This piece is a tribute to poet and writer Kate Llewellyn (1936…), and also a review of one of her early books, The Mountain, published in 1989. I have been reading it again in my Blue Mountains garden, surrounded by the fragrance of Daphne. It was the smell of red dust that Kate was experiencing as she recorded her outback travels in a series of letters to her beloved daughter Caro.
Caro Llewellyn on the cover of The Mountain.
In the 1990s my partner Rob and I were writing for gardening magazines. Well….I was writing, Rob was taking the photos. I had read and enjoyed Kate Llewellyn’s first book, The Waterlily and decided to base an article on it.
We were living in Sydney at the time, and drove to the Blue Mountains for the interview. With typical generosity, Kate had morning tea waiting for us.
Here are the opening paragraphs of the published piece.
Oh, and a couple of the accompanying pics. Kate loved Rob’s photo of her, and so do I.
This rustic barrow was left at her previous home by a tradesman and eventually moved with her to the mountains. ‘I suppose it was a form of theft‘, she told me disarmingly.
At the time of our visit Kate was correcting proofs for a book inspired by a trip to New Zealand. We were later invited to its launch in Sydney.
But I digress, back to The Mountain. Even in the 1980s Kate Llewellen was aware of the fragility of our planet, and the beauty of this country. It was a joy to share her wonder of rivers and red gorges, indigenous cave art, ‘strangler’ figs, 25 million year old fossils……oh yes, and termite nests;
‘I’ve seen a billion termite nests. Some are only a few centimetres high, Caro, and some are three metres high. The queen, they say, lives for 200 years, and lays 250 eggs a day. and the king makes sure the soldier – no, worker – termites work. I wonder really if this is all true. It could be. Australia is a place where everything you think could not be is.‘
The less pleasurable aspects of her journey she treated with tolerance and humour.
‘I forgot to tell you. I have finally conquered the bus driver’s monologue.’ [full of smutty jokes] I bought earplugs. Just the same kind as we found in that chemist in Paris. Last night I used them to help me sleep. In the night I lost one…..I wonder whether I ate it in my sleep, thinking it was chewing gum.‘
THE MOUNTAIN, PART TWO – KATE’S WRITING RESIDENCY, WAGGA WAGGA
Oh my word, this part of the book is just as engaging. The residency was at the Riverina College Campus, but Kate was horrified to discover that she would also be discussing poetry with primary school students. ‘Can’t you go and see the head teacher and say there’s been a dreadful mistake?‘ Her sweet interactions with the children amused me no end, although she felt completely out of her comfort zone and returned to her lodgings in despair.
PART THREE – LEURA
In this final pages the weary traveller returns home to the Blue Mountains. In her Leura garden the waterlily makes a reappearance, but in a heartbreaking mix-up it is lost forever. Kate creates a floral ‘eye’ … Caro’s eye. ‘Yesterday I almost finished planting your blue eye. I put in something called Lithospermum diffusum and Housonia ‘bluets’ caelulea with blue violas…’ It was a fitting project, as above all the book is the expression of a mother’s love for her daughter;
And you, my Carolina in the morning, are my mountain. You are my apple too, And my orchard. And now, with your baby coming all this love will increase. I always feel with you that my love is around your shoulders like a cloak of feathers stitched to a silk net. It weighs, I hope, nothing. If at any moment in your life you need love, put your hand on your shoulder and tug. You will find it strong as a rug.
NOTE – I had to restrain myself from simply filling this piece with quotes from the book.
Kate Llewellyn; wise, vulnerable, painfully honest, infinitely kind and very funny. Sadly, the Blue mountains became too cold for a gardening bicycle rider and she now lives in South Australia, where she was born.
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