by Susan Duncan
Pittwater is golden in the early morning light. Church Point looks polished, details are sharp. Being away makes it new. Tinnies rock on the waves and dogs sniff around. The old Curlew drops off a boatload of bleary-eyed commuters, her navy body hanging ever lower in the water. The ferry driver yells at Toby to move the Laurel Mae from the ferry wharf to the cargo wharf.
'Right, mate, just picking up a coffee,' Toby calls back, cheerfully, waving his styrofoam cup.
Phil, who drives the water taxi, zips into the store to warm his hands on the coffee machine. He's finishing the night shift and is frigid after sleeping on the sofa on the houseboat that's head office. It's moored at the mouth of McCarrs Creek, like a pink mother ship for the small fleet of pink water taxis.
'How was it? How was it?' we are asked over and over, as though we have returned to family.
'We're gonna make a Turkish dinner. We'll call you,' we promise, loading our stuff onto the water taxi, anxious now to complete the final lap.
'Any rain?' Bob asks Phil as the water taxi swings away from the ferry wharf.
'No. Not a drop. Think it's forgotten how.'
Behind us, the boat's white wake, a symbol of separation from one world to another, plumes out. Home.
During the next couple of weeks, it is the tough moments we recall and laugh about.
15
'MIGHT GO AND VISIT Pia in Brunswick Heads. Talk to that person Zeny Edwards suggested – Robert Riddel,' I tell Bob when we are well back into our routines at home and the old question about Tarrangaua's architect begins to niggle again. After meandering through ancient Turkey where anything less than one thousand years old is considered new, it seems absurd that a detail from less than one hundred years ago could be so elusive.
'Might come with you. Not much on at the moment,' he replies.
At Brunswick Heads, Pia has a new project underway. She has sold her house and bought a block of land in the heart of town to expand her wonderfully eclectic shop, Secondhand Rose Emporium.
'You're a property developer,' I say enthusiastically when we meet.
'Hardly. Just a couple of shops and an apartment,' she explains, as though it's nothing. But it is everything. She is renting an upstairs flat next to the local service station until the building is finished. Not a typical choice for a woman with a glamorous past.
'It's all I need,' she says, unlocking the front door. 'Prefer everything simple these days.'
Inside, of course, she has made it look beautiful despite the mustard carpet, which is a real achievement.
The next day Bob and I drive to Brisbane to meet the architect, Robert Riddel. He is a long, thin man in black jeans and a striped cotton shirt, wearing round black glasses and with a ponytail trailing down his back. He lives and works in a converted office building on the edge of the Brisbane CBD. He's kind to Chip Chop and lets her roam even though he must know she's going to shed bright white hairs all over the polished concrete floors, rugs and seventies retro furniture in his funky warehouse-style apartment.
'Could Dods have designed Tarrangaua for Dorothea Mackellar?' I ask as he puts his thesis on Dods on the table in front of me and opens it at a page marked with a yellow sticker.
'Well, they were in love, we know that much,' he says.
'What?' I am shaken out of my slouch.
'Yes. Haven't you read her diaries?'
'Years ago, when Bob and his first wife loaned them to me. I didn't find anything about a romance.'
'She wrote about Dods in code. It's all there. Have another look.'
He has an appointment downstairs in his office and leaves us. Bob gets up to take Chip Chop for a walk. I open the pages of his thesis and there it is, carefully culled from I Love a Sunburnt Country: The Diaries of Dorothea Mackellar, edited by Jyoti Brunsdon, published in 1990 by Angus & Robertson. The references to Dods are in bold type, translated from coded entries in the diaries, and refer to a time when Mackellar visited Queensland and stayed for a while with Dods and his wife Mary.
Thursday August 4 [1910] . . . Mrs D. [Dods' wife] went to bed early and he kept me up awfully late yarning. He's such a dear. It does make things really hard . . .
Tuesday, August 9 . . . He does like me, but he was very good driving home and I tried to help him and we succeeded! It will be alright now I think . . .
September 10 . . . Mrs D. has nerves, but I of all people and to her of all people ought to be patient.
Thursday, October 6 . . . R.S.D. [Dods] and I was very weak and I gave in without saying anything – but he knows I like him now and I'm glad in a very queer way.
There are more references but when Mackellar returns to Sydney, the references to Dods end. The following year, 1911, though, they begin again when Mackellar returns to Brisbane for the social season.
Wednesday, August 2 . . . R. [Dods] met me in Finneys and would insist on buying me stockings.
Tuesday, August 8 . . . Assembly Ball. Mrs Dods didn't go. Very good. Only stayed 8 dances, but loved each of them. It will be some time before I forget the drive home, but it's too long to write here! Only he was touching me and – I said I was rather a bad little girl, and it hurt him. We were both upset and it got much more serious . . .
The diary entries about Dods fade away over time. Was it really an affair? Or a light flirtation? Dods was married and Mackellar would never flout convention. Or would she? Some kinds of love know no reason and it means Spinster and all its dreaded connotations did not apply to her. Did she know, no matter how briefly or inappropriately, passion?
I flick through the pages of Riddel's thesis looking for similarities in the design of Tarrangaua and Dods' work. 'Front steps leading to an elevated verandah. Steep roof lines. Paned windows. Columns. Simplicity.' It was a reinterpretation of our colonial tradition. Many architects were following the style with slight, individual differences.
Hardy Wilson and Robin Dods, I also learn, were friends. Dods, who was thirteen years older than Wilson, encouraged the younger man in his quest to find a style of architecture that belonged uniquely to Australia. When Dods relocated his architectural practice to Sydney in 1913, the two men became even closer, moving in a small, cliquish circle founded on old money and powerful families – such as the Mackellar family. They went to the same art openings, functions and parties. It is inconceivable that Wilson somehow failed to meet Mackellar, inconceivable that she didn't at least discuss with him her desire to build a summer house on her high, rough hill.
'Do you really think Mackellar and Dods had an affair?' I ask Riddel as we leave.
'I doubt it was physical. But perhaps romantic?' He shrugs.
'The frustration of time gone by,' I say. 'Hard to find the facts. You're nearly always forced to make guesses. Hopefully well-informed, but guesses nevertheless.'
'That's why I did a thesis on Dods. He was an amazing architect and his buildings are being pulled down or altered beyond recognition. It seemed criminal to let his work fade to nothing.'
He opens the door to his office, where a client is waiting.
'Do you think Wilson designed Tarrangaua?' I ask again.
He closes the door, leans against it. 'That's what I've always been told and believed. And it looks right, although I've only seen pictures. I've never been inside.'
'Could Dods have had a hand in it – given the friendship or whatever between him and Mackellar? And even Wilson?'
'Maybe. When was the house built?'
'1925.'
'That makes it simple. Dods died in 1920.'
'Yeah, I know, but I've been told plans were often drawn up long before land titles exchanged hands.'
'Sounds like a long shot but you never know.'
'Yeah, right. Anyway, thanks for your time. Appreciate it enormously.'
'My wife and I spent a few months living at Eryldene,' he says, opening the door to his office again. 'I'd just returned from working in London and the Trust in charge of the property needed a caretaker.'
'What was it like?'
/>
'Exquisite.'
'Your wife enjoy the experience?'
'Yes. I think so. She died of cancer, though. When she was thirty-two years old.'
'I'm so sorry.'
'Yeah, well. I know that you know what it's like. In time, you build a new life. In time.'
***
'Let's call in to say hello to the nun?' I suggest to Bob on the return drive to Pittwater. 'She might be able to fill in some gaps.'
We phone her and she says she's not busy so we pick her up from her home and drive into booming downtown Lorn, near Newcastle, for a sandwich and a cup of tea. The Buddhist nun, Adrienne, looks fit and well. She is less hesitant with almost no sight than my mother, who doesn't even need glasses.
'I cannot believe I am well into my eighties,' she says. 'Who would have thought I would still be alive?'
She was diagnosed with cancer in her early forties and told to get her affairs in order. Five years later, after sailing around the world with a temperamental skipper, she thought death was taking so long she might as well rejoin the world of work and resumed her nursing career. In her sixties, her eyesight began to fail and she was told there was no cure.
'All I really miss are books,' she says, sipping her tea and nibbling her sandwich in small bites, careful not to spill anything.
'Do you think Dorothea would have had an affair with Robin Dods?' I ask.
'Absolutely not!' she replies, outraged at the suggestion.
'But there are a lot of vaguely romantic references to him in code in her diaries.'
'She may have had a crush but she wouldn't have had an affair. She was terribly conscious of her social position and, to her, dignity was everything. No, no affair. No way.'
'What about the house? Do you think it was designed by Hardy Wilson?'
'Dorothea designed it herself. She was incredibly proud of it.'
I don't pursue the topic. Mackellar may have made changes and added personal touches, but she couldn't have sited the building or designed it. Every architect who ever walked into the house has sighed at its balance and grace, its presence and perfection. An overprotected little rich girl without training could not have created it. But Mackellar was astute about the power of money and she may have insisted on so many changes that Wilson, a man who was passionate about detail and impatient with difficult clients, might have walked away in disgust.
A couple of months later, I remember I have a phone number for Jyoti Brunsdon, the woman who researched Mackellar's diaries. It was given to me when Bob and I called in to the Gunnedah Tourist Information Centre and mentioned that we lived at Tarrangaua. Gunnedah, where Dorothea's father, Sir Charles Mackellar, once owned four large properties, has claimed the poet as its own and runs an annual poetry competition to encourage young writers.
'We're researching the history of the house,' I told the helpful young woman behind the desk, and she came up with a contact number. I sift through my old notebooks. There it is, in neat writing instead of my usual scrawl. After only a slight hesitation, I pick up the phone.
'Is that Yoti? Or Joti?' I ask, unable to pronounce her name.
'Joti,' she says. 'Yes. Speaking.'
I explain my search, and I hear her sigh.
'Dorothea Mackellar. It's quite a long time since I've thought of her,' she says.
We chat for a while about small things. I discover she loves books and each January she ritually sets aside time to air and dust every single one she owns. 'Books hold the key to so much,' she says. She teaches the flute for a living and although she's had a couple of health scares, she is well now, and life is good.
'I can't understand why there's not a single mention in her diaries about building Tarrangaua,' I say, broaching the subject at last. 'I know this is rude, but are you sure there aren't more diaries somewhere?'
'As sure as I can be. I went through every diary at the Mitchell Library. Every single page of every book. The reason there's no mention of the house, I suspect, is because by the time she built it, she'd stopped keeping a detailed record of her life. Her diaries noted appointments with doctors and dentists, days at the milliner or dressmaker. Not much else. Except that she felt poorly a lot of the time. Dorothea suffered from "nerves" and her father, a doctor, dosed her with opiates, which was accepted treatment. Later on, she became more than a social drinker.'
'You cracked the code and unravelled a romance with Robin Dods. Do you think they were lovers?'
'Good God, no. Dods was a man who flirted madly and he probably chased Dorothea but her closest friends told me she ran a mile from any bloke who went after her. Her allusions to romances were fairy stories. All in her imagination.'
'But Dods bought her silk stockings, dined with her in her bedroom . . .'
'There is no primary evidence they had an affair. He probably waltzed into her bedroom to cheer her up when she was ill. He was a notorious flirt and womaniser. Completely charming, witty and well-read. And Dorothea, for all her wealth, led a very repressed life. She was the only girl in the family and she was groomed to stay home to look after her parents in their old age. She was really quite an innocent about romance.'
One of my mother's sayings flashes through my mind: 'A son is a son until he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life.' In Mackellar's day, it was common practice to expect the youngest daughter to dedicate her life to caring for elderly parents. My mother's generation was the same. Her sister Belle, Uncle Frank's wife, looked after their parents. Deep down, no matter what she may say to the contrary, is that what my mother expects of me?
'I think the closest relationship Dorothea had was with the poet Ruth Bedford. In one of her diaries, there was an entry about the two of them acting out a scene in bed together. The next two pages had been ripped out. I've always wondered what was written on those pages. Nothing improper for the era, I'm sure, but she might have revealed her yearnings. Her deepest desires.'
'Maybe she knew someone would read the diaries one day. I wonder if she ever felt a twinge of discomfort when the accolades rolled in for "My Country"?'
'You mean the similarities between it and the Maybanke Anderson poem?'
'Yes. I've never seen any acknowledgement from her for Maybanke Anderson's inspiration.'
'The words were her own. She just wasn't original. It's hard to know how she could have been when she lived such a sheltered life.'
I think back to an exhibition of Van Gogh at the Louvre in Paris a few years ago when I was traipsing around the world as a travel writer for The Australian Women's Weekly. It was mounted to show how he'd been inspired by the works of an earlier artist, Jean François Millet (1814–1875). The subject matter and composition of peasants working in the fields of Normandy were almost the same and yet the works could never be confused. Each artist saw the scenes with individual eyes. At the time, I couldn't work out whether the exhibition was criticising or explaining Van Gogh's work. But aren't we all inspired by others? First by our parents then, if we are lucky, by our teachers. And if we are truly fortunate, by our partners.
***
I am curious about the diaries, wonder what it would feel like to thumb through their pages. I imagine boxes full of notebooks bound in leather and cracked with age, gathering dust at the Mitchell Library. Shelves of them, like the ancient books I once saw in a church library in Lima, Peru. God, how I coveted that room with its long, thin windows and floor to ceiling shelves bent under the weight of hand-tooled leather-bound volumes. As I walked around, wide timber floorboards groaned and squeaked. Tomes with gilded titles, and measuring up to three feet, were frayed with age. What lurked inside them, waiting to be discovered? On a lectern a massive book, exquisitely handwritten and illustrated, was opened and a scholar was reading. I asked what he was learning.
'These words allow me to know the life of men who lived four hundred years ago,' he told me in lightly accented English.
'It is amazing,' I replied, 'for tourists like me to be able to see a
nd touch these books.'
'Yes, but it will change. Peru is beginning to understand that they are treasures. In a few years, you will be able to look in from the doorway only, not enter.'
His words are swirling through my mind when I set off for the Mitchell Library. I have an email in my bag from three women who hold copyright to Mackellar's estate, giving me permission to access the diaries but not to photocopy any material without further consent. In a cordoned-off section of the library reserved for people working with rare and original materials, I reach for two denim-coloured boxes the librarian places on the counter.
'Thank you,' I whisper, overawed by the surroundings. He nods.
I find an empty table and lift the first lid – hesitantly, oddly nervous. It feels intrusive, voyeuristic. How many years need to pass before digging into the past switches from prying to researching history?
'What is your motive?' the Buddhist nun once advised me to ask whenever I felt unsure of my actions.
Before I reach for the first manilla envelope, I stop and think. Knowledge, I tell myself, that is my motive. Knowledge so that half-remembered truths don't slide into oblivion forever. But I am not being completely honest. I yearn to understand what the woman who once wandered through the rooms of Tarrangaua, who fed king parrots on the verandah, was really like. Not just where and when she was born, educated, lived and died. Voyeuristic or not, I want a sense of her lifeblood. Like the scholar in Lima, I want to step back in time and into another person's life.
Inside the manilla envelopes, there are several packages wrapped in white tissue paper and bound, like a gift, with cotton tape. I unwrap one with great care – and almost burst out laughing. It's a horoscope Mackellar had done for the years 1928–29, three or four years after she built Tarrangaua. A horoscope! Then I pause. Why would a well-educated woman who theoretically had everything money could buy go to the trouble and expense of having a personal horoscope done? Because she was lost and unhappy, I think to myself. Her father had recently died, her mother was increasingly frail. The family framework that had defined her world was crumbling. Who loved her? What lay ahead? Where did she belong? Money, if that's all there is, can be a cold companion.