Looking for something to read?

I know that some people like their blog-reading world organised into tidy categories, and so when you visit this blog you get lots of gardening content (although I do often veer off course and end up in the kitchen, cooking, or other times travelling with Pammy). Well, for this posting I really want to get away from my mainstream interests and tell you about a little thread of reading that all came about as a spin-off from another of my part-time hobbies, doing family history research.

My interest in my relatives and descendants started off as a common garden variety interest of collecting names, dates, long lost uncles and aunties, discovering where my grandparents and great grandparents came from. It has all been wonderful fun, and what has really kept my interest in the topic bubbling along have been the stories, the social history, the completely different times in which all my forebears lived.

In my case that interest in people's stories took me deep into colonial Australia. I've spent countless hours at a wonderful website called Trove, which is part of the National Library of Australia. At Trove, you can read every page of what seems like every newspaper ever published in Australia, since European settlement began. I don't think that's strictly true, as they are constantly adding new newspapers, magazines and other source materials, but it's already breathtakingly comprehensive in its range.

And so I've been reading newspapers from the 1820s, the 1850s, the 1920s etc and finding stories aplenty about my relatives and forebears. 

And so as a spin-off I have been recently reading stories of 19th-century Australia, and I thought I'd mention a few books that I've really enjoyed, just in case you're looking for something to read, or perhaps spot the cover in a secondhand bookshop somewhere and decide to give it a go. And at the end of this posting is a brand new book, published just yesterday, that I want to read next.

First up, 'The Convict's Daughter", by historian Kiera Lindsey. It's a true story, and I must admit that many of my favourite historians are women (my all-time favourite is Barbara Tuchman). I think it's their eye for the telling human detail that makes them a cut above a lot of men writing history. Set in the 1840s, this is a mildly "racy" story involving elopements, an angry dad with a gun, a wayward son with a powerful family, a court case that was THE court case of its day: an abduction trial, as the eloping girl, madly-in-love Mary Ann Gill, was just 15 years old. It was published by Allen & Unwin in 2016, so I'd look for it in a secondhand store or online.

Starting to see a pattern here? Female historian again, this time Carol Baxter. True story of the biggest bank heist of its time (1828). Fourteen Thousand Pounds, which you can imagine was a squillion back then. And it was stolen by ex-convicts from the bank of the well-heeled toffs, the Bank of Australia, not the people's bank (the Bank of NSW). So everyone who wasn't a toff was delighted by the news and the police had a hard time finding out who did it, or what happened to the money. That's the cover blurb version of what's good about this book, but it's the way Carol Baxter paints a portrait of several of these deeply incorrigibly dishonest convicts that stays with you. This one is an older book which I found in a secondhand bookstore, published in 2008, and that's where you might find it too.

Just to balance out my sexist bias a bit, two more books from the era, both by men. On the left, from 2007, Love and the Platypus, a novel about a naturalist in the Australian bush in the 1880s, trying to find out how platypus reproduce, and in the process discovering a lot about the local Aboriginal people, and meeting a young blind woman with some secrets of her own.

Mr Darwin's Shooter is a novel based on the real life of Charles Darwin's assistant/manservant, Syms Covington, who ended up in Australia as the postmaster in Pambula, on the NSW South Coast. This is a different view of both Darwin, how Darwin worked, and what the times were like.

Both books aren't recent publications, so secondhand stores and online shops are your only options.

Finally, and what has partly prompted this diversion away from broccoli, frangipanis and all things gardening, is a book I haven't had the chance to read yet, but which I plan to order, as it was only published yesterday. Another female Australian historian, this time Sarah Luke (a relative of mine, not sure how you describe a cousin's daughter? is that a second or third cousin?).

Here in Sydney the battle to save Callan Park, an extensive hospital facility on the shores of an arm of Sydney Harbour, has been a heritage campaign that has been waged for many years. The grounds are extensive, beautiful and the buildings historic. And for real estate developers who don't care a fig about such things, the whole complex at Callan Park is a goldmine that will finance their tacky yachts and mansions. 

Setting that important heritage issue aside for a moment, Sarah Luke's book, whose full title is "Callan Park, Hospital for the Insane" goes back to the original files to explore the extraordinary lives of not only the troubled patients, but also the staff whose job it was to help them. The original facility built in the late 19th century was a remarkably progressive place, too, as it included cricket pitches, a farm, an orchard and even a zoo. I want to find out more about it, now I know there is a well-researched new book on the topic.

This is a brand new book, released this week, so visit the website to find out more about it and, if you like, place an order. Go to http://www.scholarly.info/book/624/

Book review: The Unusual Life of Edna Walling

Australians don't need to be told about the current voting happening nationwide on the topic of marriage equality. From early reports and opinion polls, it looks like a healthy majority (60% or more) of us will say "Yes" to the idea of making marriage equality the law, as I did.

Haven't we come a long way as a society, at least in this regard? It was only a generation or two ago that the topic of same-sex sex was virtually taboo. As for same-sex marriage, it would have been too radical a concept for most.

Why am I discussing gay people in my gardening blog? Why not? There are millions of wonderful gay gardeners but there's a special reason for raising the topic this time. I'm doing a book review.

I've just finished reading Sara Hardy's biography of the remarkable garden designer, Edna Walling, a person who the average modern reader would happily accept as a wonderful gay gardener, but who because of the taboos of her time kept her private life to herself.

From the moment you see the cover then flick through the photos inside, a modern reader would probably see a familiar gay female persona. 

This is one of the sub-plots coursing through all 266 pages of this book. Would this same woman who felt most comfortable wearing trousers, kept her hair cut short, who smoked a pipe in the evenings and didn't conform to many conservative female norms, be out and proud these days? 

I suspect so, but we'll never know. However, from hints provided in the way she lived, from letters and surviving remembrances of her contemporaries, Edna Walling was certainly an unusual woman who achieved much in her time mostly through sheer hard work and ability, but also through force of personality and a determination to make it, despite it being a man's world.

I am sure she left a lasting impression on all who met her.

If you haven't heard of Edna Walling, that says something about the fleeting nature of fame. In her working years from the 1920s through to the late 1960s, she became Australia's leading garden designer, a very well-known name. She wrote best-selling books and countless magazine articles that gained their authority from the huge number of gardens she designed for clients ranging from the very rich and famous to lesser mortals who simply needed a good garden design.

For many years, and up to the current day, the fact that a home or property on the real estate market had an Edna Walling garden made it both more expensive and easier to get buyers interested.

The National Trust and Heritage Victoria have listed several Edna Walling gardens for preservation, including what must be her most extraordinary achievement: a whole village of cottages and gardens at Bickleigh Vale, near Mooroolbark, in Victoria.

At Bickleigh Vale, not content with just building her own cottage and garden, Edna went into serious debt to buy enough land to create a series of properties with Walling-designed gardens, complete with a carefully designed and planted winding country lane linking them all together. Her clever decision to make the sale of these properties subject to a caveat where she had a degree of control over extensions to the cottages and alterations to the gardens proved to be a valuable factor in creating the village over time.

For gardeners, there is plenty of detail to enjoy. I loved the chapters on Edna's early training at Burnley Horticultural College in Melbourne. Her early days at what was to become Bickleigh Vale village were lonely, hard slog. She built her own house out of local materials. It wasn't all straight and true and the roof leaked and had borers, but it was hers.

There are so many little stories within these pages that I know gardeners, and gardeners who see themselves as nature-lovers, will enjoy.

The author, Sara Hardy, has a conversational style that often makes it seem that she is telling you her latest story over a cup of tea. Her affection for Edna shines through, and the sections where she delves into Edna's personal life are handled with genuine respect blended with fascinated nosiness that stops short of descending into gossip.

This is not a new book. First published 12 years ago, it came to my hands via my wife Pam, who bought it earlier this year, read it, then handed it over to me. Hopefully if you are interested in a very good read about a thoroughly fascinating, original and notable Australian woman, it won't be hard to find. 


The Unusual Life of Edna Walling, by Sara Hardy
Published by Allen & Unwin, a Sue Hines Book, 2005
ISBN1741142296

2010 - the best of

Well, this is going to be my last posting for 2010, and so as a way of signing off for the year, I thought I'd hand out some 'Best Of The Year' type awards for everything from the Plant of the Year (POTY) through to meals of the year (MOTY), book of the year (BOTY), movie of the year (MOTY) etc. You get the idea, so it's on with the show.

Envelope, please, glamorous assistant..... the 2010 Plant of the Year is....

Mrs Lithops! Well, a runaway winner is Mrs Lithops. She has starred in numerous 2010 blog postings, here, here and here. And she has been through family tragedies, the change of life, plus unanimous 'on the voices' election as Mayor of Succulent City (in which she has led them all superbly through a very wet spring, with no casualties). And she has achieved all this with a quiet, demure-but-strong demeanour. Well done, and congratulations, Mrs Lithops.

The second set of awards go the meals of the year, the yummiest food we encountered during 2010. The winner of dish of the year (DOTY) in the home-cooked division is....

Chermoula! This spicy North African blend of cumin, garlic, parsley, coriander, olive oil, paprika, cayenne, lemon juice, salt and pepper was this year's discovery in the kitchen, which I blogged about here. We combined chermoula with everything from fish to chicken and lamb, always with plenty of vegetables and couscous too, and it never let us down, and often thrilled us.

The award for DOTY, in the eating-out restaurant division, unfortunately doesn't come with a photo, but there was a joint winner, fortunately at the same Japanese restaurant, Azuma, in Chifley Square in the city. This very plain and sedate looking, wood-lined dining room was where Pammy and I had our 21st wedding anniversary dinner in June, and she absolutely loved the tissue-thin slices of fish, and the dressing, in the Kingfish Carpaccio there, while I just couldn't believe how incredibly yummy a Seaweed Salad could be, until I tasted Azuma's. No other Japanese restaurant comes close.

And now, a few other awards in the 'lifestyle' category...

Book of the Year (BOTY): '1959' by Fred Kaplan, a fascinating retelling of all the things that happened back in the year 1959. I won't bore you silly with a recounting of all the contents, but my poor friends were bored silly by me telling them what an entertaining read it was over several dinners in the middle of the year. Sucker for non-fiction, I'm afraid. Close second was one for the political junkies, Race of a Lifetime, by John Halperin and Mark Heilemann, a fast-paced, gossipy account of the 2008 US Presidential campaign.

Gardening book of the year (GBOTY): aw, shucks, it's Organic, by Don Burke, the book that I worked on, and which spent most of the year as Number One best-selling gardening book here in Australia. That was such a thrill that I surprised myself at how excited I was about its success.

Film of the year (FOTY): so hard to choose! I loved two French films with Vincent Lindon – 'Welcome' and 'Madamoiselle Chambon' – but the boy in me couldn't go past another wonderful pair of French films starring Vincent Cassell, the true, sometimes romantic, often violent, anarchic and chaotic story of France's Public Enemy Number One in the 1970s, Mesrine. Slight cheating here, as we saw Part One of the two-part epic back in December 09, then we saw Part Two around April this year. Pam and I see lots and lots of movies, including lots of Hollywood stuff, Aussie films, etc but this was a good year for French cinema.

Employee of the Year (EOTY): Pammy and I have a lovely tradition that now extends back several years. We work from home together and are set up as our own little two-person company. So each year we have a 'Staff Christmas Dinner' just like the big companies do, and each year one of us wins Employee of the Year. There's always a buzz of excitement around the place as the big day (and the lovely dinner) approaches. We're off to our favourite Japanese restaurant next week, and the envelope is sealed until then, unfortunately folks. You'll just have to share the tension with us, until then (but sources close to the company say that rumours are flying about that Pammy is a hot favourite to win it for an unprecedented third year running).

And so that's it for 2010 from me. I'm taking a break from work, from blogging (but not from gardening, watching movies, eating out and cooking) until some time in the New Year.

So thanks to everyone who has visited my blog, left comments and participated in the fun. Here's hoping you all have a wonderful Christmas, a memorable New Year celebration, and I'll be back some time in January to update you on the good life here in beautiful, sunny Marrickville.

Light reading

Like our resident Librarian gnome, Mitchell, I like to read. Too much probably (just like Mitch - every time I look at him he always has his head buried in a book). And to make things worse, I also like to read online as well. But worst of all, definitely the worstest of the worstest, I also like bookshops. They're a major danger zone for me. It's rare that I don't leave a bookshop without some kind of book under my arm. Bookaholism, I think it's called. (Fellow Sydney garden blogger Chookie sometimes struggles with it, too). I'm a sufferer but I don't want to be helped (see, I haven't hit rock bottom yet). As a consequence, my 'to read' pile continues to grow. I might have to retire, just to catch up on reading. Let me explain in a few photos, plus a couple more words and links (which might seem like an ad for Amazon, except they're not).

This is Mitchell, doing all day what I would like to do all day – reading (well, that's when I'm not gardening, cooking, going to movies, eating, socialising, riding motorcycles, blogging and reading online, that is).

And this, approximately, is my 'to read' pile. You see the problem? Exactly. It's not too many books, it's not enough time. Work will just have to step aside for a year or two and make room for the finer things in life.

It's an eclectic collection of fiction and non-fiction.

In the fiction section there's always some kind of detective uncovering the unpleasant details of life. Over the last few years Italian skulduggery has roped me in. Next on the list it's Andrea Camilleri, someone I haven't read yet but who has been recommended to me. As I have read all of Donna Leon's books about Venice-based Commissario Guido Brunetti and most of Michael Dibdin's books about Aurelio Zen, who uncovers evil all over Italy, I am looking forward to making the acquaintance of Inspector Montalbano, who no doubt has his hands full in Sicily.

But not all the fiction there is disreputably criminal: Margaret Attwood, Carol Shields and Tim Winton are waiting patiently for me to get back to them once more. And one of these days I am going to enjoy "The Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric, a novel loaned to me by my workmate and good friend Zora. Andric is a Nobel Prize winner, and this novel is a voyage into the heart and soul of the Balkans.

In the non-fiction section it gets weird. Right now I'm two-thirds the way through a wonderful book by Fred Kaplan called "1959" and you guessed it, it's all about 1959. So much happened back then, including the invention of the microchip which makes blogging and everything else computery happen. And the founding of Motown (the record label), the launch of the contraceptive pill, Sputnik, the first US soldiers killed in Vietnam, and lots more (eg, the treatment of African-Americans back then was just appalling - and they didn't call them African-Americans, either).

There are no less than three books there by the wonderful Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf ('Origins', a Maalouf family history that spends a lot of time in Cuba, 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes', and 'Leo the African', about a 16th-century traveller). I first came across Amin Maalouf via his poetic, imagined life of Omar Kayyam, called 'Samarkand'. I can't recommend that book highly enough (of course I don't have a copy, having repeatedly given it to friends to read). It is a beautiful piece of writing.

But there are also books to read on Aborigines living on riverbanks while Sydney grew around them, Russian home life during Stalin's rule (no fun, apparently), the Arab contribution to the Western intellectual tradition (much bigger than you might think), what happened during and after Cyclone Katrina (yikes), Christopher Hitchens trying to explain himself (oh, yes?), and a couple more.

And then, not in the pile, there are motorcycle magazines, daily newspapers and, of course, gardening magazines (not to mention websites as well). My poor eyes. I really need to win Lotto straight away, so I can retire and just devote myself to hanging out with Mitchell in the backyard, gardening and reading.

Oh dear, I've been memed again

Oh dear, I've been memed again, this time by Dot. Thank you Dot. Previously, Kenneth Moore memed me and I sort-of responded here, but in a mildly uncooperative way, in that I didn't pass on the meme to any other poor, unsuspecting souls. I explained my reasons in that previous post, but put simply, I was a teenage chain-letter destroyer. Fearless and uncooperative I was in my schooldays, no matter how dire the threats!

And so now, in my older years, I've become a black hole for memes, sort of. They stop with me. But I don't want to let Dot down entirely, so I thought I'd do a little blog on her meme-theme of telling people 7 things about yourself that you probably haven't mentioned before. So here goes. First up, my favourite book...

The Oxford English Dictionary, all 17 volumes of it. Being the book-lover in our family, I inherited it from dad when he died back in 1986. At the time dad died the very last volume, Supplement Sc-Z, hadn't been published but was about to be, and dear old dad on his death bed looked me in the eye and said "you will get Sc-Z, won't you son?". Yes Dad, I did, as soon as it came out. It cost $375 for that one volume, and I would have paid ten times that price for it! I can't begin to tell you what a wonderful thing the OED is, but along with Shakespeare and the King James Bible it's the greatest thing published in the English language.

And now, my second most treasured book – Grandma's copy of the Complete Works of Milton.

My grandmother, Margaret Coutts, did her Arts degree at Sydney University early last century, and this copy of Milton is the one she used in her studies – and it's also the one that I used when I studied Milton's poetry at university in the 1970s. It was so special to me to be able to use the very same book as Grandma used. I never really knew her – she died when I was four years old – and this book is my only real connection to her, and so I treasure it.

And now for a complete change of pace. I used to be a motorcycle road-tester for many years. This photo (above) of me giving a Harley Davidson a hard time actually gives a misleadingly macho impression of my tastes in bikes, even if it is one of my favourite action shots from the time.

That's because the big in-joke at the magazine I worked for was that I loved motor scooters. This was in the 1980s, when scooters were totally unfashionable, but I loved them for whizzing around my crowded, narrow, inner-city streets. And so they changed my title at the magazine from 'News Editor' to 'Scooter Editor'. While I tested anything and everything that was on offer, if a scooter appeared it was mine! This photo is my favourite, of a Mighty Tough Vespa beating me up. Now that scooters are so popular I like to think of myself as being ahead of my time!

As well as being a former motorcycle road tester, I cheerfully admit to being a former long-haired hippie way back when (this is a photo from Hobart, Tasmania, circa 1976). Not any more, alas, my family's famous male-pattern baldness genes have seen to that!

How many is that? Favourite book, second favourite book, macho bikie, closet Vespa lover, rehabilitated hippie. That's five. I've run out of photos, so two more.

If I could travel anywhere I would love to see the United States, all of it – except the cities. I don't really like cities, but I do love countryside and small towns, so that's where and how I'd like to travel as soon as I get the chance. Pam and I would hire a car, and drive. Probably head for Louisiana first, then take it from there.

And finally, my big problem as a traveller is homesickness. I always miss being home terribly when I'm away. Deep down, I'm just a homebody. I love cooking in the kitchen, pottering in the garden, reading in the shade. And I start to miss all three as soon as I begin any travels.

So that's as good as I can do, Dot. And please, if anyone else ever thinks of meme-ing me, be prepared to be disappointed!