For me, an appreciation of food was not about being a cook, a chef or a foodie. It was more about having an appreciation for where things come from and for knowing what makes something truly itself. I couldn’t do this for myself without knowing where my home was. And when I asked myself honestly if it was London, it wasn’t. Although I was born in Bristol, and Wilf and my mother, Audrey, were both Londoners, England was in my head, not my heart.
I had hit a rut in the city but didn’t want to blame it. What I was looking for was the exact opposite of a packaged meal for one from the ready-made meals in Tesco Metro. I wanted to walk up the road to a real greengrocer, buy fresh fish from the fishmonger, have a yarn with the local publican, and wend my way home with fresh bread. I looked for this sense of home wherever I went, and seriously in Aldeburgh and Salcombe, but with no success. On one of these trips, I found in a second-hand bookshop a copy of William Hazlitt’s The Spirit of the Age, contemporary portraits first published in 1825 of Jeremy Bentham, William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Thomas Malthus, William Wilberforce . . . names that resonated with romance and vision. ‘Mr Bentham is not the first writer who has assumed the principle of UTILITY as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral and political reasoning . . .’ wrote Hazlitt, though adding, ‘he has not allowed for the wind.’ Wherever my independent life would take me next, I wanted to be both useful, and to allow for the wind.
I decided to take a holiday in Tasmania. I hadn’t been back for a couple of years and organised to join a group on a four-day walk along the white sandy beaches of the Bay of Fires. By day, our group of strangers shared footprints in the sand and conversations were lost on the sea air. By night, around a campfire and under stars, we talked about youth and beauty. I became friends with Gillian, one of the walkers from Sydney, and she mentioned a documentary called Wildness, about two Tasmanians, the great wilderness photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis. Later, Audrey tracked down the video and posted it to me in London.
Remainders of a mussels lunch at the Bay of Fires.
The philosophy of these two photographers was simple— if people could see the beauty of Australia’s wild places they might be moved not only to protect them but to understand the true value of the world around them. It struck me that this message should be applied not just to the Tasmanian wilderness but to everywhere we live; that if we could see the beauty in anything we would then understand the value within.
I returned to London in midwinter and finally decided to put my small flat on the market and start searching online for a home in Tasmania. Who can say which one moment or revelation pushed me past the point of no return, to construct an argument to sell my flat and move across the world, letting go of twenty years of friends and work hard won? But like Road Runner reaching the edge of the cliff, that point had come. In the beginning, one property seemed to beckon—an old weatherboard farmhouse on the east coast in the middle of a paddock, sheltered by a line of macrocarpa trees, overlooking a wild white-sand beach. Concerned friends thought it looked a little isolated, which made me feel the need to defend it, but instead I found myself saying, ‘Well, yes, you’re right, it is.’
I went ahead and organised a local surveyor’s report on the property and when that came through, booked a ticket to Tasmania to view the house, just a few months after my last visit home.
Curtis’s scrambled eggs with white truffle
3 eggs
2 tbsp double cream
salt and pepper
a knob of butter
1 fresh white truffle
olive oil to drizzle
fresh crusty bread to serve
Crack the eggs into a bowl with the cream and
whisk. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat a non-stick pan and add the butter. Once it
starts to foam, pour in the egg mixture. Don’t stir
for 45 seconds, then once the egg starts to set, stir
gently with a spoon.
As soon as the egg is nearly cooked, remove it from
the heat. Slice the truffle over the egg and drizzle
with olive oil.
Serve with the bread.
Serves 2.
CHAPTER 2
Winter, Tasmania
The farmhouse was a three-hour drive from my family in Launceston—a lot closer than a thirty-hour flight, but not too close. I decided to stay in the area overnight and found a secluded B&B right on the seafront just a short stroll away. Although the farmhouse was derelict and unloved, it felt like it held some sort of promise. I walked along the beach on that crisp winter morning and wrote the reasons why I thought I could live here in the sand. I loved how it seemed the sunrise did not want to end, and how the air felt permanently fresh.
The owner worked interstate and had a caretaker living in a caravan in the backyard. The agent explained that the property had been on the market for a while and that the owner was difficult to deal with. In fact, he wondered if the man really did want to sell. I made an offer that was knocked back. After a period of futile negotiating I realised it wasn’t worth the agony of false hopes, and sadly withdrew my ‘expression of interest’. Friends reminded me that things not meant to be generally aren’t, and I consoled myself with that. The house might have fallen through, but my resolve to move had not, and it seemed this setback had merely existed to test that I meant what I said.
The day before my flight back to London, still feeling stung by losing the farmhouse, I saw an ad in the real estate section of the local paper. I was spending my last twenty-four hours in Launceston at home with Audrey, where she’d lived on her own since separating from Wilf. I always remember my mother looking older than she actually was, with prematurely aged silver-white hair and porcelain skin that looked cracked by the Australian sun. She had legs made for miniskirts, though, and ever since I was young I’d wished I’d been born with her lips that she liked to colour in using Nutrimetics’ ‘Lobster Bisque’. We spent time potting pansies at her retirement home, baking impossible quiches, and sipping glasses of medium sweet sherry, which I only ever drank with her. For Audrey, the sign of a good recipe seemed to be how fail-safe it was, and when she made the quiche that seemed to make its own pastry as it cooked, I told her I thought it should be called Incredible Quiche. She couldn’t remember where the recipe had come from, but I scribbled it down as she read out the ingredients. I liked the way she leaned on both elbows as she studied the page, and thought to myself that these were the things I would miss when she was gone.
‘See, it couldn’t be easier!’ she said with a flourish as she finished reading the method that was all of one line.
More than anything, I loved the way Audrey’s Wedgewood-blue eyes beamed when she saw you, and how she sometimes lifted her knee and slapped her thigh when you made her laugh, which, as I grew older, was often.
I was sitting in the sun on Audrey’s front lounge, flicking through a newspaper supplement, when I spotted the tiny photo of a house in a paddock and a headline that read ‘Character and Space’. I circled it with a pencil and said to Audrey, ‘That’s the kind of place I’m looking for. If you see something like that, let me know.’
‘Oh, something like that?’ she remarked. ‘Where is it?’
‘Karoola. Says here it’s twenty-five minutes from Launceston . . .’
Audrey remained silent but seemed to be waiting while I took it in.
Character and space, I mused, I like those words. I looked at the photo of the weatherboard house and the way the large square windows seemed to look out cheerfully on the world. Wait a minute, I thought to myself. I could arrange to visit today. There’s still time. If anything, it would be a nice drive in the country. I rang the estate agent, Tom Dancer, and made an appointment to view the property in Karoola. He was also the Lilydale postmaster, he said, and would meet me after finishing his morning post run. We arranged a time and he issued me with instructions to ‘
set your speedometer at the Lilydale Road turn-off on Pipers River Road, and drive for 10.74 kilometres. The house number is 1074, on the right-hand side, corresponding with the distance. That’s how the numbers work. Have you got that? I’ll meet you there.’
I needed to go on my own, and Audrey didn’t ask to come. I think she must have known that I wanted to have a view of the house that was mine and no one else’s. I wasn’t sure that Audrey would ever see what I saw, so I was pleased when she didn’t insist. Perhaps she also understood how families could pull and repel at the same time and that if she pushed I might never come home.
The next morning, I watched as the gauge clicked over to 10.74 kilometres. There, on my right, just as Tom had said, was the house with the cheery veranda windows. It was a winter’s day in late August, and the front paddock was cross-stitched with daffodils and jonquils. As I pulled up behind the agent’s car, Tom Dancer was standing welcomingly at the front gate. He seemed more like a postman than an estate agent, warm but not overly friendly or sharp-suited. We shook hands and as he showed me up the front steps I noticed a rectangular brass plate on the front gate that read ‘White Cottage’, although the house itself was neither white, nor cottage-y. In fact, it was somewhat unexceptional, set on a sharp bend in the road, among rough paddocks surrounded by overgrown beds and borders.
Tom had already opened the front door, and as he showed me through the rooms it felt open and airy, despite old carpets that smelled of chequered family histories. I liked how you could stand in the centre of the house and see rural views to the front and to the back through doors and windows that opened wide. I could see a mountain through the large window in one bedroom, and imagined the moon appearing behind it. There was a walk-in pantry almost the size of the bathroom in my London flat. Inside another room was an old porcelain sink.
‘It was a convent school at one stage, I believe,’ said Tom. ‘Nuns lived here. This would have been one of their bedrooms.’
Maybe it was the character, the space, or the French doors that opened up onto the wraparound, wide-screen valley view, but I knew from its outlook that this was the house I wanted. You just know. That’s the cliché people use to reassure you when you’re looking for a dream home, or at least the right place to live. It’s a cliché because it’s true. In fact, I had the feeling that this house had found me rather than the other way around. I wanted to call it my home and I could see myself here, waking up on the first morning, making tea and walking outside. I wanted to throw open all of the windows and doors, and, like a child, sleep in every room.
When I got back to Audrey’s, Wilf was there on his usual Thursday visit. Although no longer living together, they had never divorced. Instead, he visited Audrey twice a week. They would often seem strained in each other’s company. He was never particularly chatty and she had long ago given up trying to understand what was on his mind. How he must have felt like she was prying when she did. And how she must have learned to sink into herself in order not to make waves. She made him lunch, while he picked up the paper to finish off the clues that she couldn’t get in the cryptic crossword. I thought, it’s just how some couples are even when they’re not estranged. I showed him the newspaper cutting of the house. He didn’t appear taken with it, but when I told him it used to be a convent he lit up with laughter: ‘You’re going to live in a nuns’ house!’ Later, Simon and Jim, my two Launceston brothers, joined in the joke. Without realising it, they’d helped name my new home.
On the long flight back to London I resolved to contact Tom Dancer with a reasonable offer. With fingers crossed, I returned to work on the impending launch of Grazia magazine. Tom said he’d try to get back to me as soon as possible, although the owner was in hospital and hard to contact so it might take a couple of days. Grazia was still a secret project and a launch date had not been set. Over drinks in an Islington bar the Australian editor of the new weekly glossy asked if I had a photograph of the house. I took out the grubby and torn newspaper cutting I’d been carrying around in my wallet and gave it to her: ‘Character and space,’ Fiona read out loud. ‘Oh yes,’ she enthused knowingly, ‘a good old Aussie house.’ I was heartened by her response and felt she could see what I could behind the weatherboards and tin roof. Would the launch come first, I wondered, or the house purchase? I had to wait two weeks before I heard from Tom that my offer had been accepted and White Cottage was mine. I felt more relieved than ecstatic, as if everything had finally slipped, simply, into place.
I started imagining how the garden would be: all that space to play with. I bought the Royal Horticultural Society’s Good Plant Guide of over 3000 recommended plants and placed stickies on the pages: on lupins, allium and bamboo, lily-of-the-valley, forget-me-nots and amelanchier, only to stop when I realised I should wait until I knew what grew in Karoola. These were English plants. What about natives? With this thought, I felt a shift in my thinking. Not to try to plant my future before it had even arrived, but to be patient and allow the future to unfurl itself. As I sat in my flat above Hammersmith Bridge, disentangling my roots from the concrete footpath, a different consciousness was forming. I was letting go of everything that had gone before, and putting expectation and planning to one side. I knew that in order to live in another place on the other side of the world I needed to resist what had gone before, or at least not attract it. That’s how I learned not to spend every waking minute imagining how I would live at the house, or what I would do to it. I was determined to start with a blank sheet and wait until I got there. I didn’t know what I would do in Tasmania, or how I was going to earn a living. But I knew I had roughly six months to decide—when my savings would run out.
In October, I waved goodbye to my worldly goods and chattels and, when the removalists managed to break the glass in a painting while packing it up, hoped that I would see everything in one piece in six weeks’ time. By this time the London winter was closing in and I was feeling light-headed and ready. Yes, I was working on the inside of one of the most exciting magazine launches in the UK, but all my attention was in a paddock on the other side of the world at a place I now called the Nuns’ House.
My flight was booked for early December and I said my final farewells to my closest friends over drinks at a trendy Notting Hill bar. Whatever doubts anyone held for me, I tried to reassure them by saying I’d be coming back often enough for work. I said it, although I wasn’t sure it would turn out to be true. All I knew was that I was taking a simple step on a different path at a new address. And that it felt right. If my family had any doubts about my move they left them unsaid. The only thing they questioned was why it had taken me so long. In itself, the decision was never the hardest part of my journey. That was over the next horizon, in the unravelling of what on earth I was going to do next.
The week before leaving London I walked past the windows of Bond Street’s boutiques. A pair of shoes caught my eye: scarlet, patent leather, three-inch stilettos. They were so perfectly sculpted and symbolic of every extreme that I wanted to photograph them. Three silver buckles were attached to three thin straps, and the bottom of the pointed heel was smaller than the diameter of a pen. More than femme fatale, these were killer shoes. Would they find a use in rural Tasmania? I tried them on and said to the sales assistant, ‘They look like high-class prostitutes’ shoes!’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they really suit you,’ and we laughed because they did. Like all the best shoes, they looked unfeasible off, but felt like slippers on. They were so much a part of the life I was leaving behind that it didn’t seem ludicrous to want them, especially on sale for a third of their normal price. A good omen, I thought, as the West End shop assistant wrapped the red shoes in tissue paper and packed them into a box, ready for their migration south.
On the day I left London, 6 December 2004, George W. Bush had been re-elected President of the United States, aid workers in Iraq were being taken hostage and their gruesome executions videoed for all to see, while the inescapable narratives of Jade, Jordan, B
rad and Angelina were making headlines—as if it mattered. The news seemed either horrific or ridiculous.
London shoes.
My friend Lizzie drove me, once more, to the airport. I’d been her tenant, then friend, over many years. She was in her fifties, and in the decade or so that I’d known her our friendship had been as solid as a rock; she was the sister I never had. I’d signed a letter for her to keep as my preferred next of kin explaining that if the plane went down I wanted her to have everything: my home not yet a home, and everything that I owned in boxes currently somewhere at sea. We’d planned on a G&T at Heathrow, but once the unexpected issue of excess baggage had been sorted out, there was no time left for that. I don’t know how it was for Lizzie but my leaving felt no different to the last time: a turn, a wave, final eye contact . . . and so on to customs. The only difference was that all of my worldly possessions were ahead of me. When I boarded the plane the Singaporean air steward asked where I was heading.
‘Australia,’ I said.
‘On your own?’
‘Yes, on my own.’
‘Ah, so free and easy.’
When the plane finally landed in Launceston, I had the feeling of rising and sinking into a horse’s saddle, the right way—relaxed, tension gone, not trying but knowing, a feeling of calm, of not missing, of balance. Plain and simple. As I peered out of the window the same way I had always done on returning to the island—scanning the heads waiting on the airport balcony for Audrey’s white hair and Wilf’s height, pacing— the words came over the intercom: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have now landed at . . .’
A Story of Seven Summers Page 2