As I think any writer has experienced, people are always a little intrigued by your writing. Whether it’s being questioned about where you find the time (as a full time working busy mum, this is a valid question that I often ask myself) through to where do you find the inspiration?
The thing is, and this is how it has always been for me, I’ve never been at a loss when it comes to finding inspiration, and this mountain of ours is simply oozing with it. Let’s take the other Friday as an example. The day started normally, with the school run and a bit of work early morning, but I also had a treat planned that day at the wonderful Balance Mountain Day Spa in Olinda. Whilst I knew I would be having a massage and a facial, I was totally unprepared for the sheer bliss of the architecture within the house and the sense of silence that enveloped around me as I sunk into the deep hydrotherapy bath prior to my treatment. Literally the only sound was the kookaburra, chuckling on the tree outside the window. The architecture of the building was also steeped in history with glorious ceiling roses and decorating cornicing, above ornate fireplaces and thoughtful furnishing details that adds to the air of relaxation.
For me, it was an ideal space to close my eyes and run my mind’s eye over my latest work in progress, which is set in the Dandenongs albeit a century ago. The interloping of human activity within this pristine natural environment (that many of us simply take for granted) is always fascinating for me, and sometimes as I drive around the mountain, I wonder how each successive generation has claimed this space as their own, adding their own layer of history onto the generational collective that is in a constant state of flux and renewal. Not far from this divine temple of relaxation is Sky High Mt Dandenong and one of my favourite trees – the Wishing Tree – so reminiscent in my mind of childhood book memories whether Narnia or the Folk of the Faraway Tree. Maybe I was never destined to not be inspired by trees, given how central they have been to my childhood literary dreaming.
Driving home from Olinda took me past the wonderful Cloudehill Gardens, another space that is full of inspiration for the creative. The softness of the flowers overflowing against the hard landscaped features within the gardens, the walls, the archways, so many spaces offering just a hint of what follows. The landscaping trains your eye to follow the lines across the garden and into the wilder landscape of the gum trees beyond. And there are surprising quotations scattered, including a medieval poet which always is an inspiration for me. And then finally towards my hometown of Emerald where my favourite tree contains a man-made face, but I like to think that the tree would have a few stories to tell, just like an old man who sits and observes life around him, the wise old storyteller, his wisdom etched across his craggy features.
When I sat down with notebook and pen that afternoon, I wrote around 3,000 words just based on the experience and then split them into two, one for the 1920s Dandenongs element, where Lizzie – the main character in my work in progress – migrates to and sets up an artist’s studio, and the other for my musings notebook, the notebook I keep where I put snippets and scratchings, those words that don’t yet have a home, but at some point may be breathed into a new life within a new work or a blog post, or whatever else may be waiting around the corner. So that was just an average Friday on the mountain, and yet produced such creative outputs. So, when people ask me where I live and what I do, I’m hoping it won’t be too much of a surprise for them to find out I’m a writer who lives in the Dandenongs. This place is bursting with creativity and inspiration, my job is just to capture it and to breathe life into it, and to turn it into something magical.
Would you like to follow Bethany Sinclair-Giardini’s writing journey? Connect with her author page here; https://drbethanywrites.com/
Read more about life on the Mountain here; https://mountainashchapter.com.au/?cat=4
