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Talking Location with author Joy Rhoades – New South Wales

1st July 2018

#TalkingLocationWith…. with author Joy Rhoades, who has set her novel The Woolgrower’s Companion in New South Wales, Australia.

Thanks, TripFiction, for having me along! I’m thrilled to share my novel’s beautiful part of the world with you. The Woolgrower’s Companion is set in Australia in 1945, mostly in the remote north of New South Wales. I had to ‘think’ myself there, as I was writing from outside Australia. I’m doing the same placing now, as I work on the sequel to The Woolgrower’s Companion for Penguin.

author Joy Rhoades

The trees are a shot of the gully on what was her family’s property, with black myalls.

But luckily, that part of Australia, the northern tablelands of New South Wales, I know well. My grandmother spent most of her 102 years on what was her family’s sheep property there, and I visited her often from childhood. It’s quite different, geographically, from where I grew up (in western Queensland) which is much more flat and dry than Woolgrower’s country. Woolgrower’s landscapes are quite distinctive: hills that are soft and rolling, lines of poplars on cleared valleys, creek beds plotted with black myalls. I didn’t locate the book in a real place but created the fictional town of Longhope instead. I picked the name because so many early Australian white settlers were from the British Isles, and there is, of course, a Longhope in Scotland. The name seemed perfect for all that my main character, Kate, has to battle and overcome (and she does!)

The woman on horseback is Joy’s grandmother as a young woman

The challenge, of course, for a historical fiction writer is to be establish how the landscape has changed since 1945, when the book was set. For me, the great challenge was to understand the enormity of the sheep places in 1945. Amiens, the property name chosen by my character, Ralph Stimson, to commemorate his soldier mates fallen there in France in WWI, is big. 30,000 acres big. That’s 15,000 football pitches.

The woman with the wallaroos is Joy’s grandmother again. She would hand-rasie baby wallaroos on the place, if their mother was killed. Here she is pictured with Julia and Matilda, in her garden.

The fabric of the bush shaped the people too of course, So there is a certain resilience about country people, anywhere in the world, a sort of make-do spirit that infuses their lives. I needed to shift away from my urban existence to imagine how it must feel to love 16 miles from the nearest doctor, when a snake bite will kill in minutes.

And I wanted to capture the beauty of the land and the landscape. There is something quite mystical about any remote place, and I like to think that Australia, that ancient land mass, home of the oldest known rocks that form landmass, has a unique sense of time. The aloneness of it all is usually what hits me when I visit, like standing in a ruined cathedral.

The plants, the birds and animals that skitter across that ancient surface bring life. It was with such pleasure that I describe the birds. Australia has one in ten of all living bird species and it’s now recognized that songbirds evolved here and evolved for some 10m years before they began so spread from the continent. So, the noisy cacophony which will greet a visitor early in the morning –the dawn chorus—is something quite special.

If you’d like to visit the area near where The Woolgrower’s Companionis set, I’d encourage you not to miss any of the following in the northern tablelands area of New South Wales:

  • You might like to visit or stay in the lovely country homestead Blair Athol, outside Inverell, so beautifully restored and so evocative of Australia’s homestead glories. It has a boutique and spa too, along with lovely gardens. Quite something.
  • The Myall Creek Memorial. It’s a very special place dedicated to preserving our memories of a terrible massacre (which is referred to in The Woolgrower’s Companion), and it is recognition too of the community’s desire to seek forgiveness and to grant forgiveness. The annual ceremony is held in June, but the memorial is open year-round. Check local listings before you go, of course. Listening is always important but in a time when reconciliation has never been more important, a visit to a site like this can be a wonderful start to
  • The lovely town/city of Armidale, NSW (also mentioned in The Woolgrower’s Companion) is a wonderful place to get a sense for colonial Australia, with stately buildings and parks, some built with wool money. Here’s one person’s travel guide.
  • You should definitely consider a farm stay while you’re in Oz. Here are some of the best as rated by Qantas, and a bunch more options. Do it! You’ll love it.
  • Make a visit to the glorious Gibraltar Range National Park, and neighbouring Washpool National Park, in northern NSW inland, not far from Glen Innes (not far by Australian standards. I just checked: it’s 72km:) Do a hike. They range from easy to multi-day 45km World Heritage Walk. Look out for Lyre Bird Falls.
  • And listen out for the lyre birds! Here’s a fast minute or so of the fabulous Sir David Attenborough,with Oz lyre birds. What you might not know is that lyre birds prevent bush fires by turning over leaf litter, and that also creates min fire breaks. To prep for your trip and for more on the fabulousness of Australian birds, read John Pickrell.
  • Do keen an eye out for the bird life. You’re sure to hear the distinctive scraaartch- scraaartch of the cockatoos and you’re likely to see them white with sulphur crests. Lok out too for the gorgeous galahs in their pink and grey plumage. And, like Kate and Harry in The Woolgrower’s Companionyou might be lucky enough to spot a black cockatoo heading east. Get to shelter, if so. It’s gonna rain!
  • Enjoy! Safe travels!

Thank you so much to Joy for her wonderful insights into locale. Do follow her on Twitter, Facebook and via her website . You can of course buy her book through TripFiction

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For more books to transport you to AUSTRALIA (drill down by region, city and genre) just access the TripFiction database!

If you fancy winning a copy of this fab novel, then click here (giveaway closes 14 July 2018)

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