famous Archbishop Carr’ … as we went off I said, ‘It must be genetic Michael’ and he said, ‘No it isn’t. I am Cohen really … Jewish.’ So I waved to Ed who is so special and outgoing and warm a man who stands out and does not judge … he is always sweet to me and I never have anything to do with the Literature Board so why would he bother except he just likes to be friendly to everybody. I was running across the road and he shouted something I didn’t hear … I was holding my hat on my head and running, so couldn’t go back.

200 Catholic priest and arts administrator.

I made the hat from an old straw one I took round Africa that is dark with dust and had put the green and navy shot chiffon silk scarf around it as I felt the need to look a bit glamorous. (Vanity).

I stayed overnight with Patricia as I couldn’t face the train. Yes the word is havoc. The sheer havoc of the explosion of this death.

On a happier note, I have just wheeled a load of beautiful old pink bricks from a big bin down the road. I have done a load a day for the last week. I can’t do two as its too heavy … how men do it hourly beats me … it is cruel on the feet and hands. They are putting a new storey onto the house and these are thrown out … I climb up into the bin and hurl out bricks … then totter home … I am making a path to the tap and letter box and edging all the garden beds … they look wonderful next to dark green box plants I am growing from cuttings … a slow business …

Vandals hit my letterbox with a hammer or big stick last weekend. Hugh mended it as he was here with Sophia for two days … and he got a fright and thinks I ought to move but it is only kids and they do the whole street … Terry next door tells me this … his letterbox was hit too and his is tin … I would like to get an iron one … I plan automatic lights and a siren on the next box … but that may not be yet invented. But there is a need … a new niche market as they say.

A load of white may is out so big like a load of snow … tons of it outside the living room window … I think of Mary as when I brought her home from birth her bedroom had the white may in bloom outside the window and as the house was new to us it was a great greeting and surprise … and she was as fair as the may flowers.

I am going to hear Ghilly sing in Gounod’s Faust tomorrow night and with her to Newcastle for a music festival at the Cathedral for the weekend …

There is a poetry festival on in Canberra on 1st Oct. and I have to go to that … but I think it will be poor … poets en masse are woeful … like carp scrambling for bread … an air too often of debauchery … but go I must and maybe it will be ok. I will stay with Beverley Fitzgerald … and hope to see Richard.

I can see the white wake of a fast boat on the grey sea …

I hope you are both flourishing … spring is here and that gives a lift to the spirits … thank God your Patrick is well and happy … sport is a godsend …

Love from Jill.

Woonona.

10th October 1998.

Dear Philip and Jenny.

Silence from me … I have been away … about four trips … forgive my silence … lots to tell you … I hope you are thriving … you would have enjoyed the poetry festival but I feared the worst … but it was good … but next year let’s do it …

Sunday … at least it is a beautiful day … these school holidays with Jack … we have enjoyed it … think the headache was from the dull roar of the television … after we slump in from a long ride at about 2 p.m. and have lunch, then I feel it is only reasonable for Jack to rest by the television. He is the most undemanding child.

Twice a day we sit down to the table and have a discussion … we are onto President Clinton and the dilemma of the people of whether to impeach or not … and onto the fall of the Government in Italy and their vote by only one which means the communists will possibly not let Nato use their airstrips for strikes on Slobodan Milosevic who has put all those refugees into tents with winter coming … to bomb or not to bomb this monster … that is our question … his opinion is as good as many or better than many …

I have stopped having Philippa to garden … as Jerry said ‘You can’t have her dig for you’ … the sun is hitting my forehead coming in the new French windows by this table … I put blinds in the kitchen and one in the new window in the bedroom which looks out onto the back garden and is a boon.

The Newcastle Cathedral music festival three weeks ago was brilliant … they did a movable concert … first before lunch in the Catholic Cathedral of a cappella choirs singing religious music … Mozart, etc … then to the newly rebuilt in the old style Anglican one, another choir with some of the same people plus accompaniment … then lunch outside under a bay tree looking into the harbour … John made about a thousand sandwiches with helpers … his secret is to have fresh and hand cut bread … quite big hearty sandwiches … then after juice and coffee, over the road to the C of E grammar school to hear a choir and some soloists sing arrangements of nursery rhymes, Shenandoah and old folk songs … it was glorious … and so few know about it … we paid $20 at the door of the first church and nothing more for the entire event …

In the evening we went to dinner at the Newcastle Club which I thought would be a football club house but was a dark timber lined mansion with the head of the club a sponsor of the festival, a lawyer who is with a nun, Jocelyn, out only two years ago … very in love, she’s got a great knowledge of music, he is daft about her utterly besotted … not allowed to see his own children in some divorce … she didn’t tell me that … just said she has seen his daughter aged four in a video and she is now grown up … all this of course was besotting to me sitting there minding my manners, focused on not spilling, and finding Jocelyn bright, happy, erudite, brave, and puzzling … she works with the severely handicapped … teaches them to compose electronically … don’t you love this tale … now Mr. Urbanity with the white collar and blue shirt at the end of the table could not take his eyes off her … she referred to her saddlebags … meaning plump hips when she took a chocolate … it was with the greatest difficulty I banished the thought of him clutching them …

Seagulls are swirling round the lawn like aeroplanes in a busy drome queuing for scraps I threw out … they swirl into land one wing higher than the other so like a plane … same principle involved I suppose …

Nick Hudson doesn’t want to decide on my gardening book until it is done … no word from Landsdowne yet … and I have lost faith so stopped … Nick has gone to the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London one for a month.

I laughed and thought of you two weeks ago … things are better now by the way … I was paid by the Campbelltown Literary Festival … where I gave two talks … so do not worry … and that one was head-bangingly boring … well meant, good people, but not much idea … about twenty people came … I kept going to the lavatory and trying to find a place to hit my head on the wall where nobody would see me … over dinner in the Catholic Club … a Pinteresque conversation … I have a dog. Yes. It is a hairy dog. Yes … I tried to be fascinated as these people who are still as stones round a table drinking, are deep as ponds really and I cannot fathom them … two hours of this … I was a wreck and escaped with the greatest exultation at 9 p.m. kindly driven to Hugh’s for the night … God this life … I cannot see myself dragging round the country to these fairs like a freak when I am eighty … will I still be doing it … will I still be alive … I keep thinking I have cancer … I dreamt I had it on the farm and Gwen Harwood first dreamt her cancer and then found she had it … it said so in her book Bone Scan.

Well, where was I …? Yes, to the tale of the money … I had about six dollars to last four days and as I walked in my gate thought ‘Well it’s over to you, God’ … as a nun on a bus told me she’d said … and I walked over … you are not going to believe this … to the bin on the side of the house near the fence and on the ground was a ten dollar note beside … that happened within three minutes of my thought …

Then I asked Terry, my neighbour (70) ex-mechanic, to help put up the three new blinds I had got from a bin at the blind shop … $15 each … while I hate asking him for this kind of help and he won’t take money, it meant I could not ask him so when he was up on a chair I put it into his pocket … and the job was done … this meant that when Mary and Peter[201] came here and I was coming back on the train from the Greenwich lunch, they would greet them with some coolness … they had to go to take back the car they’d hired to go for the long weekend to Kiama and left Jack at Terry’s.

201 Peter Jordan, Mary’s husband at the time.

My brother Peter is coming with his wife Helen today for a drive and calling for lunch or morning tea they do not know yet and will take Jack back to Mary’s … I was doing it today and this will be a boon to me.

Jack sitting here eating poached eggs and gravy on toast a thing Hugh and I love … needs a roast the night before for the gravy … says you should sell some of your recipes … he was reluctant to try it … as it sounds odd but it is delicious … I bet nobody has this in their cook book he says … you should do it … no one’s cook book that I’ve seen has ever had this recipe in it, he says … But once I did see something of it in a book … English, I think, no maybe French … people sneer at this so Hugh and I keep it quiet … the squeamish, those who love to feel superior about food, and they are a multitude, lift their noses in derision … but they are missing a treat.

I hope you are not too weary of this letter … ‘enough is enough,’ as Mrs. Thatcher once said.

I heard Ghilly sing Stephanie (an important name, between us all!)[202] in Faust … I went the night before going to the Newcastle Festival of Music … and the day I spoke of was only one of the five days … so it was not the whole festival …

202 This was Philip’s code name for Jenny before they began to live together.

Please give your Kate and Chris[203] my love and I send lots to you both.

203 Jenny’s PhD students from the University of Sydney, and Philip’s part-time carers.

I start teaching again this Wednesday … maybe an afternoon advanced class if they get enough people as well as a 10 a.m. class for beginners …

I am sowing beetroot seeds and many French beans and a lot of flower seeds … the garden is like a grenade. I run out every few hours to stare at the ground to see if anything is up … some beans … and my neighbour’s share farming of sweet corn is up … he asked if he could use my land … I am delighted what a lovely idea … he sowed, I watered … he dug … my task the easier … and the sun and soil do the rest of the toil.

Love from Kate.

P.S. Jenny, have you seen the new books of Stead’s[204] letters? I saw the first one and reviewed it for the Courier Mail … I think you will enjoy them if you haven’t already … the first is possibly more interesting than the 2nd as I felt reading so many letters of end of an age in the library they were sad … but possibly being edited and organised makes them more interesting … but the early part of the life is still shrouded in mystery and so those letters from that period held a lot of interest for me … She spoke of her theories on art, etc. in this 1st vol. and the autobiographical centre of what she wrote.

204 Christina Stead.

Love. Kate.

1999–2004

Rose Park, S.A.

30th October 1999.

Dear Ianesco,

I have abeen thinking about those pictures you showed me and I want to tell you how impressive and exciting I found them.

I was thinking this morning that your landscapes are about the past the present and chance and taking these three, you juggle them in that breathtaking hypnotic moment that makes the juggler catch all the balls over and over and makes the artist make art. The way those old ancient landscapes affected only by nature are touched, trammelled, at times devastated, cultivated, ordered, debauched civilised and depraved and how chancy it all is and how peculiar, accidental, almost a shrug it is, our indifference, hubris, our ruthless beautiful history what your pictures show—

The glory of the birds, a flight accidental and beautiful as a splash of paint. The secret I think is that the motive or spring is love—an adoration of the horizon, the sky, the space, the glory of it all. How chancey our history is—who goes where and when and what they do to the places they go and who follows and what they do to the people there before them.

And there’s in those pictures, the excitement of the gesture, the wave, the way paint goes on but I never feel that that’s a crucial thing in them—but I may be wrong—what makes them exciting pictures is the juggling, the way these things are handled in the language that lets you speak and the viewer join in and be affected.

Your mural will be magnificent when you pull it off—the image is so gripping.

What is that picture, is it a Raphael of the Prince in red?—I forget its name—it’s him dismantled by, I suppose, a combination of Leonardo and Mr. Smith the local facial cranial surgeon at the Q.E.[205] It’s eerie, compelling and has the dignity of humanity dismantled—the secret of great medicine/nursing—I think, is that human beings never lose their extreme dignity at their most incompetent and vulnerable which leads to how we can deal with and approach the dying—their inexorable (and ours) withdrawal amid stench, pain, sorrow and history. A petticoat, a ruby ring and a hypodermic needle in a silver kidney bowl—these are the accoutrements of death. Everything is incongruous and heartbreaking and ordinary, so ordinary, banal really.

205 Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide—a mural commissioned by the surgical department.

Thanks so much, Ianesco, for showing me the pictures—to spend time with you seeing them in the studio—

I’ll see you and Mirna in March I hope—I go to Warraweena[206] at the end of Writers’ Week and will call it research for a trip for us all then as at that time I think University will be busy and you may not be free—but if you tell me later that year—and if the place is any good, and I suspect it is—I’ll book and we can go at a time that suits you both and I’ll let Richard know too—we need to get into a truck and get going.

206 Conservation property in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, belonging to Kate’s brother Tucker (Tom) Brinkworth.

Love and thanks.

Jill.

P.S.—Balmain,[207] Tuesday, 2nd November 1999.

207 At Jenny Gribble’s house in Balmain, Sydney.

I have been thinking again about those pictures Ian and I see I’m wrong about the gesture—the surface—it’s important—crucial, because it brings the present—the surface the here and now right here in front, as it is, of the past—all that’s been done and has been is behind the present: it’s this gesture that speaks and anchors the picture in the actual moment of now. Anyway, I go over these pictures and enjoy thinking about them, so thanks—

I am sending you a quote, as it may interest you, thinking as you now are about medicine and history—It’s from The Rings of Saturn that you of course have read—by W.G. Sebald—and the part on Thomas Brown (born 19.10.1605)—and on Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson.

I’m here to visit Philip Martin who’s had a stroke—a poet, sixty-eight—as Jenny, his partner, has gone for eleven days to U.K. So as I told you I visit the hospital between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and read to Philip and take him in the chair for a walk down Darling Street. We dine at 5 p.m. with four women at a table in the dining room—two are lucid—all are brilliant, serious and interesting—We eat bread and butter—one puts sugar on hers as we did as children—‘No jam here,’ she explained—by God she’ll have jam today as I can at least get that—two chide each other and Philip, in an aside to me with the flash of his old wit and astuteness said, ‘They continue a gay war’.

One man frozen in a patrician mask of such intelligence and worldly acceptance caught in mid-step and I greeted him but received no reply at all—it was a surprise as his look was so arresting, attractive and keen—it was like knocking at the door of a palace with the owner perhaps in chains upstairs.

Last night I read Philip the end of the Book of Job then a psalm and left him to sleep. It is moving to sit there—we two old friends, one lying immobile sharing these great words—I feel privileged and humble let me tell you—and all this free simply by picking up a book—it seems very lavish.

Love to you both. J.

FAX to Dr. Jenny Gribble, Department of English, Sydney University

Woonona.

9th December 1999.

Dear Jenny and Philip,

Here is a copy of a review of Sofala which I thought you might like to see … it is a great relief to have this, as you can imagine, because although I was calm about the book going down without even a bubble, a notice that is kind and positive is just wonderful.

I’ve been in town, i.e. Sydney, to see two friends and see Run Lola Run and to see the drawing show at the NSW Gallery with Jerry. This drawing show, if you haven’t seen it and I imagine with the operation you haven’t yet got out much, will give you a lot of joy I think if you manage to get there.

The trick is to go early. We were in at ten and so missed the crowd … over six rooms and full of great wonders … even made me feel painting was barely interesting after seeing the drawings.

There are November lilies and roses out in the garden so life is good and I hope for you two too.

Your Christmas cake is made and will arrive either by my hand or by the postman’s within a week.

I hope Anna[208] is thriving … Sophia is four on the 14th Dec. and comes here to decorate the tree with Jack next Thursday for two days. This is a big treat for me.

208 Jenny’s granddaughter.

Oh it is a relief my friends to have a review that is kind … and to escape those drab sisters who just abhor women who have children and all they put their hand to … I feel I have escaped under a fence like Peter Rabbit. The magazine, Australian Book Review that is, have used the cover of Sofala on their cover I am told, not yet seen it but this is delightful news … I hope the operation was a great success and that you are both well.

Love Kate.

Woonona.

12th May, 2000.

Dear Mirna and Ianesco,

Thank you for the card and message.

On Sunday I went to Barbara Blackman’s set of mud brick houses in a rainforest at Kangaroo Valley about one and a half hours south … I had a picnic with friends first and went to the launch of Kim Mahood’s book Craft for a Dry Lake, published by Random House … We had to be ferried down a mud hill in four wheel drive, four by four … and about 100 people there … not Mandy … who I was expecting. A wide verandah and big table full of great antipasto … very cold down there … Barbara opened the talks then Martin Harrison from UTS and ABC radio (ex I think) launched it in a camp airy way … raving gauche and sophisticated at the same time … much hand waving and so stunning … said over and over … and now I have read the book it is true. It is wonderful … a cross between Road to Coorain and Tracks and Reading the Country or whatever that book was by Paul Carter. Truly I am exhilarated. It amuses me that none of the people Kim did trips with or who taught her are mentioned.

My two friends and I did not stay for the slide show and reading in a theatre in the Blackman grounds that day as it was five o’clock and darkening and the thought of the wet hill and the ferrying up of so many (though some had risked it and driven down in cars and how they get up, Kim said, will be interesting … so I could foresee a debacle). But I really love the book and think her interior monologue is almost of genius … what a thrill to read such a book.

I am working on the Railway station garden again. The local nursery gave me two good plumbago plants and I put them in there three weeks ago. But last Monday I was there paying a bill and mentioned the garden at the station again and they sent round three barrow loads to my verandah of pots of chrysanthemums, sage and pansies. I was thrilled. Two lots went in on Tuesday. (I taught my last class at Sydney for this lot Wednesday … thank god. But the money is a great boon.)

Today I am off to put in the last barrow load … these are marigolds and small daisies.

The great news is I have bought an eucalyptus maculata (which is a tall huge gum) now one metre high and put it in by slipping in between the gate where fewer people can go and this is near the little park across the train lines … This tree is a joy and so far is safe, but a while to go yet … when I gave it a bucket of water—thrown over the cyclone fence—it shook itself like a dog and it seems very comfortable with its place … oh and how my heart lifts to see it.

Good news. Mary has offered to shout me a haircut and colour at her hairdresser for Mother’s Day and to give a lunch tomorrow with Hugh and Cathy as guests too … this is a real thrill. Jack rang me today and told me the hair was a secret but they were worried it might not be welcome … but it is very very welcome … so off I go early tomorrow.

I have just heard on FM that if women put on weight on HRT it is nonetheless less than they would have if they were not on it … I did not know that … this is Don Edgar of Gut Busters talking.

I went to Canberra and did a reading at a café with Lynn Hard last Wednesday night, had to fly as I had a class by noon that day. Lynn made me the most wonderful pair of tapes … Andrea Marcovicci singing Jazz and also one of Dawn Upshaw … these are a luxury … I am mad on them both.

Syd Ball[209] my old friend from Adelaide had a show on … I read of it in the paper and went on the way to the train. It had just been hung that hour and Syd was there. Joy Warren, the owner, came out and asked me to come to a dinner that night for Syd. I did and was very glad … Margie Worth his ex wife and my friend from Adelaide came … we went to a rowdy but quite good Italian place … but not all that Italian as there was avocado in the salad … But Syd is thin and sick I said to Lynn as we came away in the morning something is wrong with Syd. I thought he might have cancer. But at night he got out two bottles of pills and I asked and he said his heart is shrinking … This seemed so melancholy … he is the first of our group to be really sick … a sign of our age … he is still in love with Margie I think … his girlfriend (who was Margie’s image but not as beautiful) left long ago though he built her a big studio Joy said … plenty of reasons I bet … He has a great Glenn Murcutt house on the northern hinterland. He is lonely Joy said. I’d ask him down but I don’t want him to think I am after a painting.

209 Artist.

The paintings were wonderful … big squares of thick flat colour floating on dark backgrounds with pale squiggles of colour worked in and a halo often round the big square … Syd said it was about time but his explanation foxed me utterly. A series of small works on paper about two feet square were in a room and only $2,500 each which is very very cheap … these are the Tang poets … Lynn lent me a book of them later … They come from the Buddhist caves near Mongolia which are a sort of history of Buddhism, a great thing to see Syd said, see this if nothing else … it’s like our Sistene Chapel—can’t spell this today or maybe ever …

I think I’ve told you that I had a burglar 6 weeks ago … I interrupted them … found the broken glass next morning as I had come home late from teaching at 11.30 p.m. and put out the bin rowdily … and so they fled but they had used the toilet so at two am. I could smell a man there so washed it down with Dettol and thought nothing of it till I found the broken glass. I had just gone back to sleep not wondering at all why the hormones there had smelt so different … which happens when one lives alone as men and women smell differently. I felt like Mrs. Magoo. Now I have a front black iron security door … just as a sign of discouragement to burglars … but I am more careful with keys as I had left it in the door. Hugh had done the same on his fortress and was robbed while he was in the house and visible from the sun deck where the person took the keys … his house is covered, roof manhole too, with iron bars … dangerous in fire I think … but the street was robbed—a little street—eleven times in one month.

I hope you are both thriving and finding marriage joyful and calm.

This autumn is grand, pure air and sonorous waves at night crashing under the moon …

I am very touched and honoured you say you are framing the wedding poem! Thank you.

Love. Jilly.

Elanora. QLD.

17th August 2000.

Dear Jenny and Philippos,

Silence from me, stunned, I think, from Byron Bay Writers Festival and the strangeness of strangers—those on panels make situations of such gothic weirdness we all it seems almost begin speaking in tongues. Truly. I’ll give an example. (I see I’ve begun this letter in what ought to have been the middle and now the start will be at the centre.)—sorry—no manners but I didn’t want to start on Our Mutual Health or Our Different Weather i.e. It’s warm here Jenny and I am swimming in the Palm Beach Olympic heated pool—now back to the start.

A panel. e.g. Morag Fraser—everyone loves her—she’s a sort of married female Jesuit—perfect, wise, beloved and respected—do you know that kind of person. Do they ever Sin I want to know? Can you imagine them shoplifting? Or hitting a Customs Officer in exhaustion and irritability say? I took her shopping to Anna Middleton’s great factory outlet—really elegant—near our resort. A bonanza—it’s she of the White Linen Blouses sold by mail order—do you know those ads? Well, heaven on earth—all sorts of Italian silk clothes, not just white linen—suits—etc., oh! it was glorious. I nagged Morag into a linen suit and silk blouse of great lushness, the colour of washing up water—God it was gorgeous. She worried me as she said she had no clothes to wear to the dinner Opening Night. And that once Drusilla in Brisbane had floated past her in an evening frock! i.e. off to dinner. And D. never dresses up—wears black slippers, etc. So what’s with Morag and no evening clothes? See what I mean by the Jesuit factor? So now she has a blouse that will take her places and to glory I hope!

Well this same Morag on our panel on Garden Writing with Peter Timms[210] and someone I forget—got what I think of as a dose of Bunyip factor which happens espec. at the end of these panels. Somebody from the floor asks a sort of Bunyip question—the equivalent of ‘Have you seen a Bunyip?’ In this case ‘I want to feed my children and plant trees and I’m in conflict over this’ so Morag launches into ‘Well you must feed your children and your family. Burke and Wills died of thirst in the desert.’ Words exactly that and maybe something in between—my jaw dropped as I saw the Bunyip had arrived. First of all, Burke and Wills didn’t die of thirst as you know—they died on a River—not dry either. They died of nardoo poisoning—native seed. I didn’t say anything because when the Bunyip comes sense goes and doesn’t return. The Chairperson always becomes bewildered and under the impression they have missed something lets the sessions ramble on and on while the Bunyip goes on to get a throttle hold on all—audience and panel—and you stagger out into the daylight blinking in bewilderment and awe and horror and embarrassment.

210 Tasmanian writer, art critic and gardener.

I got an attack of Bunyipitis myself on a panel with Robyn Davidson, Narelle Day and Di Morrison on Travel. Asked at the end by a woman in the crowd—‘What is your Jason’s Fleece in Travel—I mean what is your Holy Grail?’ ‘What?’ Di said ‘Meeting the people,’ which I think is rubbish—if you want to meet people, you can go to your local Supermarket or Church. Robyn said something about not approving of the centre coming to the outer—which means she’s against travel writing (she who’s done so much and interrupted real living tribes!)

The audience understandably was baffled—my answer was my Holy Grail (and I’m not proud of this. I give it as an example of the sheer dottiness that invades one—hubris is the seed of it I suspect) that having a car with a driver who is going on and on is mine.

Well, why leave town—any Taxi driver will oblige with that!

I’m sitting on a bench outside a photo Kodak shop waiting for a photo to send you—it’s of the farm and worth a thousand words as they say—I meant to be short with this and let the photo speak but even a peacock and a white one at that couldn’t describe the panels. The photo is by Murchetta Luskavoca a famous UK/Polish photographer—protégé of Cartier-Bresson. She had a holiday on the farm and gave Jerry a set of photos. As you’ve had lots of letters from me on the farm I thought you might like it.

I hope you’re both well and that you’re comfortable, Jen. Forgive this poor writing—nothing but my knee to lean on. I’ve just had a deep massage for two hours so could float up like a balloon.

Home Mon. 21st Aug. The following one I go with nine students to the Bed and Breakfast at Leura for two and a half days then home to weed and work.

Love to you both.

Kate.

Southern Cross University,

Lismore.

30th August 2000.

Dear Ianesco,

I hope things are well with you … I am waiting to send you the list of books I said I’d give you … I am having a good time here …

My first teaching experience was illuminating. I don’t give talks much here and really just listened while they gave papers.

One girl, of whom they were all I think terrified, seemed to have been made from different parts of old dolls. Wearing clothes of a 1940 ten year old with her mother’s sun frock about six sizes too big on top … with little sweet white thin legs in elastic sided boots and a matted hairdo (like a wig left in the rain and slept on by dogs) she twined her dangerous fingers through it though it would astonish anybody that a human could bear to touch such material.

Darlene, a tall raving beauty, half African American and Aboriginal, long thick curls twined in a knot, hanging down on her very crisp laid-back Country Road clothes read a woeful poem on her native state and her pride … nobody dared say a thing … it is ever thus and now she will think she can write because we must politely stand in awe such is the political climate … It strikes me that in art and dance Aborigines have no peer and can go into the international arena and be wonderful the equal of anybody in the world. But it is because these things are within their own language and culture. Writing in English is not. But nobody is game to say this and so miles and miles of excruciating poetry and writing is published in the belief of the authors that it is fine art. It is perhaps noble cries, anguish, and so forth but art it is not.

Five hours after these classes a woman arrived crying saying she’d cried ever since and been with a counsellor because we had been hard on her … All this you deal with daily. It is queer to me … I merely asked her if she thought that we ought to have more horror literature (as she said it was strange that we had no Stephen King in Aust. as a horror writer) and it is what she reads.

Then to set my teeth on edge a lecturer Julie, a forty-five-year-old sweet hippie showed me her favourite students’ essays which were not written at all except as some old lists and scraps of paper inside covers that looked like the contents of an ants’ nest. It seemed like ‘Sound of Music …’ ‘these are a few of my favourite things …’ But I did not think that essays are the contents of your kitchen cupboard, your glory box or even a shopping list. So modern university life is going to push me far and tax me … I laugh at myself and my conventions and conservatism. A strong smell of patchouli wafts around, girls in bare feet and beads, rolling cigarettes sit among young men with sharp blond hairdos in Country Road trousers and shoes. Now where will they all be in a decade?

One young woman startled me by appearing in a black silk fringed piece of cloth draped below her lovely naked pregnant belly, with a silver ring in her navel, barefeet, toenails painted purple, long black hair, reading her paper at a pace no word could be deciphered from it … it might have been Swahili. What can a person say that might be helpful? ‘Thank you, Lockie,’ was my reply.

The booklist follows separately.

Love,

Jilly.

Woonona.

11th February 2001.

Dear Jen and Philipos,

Thank you for your calls, Jen. Congratulations on the news of the baby boy[211] in London. I am looking forward to coming up in July—long time away—to visit you Philip and maybe have an adventure or two!

211 Birth of Timothy Gribble, Jenny’s grandson.

Mary told me I can do the flowers at her wedding (28th April, Saturday—at Vaucluse Boatshed—a bare, but with lovely views, edifice, I hear) so Easter lilies it will be with fat green leaves she wants.

I went to the Lecture on Toroni in Northern Greece, by the Professor of Archaeology at Sydney University on Wednesday for the opening of the new lecture halls opened by Sir William Dean—lots of lilies, oysters, Gough and Margaret being sweet—I do love them—and some formality—Chris Downes was there who I dodged—(he who does not answer letters of the heart-rending pleasing kind!). At one stage I moved aside to see and Margaret Whitlam behind me, picked me up like a mother kitten and pulled me back so gently—like being in the maw of a beautiful cat—and said ‘Come back here!’ so I stayed as bidden. Then thinking it over she murmured in my ear—‘Oh you can go—I thought you were moving to let me see. There’s no need—

I overlook everything and everybody.’ But I stayed then like a hypnotised kitten. She was so gentle and powerful and smelt beautiful.

I’ve had piles of visitors, as you have Jen, and as I said—but last week wrote seven letters with relief and planted five trees down the line in the mud at the Station (the rain falls off the platform and makes mud below.) I am heading south to Bellambi—a rotten hole full of vandals and neglect and if I do my dream I will dress it in blossom and beauty. But it’s two kilometres away—but I’ve done one hundred metres or maybe two hundred—step by step I hope to proceed. Then I ask, ‘Why not go north?’ And so I dream of heading up to Bulli which doesn’t need trees as much, having two magnolia grandiflora at the Station.

I hope you are both thriving and house plans going well, Jen.

Love. Kate.

Woonona.

Monday, 27th May 2002.

Dear Lucy and Marion,

Thanks for returning my call—writing like this I’ve decided a pen is more reliable.

I have been wondering how you are and if you’re feeling any better Lucy. I hope so. Jack was thirteen this month so his mother gave an impromptu party for adults mainly—and I raced down also on spur of the moment with a cake. He and I had just been to Adelaide for the school holidays to my brother Tucker’s place—an ex jackeroo’s house he’s given us, an education centre that the University of South Australia uses for ecology students—it’s in Mandina Lakes—a chain of twenty kilometres of linked lakes with tens of thousands of duck and black swan and blue crane, egret, tortoises, kangaroos and wombats and snakes—very beautiful and isolated—no phone and too far away for cell phones. The house has ninety feet hall of red jarrah and six bedrooms off that plus dining rooms seating twenty with wood fire—we were alone three nights unexpectedly as our friends were late arriving—so I was secretly afraid, Jack being asthmatic—or that we’d fall in a wombat hole or some other thing happen—so we walked everywhere together up and down the long hall and to the outdoor toilets—and we shared a room. My youngest brother Peter drove us down with his dog Fly and taught Jack to shoot—and took him spotlighting and shot four rabbits and a hare. I cooked the rabbits in milk with bacon and breadcrumbs and thyme and onions—an old dish from my childhood—a casserole—very good. And I soaked the hare two days in one and a half bottles red wine and baked it in it and de-boned it—very good too—I was anxious that our city friends might be squeamish about game, you see, but on the contrary, the one I was most worried about, Mirina from Croatia who is opposed to hunting, liked the hare so much she had it again for lunch on toast.

Jack made a ‘hide’ and we had binoculars and I’d given him a camera, early, for his birthday so he crawled around with me following day after day photographing birds. It was all exhilarating—and the hide was one he strapped on with his uncle’s belt, being constructed of chicken wire that he’d threaded grass and gum branches through so it was a cape like a Maori feathered cape—quite lovely too. All this endlessly amused us and kept us from being lonely—Tucker sent us over, in the back of Peter’s ute before the latter left, a leg of venison—he gave Peter the top half of the beast and Peter took it home. It would feed fifty.

Jack had a homework story to write and did it on the trip as a boy’s diary—not his own, he pretended, and got one hundred percent.

I am correcting a manuscript I’ve had typed into a computer, it’s called Playing With Water[212] and is nature writing—the very devil to write—it’s taken four years. I hope to God somebody will like it and publish it—it’s very strange—somebody needs to love it.

212 Published by HarperCollins, 2005.

I’m making a garden at the Railway Station—I did it for six months before anybody there spoke to me—and now they accept me—it’s been a huge adventure—there’s fifty trees and $400 of old roses plus daisies and geraniums and one day it will be beautiful—I was given almost everything—the cuttings came from my garden—I didn’t ask permission as I didn’t think I’d get it so just took the barrow with a load of cuttings and began to dig—I guess everybody thought I had permission from somebody else—now I have a key to the gate and can choose who mows and when—it’s a heady feeling—I now am obsessed and would like to take the line of trees lining the two hundred metres of platform further down to the next town, Bellambi—a squalid hole full of youth suicide—they toss themselves in front of trains there—and of course eventually I could get to Perth as the line goes on and on—nobody in our family, you see, has any sense of scale—it comes from a game we played as children—I’ve just sent Eureka Street magazine a piece on Tucker with the game in it—let’s hope Morag[213] takes it—I sold it to David Fagan, deputy editor of the Weekend Australian, last November and he sat on it until March and when I tackled him and said it’s time to talk turkey, he refused it—by this time the tale of my brother’s opera he’d put on in his wetlands was no longer fresh—so with some chagrin and small hope, it went to Morag.

213 Morag Fraser, the editor.

It’s a beautiful sunny day after rain and a flock of sparrows are eating seed from the back deck—I can see this from my bed.

My friend Jerry and I had two days in Canberra at the Hyatt and saw the Mary Moorse portrait show in The National Portrait Gallery with rag dolls which we loved—a cross between the gothic and Louisa May Alcott—very original and queer—of her daughter—doll portraits as the child grew—nothing like it’s ever been done, I feel sure—we had lovely walks round the lake and went to a couple at Queanbeyan who have a studio and house there—who sell spectacle frames and jewellery—he teaches at the Canberra Art School—wish I could remember their names—very attractive clever people—he’s German—I’ve just looked up my diary for their names but I’ve got the Bircher muesli recipe for our breakfast but not the people!

I hope you’ll come down and have a beach walk or sit on the deck and read, looking at the garden, whenever you feel inclined.

Love from Kate.

Woonona

30th January 2003.

Dear Lucy and Marion,

Thank heaven the fires in ACT have lessened—I was very worried for you. Having been cut off here last year—as I said on the phone—it brought home our incapacity to save much when it is hot and a drought is raging. I mean our vulnerability is complete but I live hardly ever aware of it. More so now, though.

A man’s just been to quote on a lattice fence and rose arbour and found me in disarray writing to you—i.e. undressed.

Thank you for your Christmas message. I still have glittering stars Lucy, on my door frames from last December and I love them and so does Sophia (7). She’s been with me for four days last week—we made a recipe book with 1960s cuttings. Michael Boddy, Leila Howard (remember her?) Len Evans, M.F., Neville someone—who had drawings of step by step methods—in the Australian, Arabella Boxer, etc. We made glue—a magical thing to Sophia—she insisted on all gluing being done on my Persian carpet—I’m a strong woman but I couldn’t stop her—I covered the book in a wild silver psychedelic paper she chose, so it gleams like a lake in the sun and makes me blink. Sophia’s gone home but I am now obsessed with the book! Jack and I made one for him over the past ten years and his first recipe when he could write was an imitation on Ian Parmenter[214] done at first with camp actions down at Lyrebird Dell with a bucket of water and a stick and stones. He called it Licarish Pie and wrote it in the book after illustrating the method by the waterfall. (I think the title is a boy’s dream and possibly a world first.) He’s back at school today.

214 The television chef.

Mary and her husband Peter came with Jack for Christmas and we had José Borghino[215] and Susan and three children to stay also—José said to Susan it was one of their best Christmases so I was happy to hear it—their Anna is 12 months old so I liked having a baby in the house. Mary’s ‘godmother’ of a non-religious kind—more mother than God, to their Dominic (3). I tried to plan something Spanish to the menu for José’s sake but a Women’s Weekly Spanish book I bought was poor—so I gave up—Torrone and Gazpacho had been on my mind—so we had Australian/U.K. things.

215 Lecturer at University of Technology, Sydney.

I learnt a game called Dictionary which we played on Christmas night and which I love now—so maybe if and when you come we can play it.

There was lovely paper here to write this on but last night, cleaning the bedside table I spilt O’Cedar oil on it. The waste!

A frozen shoulder from writing the diary in bed has had me swimming a lot as it helps to loosen it—sounds like a cut of meat—my own shoulder, I mean.

I’m teaching four hours a week and stay overnight Tuesdays and spread myself around staying with various friends and Hugh and Mary. Last Tuesday week I stayed with Helen Sharwood and Lynn Hard in their new house at Dulwich Hill. Mary loves her new job[216]—calls it ‘Heaven’ as I think I told you on the phone, Marion. Two weeks ago we were cleaning her new office in The Rocks. I spoke of her and now she’s rung this minute—there’s been a train accident on the southern line, so she thought to check on me—I never travel in a front carriage—for just the reason these poor devils won’t be home tonight.

216 Director of Sydney Writers’ Week.

Trouble is, this pen makes the letter hard to read.

A photo of Tumby Bay School, grades one, two and three, came from my best friend then, Heather Poole, of us last Christmas, and I am amazed—bare footed boys, Miss Howard, who taught us all to read and write in the one room, in her box pleated skirt and hand knitted lacey jumper, my brother Tucker in boots staring so fiercely at the camera—aged six, presaging his intensity and power that led him into matters of scale that are hard for me to grasp. Almost all the children’s clothes are home made in this picture—we are all clean and literate and obedient and happy—hair clips (Heather) and with plaits and ribbons (me) and ready for anything—Roxanne Hendrickson, a femme fatale, in her long blonde ringlets—as her name suggests—Heather’s husband almost married her. How could all these thirty-three children be taught to read and write (with the exception, perhaps, of poor Beryl Grindle who had Down Syndrome) by one woman in one room, when now, it would not be thought possible or right and even be called barbaric or cruel. So I bless Miss Howard and hope her dreams were fulfilled—but doubt it.[217]

217 The rest of this letter is missing.

Woonona.

6th May 2003.

Dear Marion,

Thank you for the wonderfully generous letter you wrote to support my grant application. I was very touched and am deeply grateful.

It was a treat to have lunch with you and Lucy—I do not get many talks to friends and how I miss that!

It’s Jack’s 14th birthday—I gave him the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Music in a box from Folio and some skateboard magazines. He had a picnic—sat in a park—a sunny day at Darling Point where he’s had lots of picnics and birthdays. The sea sparkled—a yacht race was on—little children played with a hula-hoop and climbed a tree—it was idyllic. I cut the rich chocolate cake I’d made with two babies sitting watching—sort of awed, I thought, with others kneeling around us and cream and strawberries falling everywhere in a general collapse—the babies ate a whole slice each ardently pushing it in with their little starry hands.

I think I told you of my discovery of Belinda Jeffery’s book 100 Best Recipes—a treasure for me. It was her chocolate cake I made—cognac and almond liqueur—Jack said, ‘Doesn’t sound like a kid’s cake’. But he wanted to go to a ‘stay over’ party with no parents or adults present and thirteen—thirteen year olds, and wasn’t allowed, I’m happy to say. It brought into rich contrast the cake, the bedevilment of being not quite adult enough for what he longs to be allowed to do.

I’m off to Leura to do two and a half days’ workshop—twelve students are coming and I need to be spry to do it well—it’s usually good—lovely food and wine which we all bring and share, fires and autumn and a lot of writing. I’m wiped out afterwards—I once sat and watched my train pull in, stop and leave and I was unable to get off the seat and get onto it, as my mind couldn’t function.

If I ever do get a grant, it’d give respite from all this teaching—Lord, it’d be a miracle and you would’ve been instrumental in it.

I’ve been planting datura cuttings which I meant to grow when I came here six years ago and once wrote to you and Lucy and Graham saying I’d do it but forgot in the flurry of starting the house and the garden and the Railway Station—so I hope they take fast—I didn’t know they’ll grow as cuttings and never saw them at the nurseries—

they’re re-categorised now and are really brugmansias or a word like that and daturas are quite small shrubs—related but quite different—

I must look up Botanica and get the correct word.

Mary’s boss Sandra Yates is being interviewed on radio—did you hear it? Mary says she’s good to work for. Her words are so apt you can tell she’s clever—perfect, eloquent, unclichéd expression—very lovely to hear—quite rare. My 97 yr. old aunt is like this—her letters look as if she’s twenty—perfect script and she says things like ‘it’s very refining’ of oppression—and ‘you’ve cherished that child’ regarding Jack—so you can understand why I liked The Point so much with its emphasis on words and the importance of clarity in language and how we ought to cherish it—to use Aunt’s word, though you don’t say we ought to.

On Iris M. and The Book and The Brotherhood which I’ve just finished reading, did you know of a group of men set up as a religious household based on that book? I read that in J. Bayley’s Iris which I’ve just finished. Now I want to read the other twenty-six novels she’s written.

Birds are calling loudly so I think they’re saying, ‘rain! rain!’. Good—I had a wheelbarrow full of water last week from rain and I gloated on that trembling pond.

Again, warmest thanks for your beautiful letter.

Please give my love to Lucy and love to you.

Kate.

List of recipients

Herbert Bogart

Beverley Farmer

Peter Goldsworthy

Peter Goldsworthy and Helen Goldsworthy

Gordon Graham and Sue Woolfe

Marion Halligan

Marion Halligan and Lucy Halligan

Marion Halligan, Lucy Halligan and Graham Halligan

Susan Hampton and Andrew McDonald

Mandy Martin

Mandy Martin and Bob Boynes

Philip Martin

Philip Martin and Jenny Gribble

Ian North

Ian North and Mirna Heruc

Jerry Rogers

Ghillian Sullivan

Ghillian Sullivan and Stewart Buchanan

Ghillian Sullivan and John Miller

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Table of Contents

About the editors

Title page

Imprint

Dedication

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1977–1983

1984–1989

1990–1992

1993–1998

1999–2004

List of recipients

Wakefield Press