A Very Magical Month in the Blue Mountains
I’m sitting in the food court of Sydney Airport, (temporarily trapped as somebody nicked my luggage cart while I was getting a coffee, leaving me with too much luggage to carry to the check-in desk and no means of sourcing another luggage cart- the joys of solo travel). I am using this period of non-consensual stasis to reflect on the last five weeks. In four hour’s time, I’ll begin the epic journey back to not-so-sunny-Belfast. I hope to arrive home sometime before Christmas.
For the last four weeks I’ve been on a writer’s residency in the Varuna Writers’ House in Katoomba, New South Wales. I was part of an international author’s exchange arranged with the good folks in Cove Park, Scotland, (also a wonderful and stunning place to write for a month; what Cove lacks in kangaroos and koalas it makes up for in Highland cows and enormous slimy toads). I’ve been fortunate enough to have taken part in quite a few writers’ residencies over the years, but Varuna was such an outstanding experience, I wanted to jot down my highlights and say a huge thank you to everyone who made this residency possible before the jetlag befuddles my brain.
You know I love a list, so here are my Australia highlights in no particular order. If you get a chance to visit this part of the world, move heaven and earth to get some time in the Blue Mountains. It is not at all like Neighbours or the Flying Doctors, which is to say, it is not what I was expecting, in the very best sense.
The House - Varuna is a big yellow house set in beautiful flowery gardens, (i’d be more specific about the horticultural aspect if I could, but suffice to say there were some lovely purple flowers outside my window and a host of pinky red ones all round the front). The house belonged to the Australian novelist Eleanor Dark. Her family gifted the building and grounds to the writers of Australia and I felt really privileged to have a little corner of the house to call my own for four weeks, alongside use of Eleanor Dark’s beautiful writing studio with a desk looking out over more flowers and lots of noisy cockatoos. This is a special building with a real sense of peace and creativity lingering in every nook and cranny. I slept better than I’ve slept in years. I felt like I’d been given a real chance to rest. It also smelt much nicer than most old houses smell.
The Staff - Veechi, Jaala, Maeve and the rest of the Varuna team do an incredible job of creating an atmosphere which feels like a home away from home. They were so incredibly welcoming and willing to offer advice and encouragement at every turn. I really appreciated being on a writers’ residency where productivity was not valued above rest and time to think and play around with ideas and enjoy the space. Nobody on staff made me feel in anyway pressurised to write and that felt like a real gift after a year of hectic deadlines.
The other writers - I was lucky enough to be sharing Varuna with three fantastic international writers, Emma (from New Zealand), Betsy, (from Ireland) and Jianing (from China). When you sign up for a residency there’s usually at least one very annoying person you have to put up with for the duration of your stay. Thankfully we had none. This has set quite a high bar for future residencies where I will now be expecting great conversations, firelight readings and good craic. If you are mad or annoying or incapable of loading the dishwasher please don’t come to the same residency as me.
The Blue Mountain Writer’s Festival - We concluded our residency with a weekend of festival fun in the stunning environs of the Carrington Hotel, (think Agatha Christie murder spot crossed with the hotel from The Shining), and the Cultural Centre, (home of the best banana bread I’ve ever tasted, hot, buttery, sugary, crispy on the outside, gooey in the middle, literally the Platonic ideal of banana bread). I had a fantastic short story workshop, (once again, surprisingly absent of annoying people), a brilliant event reading alongside Emma and lots of opportunities to make new Australian writer friends and learn a little about some of the issues and themes people are engaging with in this part of the world. It was a particular honour and privilege to meet so many First Nations writers this month, to get a crash course in First Nations literature and be present to witness all the hard work, passion and integrity which went in to the Yes campaign.
Animals - We went to a wombat farm. A wombat ate my trainer. I also saw many kangaroos in the wild; one had a joey poking out of its pocket. I saw no snakes and only some very small spiders. I am pretty happy with my Australian animal experience.
Caramac-type chocolate - The people of Australia have a much more healthy attitude to caramel flavoured chocolate products. In this sense they are far superior to the Irish. Their chocolate aisle is a holy place. There are at least a dozen different varieties of Cadbury’s Caramilk, including small Caramilk shaped wallabies. Rest assured I have sampled them all.
Not being a crime fiction writer - I arrived at Varuna in the fortunate position of already having my next two books written and contracted. I decided I would use my month as non-pressure time to experiment with trying to write a crime fiction novel. I told myself that if it was a complete disaster, this was ok. The world was not waiting for my crime fiction debut. I wrote 45,000 words of a crime fiction novel. It was a complete disaster. I gave up at the point where I was trying to pass a decapitated head off as a pineapple. The book is going in the bin. It was incredibly helpful to have artistic space to try something and be able to fail. This is another much longer essay, but I do believe, the room to fail’s a key principle of creativity and funder’s don’t always understand this. I now have fresh appreciation for all the crime fiction writers I know. It’s harder than it looks to murder somebody convincingly.
Imagination resurrection - Whilst officially writing a crime fiction novel, I accidentally wrote five short stories. I think at least two of them, maybe three, are pretty good. My brain feels like it’s jumped into one of those Scandinavian ice baths. I’ve been ploughing through novel edits and big projects for the last eighteen months and it feels wonderful to have been able to indulge mad ideas and whimsies for the last month. I’m coming home with a rake more tiny ideas for short stories. It feels like I’ve got my old brain back.