Gunyah Artists’ Residency

In a well intentioned attempt to catch up on blogging about art related stuff, I thought I’d write about a couple of recent pieces of good news. The first is that the sculptor Karen Robinson Smith and myself will be spending some time this year at the Gunyah Artists’ Residency in beautiful Port Stephens. Now I like Port Stephens, I really do, but two things put me off actually entering this lovely expanse of water. The first is the very clear memory of sailing up the Australian East Coast, delivering a catamaran to its new home in Brisbane, and seeing a large shark heading for the Port entrance. And the second is a dimly remembered factoid, something about it being a particularly popular breeding ground for Grey Nurse sharks.

Other memories of Port Stephens include ramming a steel hull yacht into a sandbar on the way out. The yacht was a beauty, and she’d recently had a full refit in a Lemon Tree Passage boatyard: she was gleaming, no rust stains to be seen, just perfect brightwork and new paint shining in the sun. We spent about an hour getting her lovely hull unwedged from the sandbar. In my defence, yes I was steering, but the boat owner was giving directions.

I also recall a funny conversation with the ex-husband after he’d accidentally dropped an anchor onto the sea floor whilst mooring. I’d dived for lost stuff once before, I once rescued an outboard from a metre of slime on the bottom of Dora Creek (all that could be seen was the ghostly profile of an Evenrude logo) and he gently suggested that I may be able to pick up the anchor. I just remember suddenly recalling the Grey Nurse statistic and immediately yelling ‘no!’

A final memory of Port Stephens is eating some incredibly good fish and chips from a local store.

The other recent piece of good news is that Sirena, my Hans Christian Andersen inspired short story, was selected for publication in the 2012 40 degrees South Short Story Anthology. This was nice, always exciting to see your name in print, and I liked some of the other stories in the collection. 40 South is currently running another writing competition, The Tasmanian Short Story Competition; the good news is that you don’t have to be an island resident to enter, the bad news is that it closes next week.