Artist in Residence Ahimsa — Bronwyn Davies Studio

Day 1

I arrive on a Wednesday afternoon. It is mid summer and the sky is low with soft cloud. ‘Moora Moora’ nestles on top of the sandstone ridge at the end of the winding road. Rocky paths lead from the grey bungalow meandering by banksia, ferns, peppermint gums and angophora to the Hut of Happy Omen.

It is the same as I remember.

Boards grey, room spartan, fireplace empty, bunks high up the walls, open to the elements;

a ramshackle presence

stoically persisting.

Back at Moora Moora , at the laminex table salvaged from council clean up bins, I sit on the chairs borrowed from the Hut of Happy Omen next door.

I consider the chairs. They came with the Hut and its activities so must be at least 75 years old as that was when the Hut was new. This table also a relic from the 1950s. It’s a suitable desk and suits the feeling that pervades this place.

From the verandah I look across the valley . The white limbs of Blackbutts sway in the foreground, a trio of peppermint gums trunks bleed and bend at their elbowed branches. Beyond is the creek and the National Park. Byles Creek into Devlins Creek the same creek that bordered my childhoods is somewhere down there beneath the canopy.

My thinking and landing in this place is interrupted by a FaceTime call from my daughter and granddaughter on the other side of town and then from my husband in another state. I am brought back to this time, what others are doing and thinking, my home, my family, my commitments. I remember that I am meant to be joining a zoom session hosted by Small Giants and Damon Gameau of 2040 fame. I zoom in, and am sucked into the vortex of should be’s and could be’s. List of links and ideas noted, the tea I made 2 hours ago drunk and the sushi roll I grabbed for breakfast finally eaten. It is 8 pm. The trees now silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky. The white cockatoos screeching their way down the valley highway in some kind of universal bird peak hour.

Martin has brought me copies of Maries books to read while I am here

I camp myself in this empty house. A mattress on the floor. A tin mug for tea,. My heaviest luggage my easel, laptop and art supplies. I muse that this house is but a stones throw from Ahimsa and Isn’t that me all over- a stones throw from Ahimsa ; in sight but not quite arrived at. ( Ahimsa is non-injury in mind, speech, and action towards any creature. Specifically: In Mind – not to think maliciously of others. In Speech – not to use foul language, swear, backbite, or quarrel.)

The owner of Moora Moora is Martin Falding a quiet conservationist, who grew up in this house the land on which it was built gifted to his parents by Marie. He has fond memories of Marie and the life and people who passed through this place. Martin and his wife Jan now live north of Newcastle but still maintain a love and connection to Ahimsa and to this house with its pink bathroom and faded curtains.They leave me with introductions to neighbours and a pile of books and maps.

The smell of camphor, yellowed news clippings, hand written dedications in the frontispiece by the author Marie Beuzeville Byles.

In the footsteps of Gautama The Buddha- 1957. A good place to start.

Day 2

Yoga and loving kindness meditation in the Hut of Happy Omen. A walk in the bush and a cup of orange and cinnamon tea. I will read 10 pages of footprints of Gautama The Buddha before I walk to Chilworth Reserve in Beecroft.

The morning is cool and the clouds still hang on top of the trees. I wind my way down the paths of Ahimsa on to the Kurajong Track that starts at Day Road and connects to Malton Road via Byles Creek. I see stripped red bark and large fluted seeds rom the angophoras , star shaped seeds, thick jungles of moss, flannel flowers, stringy barks and towering red limbs that flank the creek. This creek is cool and shady. Something sweet and familiar; lemon, and peppermint fills the air. The track crosses the creek into suburbia. Wealthy, established suburbia manicured lawns, renovated post modern and charming federation homes line streets impossibly steep as they climb up from the creek.

Loaded with supplies from the Beecroft shops I venture on.. Beecroft is the place of my early school days, ballet classes, sweets from the Zodiac cafe, gifts from the Kenwick Art Gallery, being taken to the village green to avoid parental custody confrontations. It is slicker. Crowded now with apartment blocks a more diverse demographic, still genteel. I walk to Chilworth Reserve, the land gifted to the public by Marie Byles parents. It is cool, a bush and creek valley hemmed in by houses that burst out of their boundaries. The once large Cheltenham and Beecroft blocks are now battleaxed and subdivided. Nothing stays the same.

Memories flood through me. The connection to place has never been more tangible. Street names evoke school day memories, I see myself walking or driving through these places, it is a tear in me, a rip allowing the light into what lies beneath.

I am walking with Marie and also with my younger self. Arriving back I set up my easel on the verandah and begin to sketch the view from the verandah. I begin to paint the Peppermint gums I see from the bedroom window. I read more of footprints… I am landing

Day 3

My friend Joanna will visit today. So I commence the day on the laptop. I am developing an exhibition pitch for the Gillian Mears Project we will call Paradise is a Place.. Awarded writer Gillian Mears was also inspired by the life of Marie Byles and travelled to India to follow in her footsteps. She began a novel called Remnants based on the character of Marie Byles. I am working with her sister Karin, my friend performing artist Margy Rose and filmmaker Lois Randall on a project to explore and celebrate Gillian and her world view. I am only midway and it is now midday when Joanna arrives.

To have such friends is a blessing. We head to the Hut of Happy Omen to stretch our bodies and minds with yoga and mediation. We lunch at Cheltenham lawn bowls club, pick up supplies and take a tour of the area in her car. Then head back to go for a hike.

At the Day Road entry to Ahimsa there are several tracks that head in all directions along the creek. Byels creek to the left and Devlin Creek and the LaneCove river to the right. Yesterday I explored Byles Creek so today we head left towards Whale Rock. We walk down a fire trail that follows the creek. The Angophoras are stunning red guardians, trunks mostly stripped at this time of year it seems, a clutter of red bark at their base. We walk and talk, the occasional runner appears as the afternoon wears on. We cool our heels in the creek, speak of life and loves before heading back for cups of tea, organising next catch ups and farewells.

I make a salad while catching up with Michael and Rhiannon. I turn on the verandah light and laptop and continue the pitch until the mosquito coil burns out and I am forced inside. It is midnight before the draft is finished. Too much blue light makes sleeping difficult.

Day 4

It is always cool before the dawn. A dear friend from my school days is visiting today. I add these words and set to stretching before she arrives. My friend has been through much. The trauma of it marking her face with scars from shingles and shaking hands and numbness riven by the drugs that stop her from feeling the pain that twists inside her. We walk these old streets we have both shared, separately but with strong recollections. We talk as we go, reconnecting and reviving the sense of both of us at a much younger age before lifes ravages took hold. Though she arrives early it is long into the afternoon before we make our farewells. The walk under angophora, the smell of gum and lemon sinking into our bones.

As the light fades I sit at the laminex table on the verandah of this simple abode. I make lines on maps that will pattern the trunks of the peppermint gums. I make a simple meal, I talk with Michael, I take a bath, I read In the footsteps of Gautama The Buddha and go to sleep.

Day 5

It will be hot today. 37 degrees is predicted. I start the day at the Hut of Happy Omen. 40 minutes of yoga to stretch the body and 15 minutes of meditation to reflect on gratitude and loving kindness.

Leilani, Clementine and Rhiannon arrive in the vintage gold Mercedes . I take them on a tour of the house then on a hike down to the creek. The day is heating up and Leilani has to carry Clementine most of the way. Leilani has recovered from a bout of gastro or food poisoning, but seems ok. Clementine points out leaves, and birds and we hug the angophoras. We head back and out for lunch at the bowls club then onto a tour of Cheltenham, Beecroft and Pennant Hills. Memories poke through between newly built highways and more refined and renovated houses.

The 30 year old Mercedes needs oil and as the day heats, the girls retreat to the city and I take my place in the cool of the verandah.

this treasured copy of a Room of One’s Own in the archives of Marie Byles at the Mitchell Library

I am painting whilst listening to the reading of ‘Wifedom’ by Anna Funder…the curious life of George Orwell and the complete omission of his wife Elaine from all his essays and writings. It is curious this exclusion of the feminine. It is what is driving this writing. What are the stories of women? Where is their world view in history? Virginia Woolfe speaks of it in A Room Of Ones Own..a book treasured by Marie Byles

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority.”

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”- Quotes from Virginia Woolf

Marie Byles, Gillian Mears, Valerie Albiston, Margaret Sutherland, Deanna Conti, Ellis Rowan are but a few of the women whom history has forgotten. These women dared to be themselves, to push boundaries. They were leaders in their fields and part of new ways of thinking yet we seem to have forgotten them and left them to rot in the back of dusty shelves and forgotten programs. Their glory and recognition faded too quickly.

I speak to my sister Rebecca. She feels too that history has erased the contributions of women. They say that history is written by the conquerers…can this be also true for women? We are the conquered?

As the evening draws in I walk to Day road entry and make some sketches of the path and Ahimsa peeking through the bush.

Day 6

Yoga and mediation on the verandah. I am enjoying moving my body and stilling my mind in this way. At 7 am it is already above 28 degrees and has been hot and uncomfortable all night. I have written in my planner that today is for mapping the walk to Whale Rock and to go to Hornsby to get some supplies.

Though it is very hot the walk is shady. I walk and stop many times, making preliminary rough sketches and taking photos. It is such a great way to notice things. I walk to and then past Whale Rock, further than I have walked thus far. I come to a fork in the road that will take me on but the day is heating up and I still need to get to Hornsby.

It is past midday and I am hungry on my return. Sated I get ready to walk to the station to catch a train to Hornsby. Nothing looks the way I remember. Everything has changed, the landscape, the people, the sounds. Hornsby has a Westfield shopping monstrosity with all the usual brands screaming for your attention. I find the Spotlight and then the Officeworks. I am organising negatives printed on transparencies for doing cyanotypes, printing of photographs for later rendering in artist books and buying needles and thread for the Marie works on hand made paper.

It is getting late when I return. The sea of pink Cheltenham Girls uniforms has abated. The day has been shrouded in cloud which still holds in the heat. I walk up to Moora Moora past the ‘macmansions’- wondering where my childhood memories have gone.

Dinner early, a phone call with Michael and then stitching as I participate in a zoom call with Shelley and Joolie. We are agonising over a name for the exhibition. We had agreed to The Storykeepers but that has significance for Indigenous cultures so would be best avoided.

I pack up and move inside ready to read more of Maries footprints and sink into sleep.

Day 7

I wake it is 1 am. Something is not right. Something is not right with me. My stomach begins to churn. Is it my imagination? I toss and turn but the queasiness is undeniable. Soon I am rushing to the toilet, bring up and out everything in me. This goes on until dawn. My head throbs, I am light sensitive and the migraine and aches are beginning.

The rain that has been holding off for days buckets down and the temperature plunges.

I try to sleep or get motivated but nothing works. I cancel my trip to the library , call Leilani to see how she is going and Rhiannon to see if she has been similarly smitten. They are both fine. Rhiannon organises a delivery of electrolytes, potatoes, soup, dry crackers and tea. It is almost 2pm when the goodies arrive. I am delighted and share the dry crackers with 3 kookaburras who are on permanent food patrol here waiting to swoop in on any morsel on its way to your mouth.

I have wanted to walk in Maries footsteps, to see what she saw be as she was. She must have had illnesses and no uber eats or calls to children to help out. When she was brutally attacked as she slept on her verandah it must have taken all her courage and resolve to practice true ahimsa. To not give in to suffering and vengeance and to also learn to trust and feel safe again as a woman in her late 60s. How is it that she had so much internal fortitude where I am undone by a simple stomach bug?

Day 8

Quietly stitching all day. Listening to Wifedom audio book by Anna Funder. Yoga and meditation on the verandah. Watching birds. Get organised for trip to city and library.

Day 9

Head out early for the station. Finish listening to Wifedom on the train. Make my way from Martin Place to the library. I pass many housesless people dossed down under shop awnings and doorways of this affluent part of the CBD. It is early and the doors are yet to open. More houseless people slumped up against the library windows. As the opening time grows closer they gather their possessions. One Chinese woman begins her morning exercises after bundling her things together. The doors open and they head inside for the bathrooms I presume. I drink peppermint tea. Make my way around to the Mitchell entry and the statue of Mathew Flinders and his cat ( I presume) some 10 foot behind in bronze on a window ledge.

The Mitchell reading room is vast. The special records section at the rear. I make my way past rows of tables ready to receive scholars and students under the watchful eyes of librarians and floor to vaulted ceiling bookshelves. I have a trolley of boxes awaiting me. Forms to fill in, proof of my bona fides and evidence I have permission to copy Gillian Mears archives. Karin her sister has allowed me to go through the files for this project. I am not interested in the myriad correspondence but more keen to view her diaries to get a sense of her perspective and observations. A box labeled ‘Remnants’ , and notebooks from India that lures me as ‘Remnants’ is her unfinished manuscript inspired by Marie Byles. Maries boxes contain photos, writings, journals, clippings. I also have finally a copy of By Cargo, Boat and Mountain . Now long out of print and unavailable outside of expensive antiquarian bookshops abroad.

The day passes. I go down one rabbit hole after another. By 5 pm I am ready to leave. I meet Leilani and Clementine at Redfern and am soon joined by Merlo, and Rhiannon. Dinner then sleep on the couch.

Day 10

Play with Clementine who is a delight. Walk to get chai, cheese and Vegemite scrolls at a groovy Alexandria cafe. Leilani is spending the day on set of the filming of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. I have an appointment with the National Trust at 10. The archives of the National Trust hold more papers and photographs for Marie and Ahimsa. We talk about a proposed exhibition which will be more of interpretive panels displayed in one of the Trusts function rooms and then toured to libraries etc. I think I can help them. I am disappointed that David Burden the Conservation Director for the National Trust is not able to join us.

I head back to the library around midday. Devouring more and more archives. By 5 pm I am cooked. I meet Rhiannon at Newtown for dinner and a movie. ( The Anatomy of a Fall) I am home late, Merlo has been looking after Clementine who is not well and grizzly. I try and sleep on the couch but the sounds of the city on a Friday night keep me awake. It is past 2 am when Leilanii gets in. I still can’t sleep.

Day 11

Wake feeling bleary eyed and queasy. We take Clementine to the PCYC after a chai, for Gymberoo. I do not feel well. I head back to the library as the others head out for the Carriageworks markets. After 2 pm I pack up and bid my files adieu. I walk into Town Hall. The streets are crowded with shoppers. Underground shopping precincts connect streets and shops with the station. I have an overwhelming sense of panic and claustrophobia. Shops seem to shout at me to buy buy buy, to be something I am not , to consume. Outside of Stanmore the train is stopped. There has been a fatality on the track and the trains will be held up. I nod off to sleep in the stilled train, aware of the passing of a life and its impact on all those who have to attend to the accident.

I am welcomed by the smell of the bush, kookaburras and magpies. I am flat and somewhat teary. I call Michael, I am missing home and his company and love. We talk for a long time about many things. I go to sleep reading the Lotus and the Spinning wheel.

Day 12

Yoga and meditation in the Hut of Happy Omen. The tenant is away so afterwards I take a walk around Ahimsa, trying to imagine it as it was in Maries day. The goal of the National Trust is to return it to the state it was in during the time Marie lived here. We shall see. During yoga I looked up at the trees and the roof of the hut, during meditation I realised that this was a refuge, and that my work should come under an exhibition banner of Refugia, This will enable links to work she did and her beliefs about the environment and spirituality as well as a connection to the pressure of development on landscape and vital wildlife corridors and “primitive” bushland. It speaks to the need for refuge and connections to nature for our mental, physical and spiritual health and also ways we can create refugia areas in our own backyards.

As I type this a soft underdown white feather floats past me slowly.

This morning the she-oak leaves glistened with dew and last nights rain.

Bowerbirds and lorikeets joined the dawn chorus.

I am visited by the magpie patrol, watched over by kookaburra and ignored by bush turkeys on their daily forage.

I spend the day on the verandah painting the Peppermint Gums Eucalyptus Piperita. It is late when I finish up after a long phone call with Mr Bunney.

Day 13

This was once our music room glad to see the mural remains

Yoga on the verandah. My head is all over the place. I decide to go for a walk which I do , 5 minutes past Whale Rock. I think I shall make some colour works like the colour of the topics series to capture the colours of this bush. Then I walk to Cheltenham station and sweating, catch a train to Beecroft. I get some salad and sit down for breakfast/lunch at Chicken and Fish-heads cafe. Afterwards I am not sure which way I will go home so I leg it down Sutherland Rd so I can relive that roller coaster rd once more but this time on foot. I turn into Chorley Ave then Norma Crescent thinking I will try and walk down the track to Byles Creek as we did as kids. At 2 Cheltenham rd I hesitate and decide to knock on the door. A woman of similar age to myself and a 3 year old child meet me at the door. She ( Anette) is happy to show me around. The house seems much smaller. Less grand and far more lived in. Kitchen has been renovated, study turned into a laundry, patio turned into a family room, rooms extended and another floor put on. The Music Room still had the Trompe-l'œil of fish and the fountain. The new owners had discovered it when they pulled off some old wallpaper. The backyard is smaller without the patio and the pool is empty, the kabana is gone and a brick pool house is going to be renovated to a full size with the pool becoming an underground garage. Anette is friendly and sympathetic to what it must have been like to move at such a young age from such a home. . Her family of 6 children have lived here for 23 years. I am very happy they have made it their home. I am also pleased to have found the courage to go inside. There was something cathartic about the revisiting.

I bash through the overgrown bush track to the creek. Such memories of childhood come flooding back. It is magic. I walk along the creek, thinking of my younger self playing in the rock pools.

I have a cuppa with Peter at Ahimsa. It’s a small space but perfectly suitable for one person.

Later I start a new work a ‘scatter’ featuring a cockatoo feather which I block out with masking fluid. I work late into the night with graphite paint, listening to Julia Baird read her book ‘Bright Shining’ on the power of grace.

Day 14

My last full day. It was after midnight before I fell asleep. My restless mind would not switch off. Groggy I get up and take my yoga mat to the Hut of Happy Omen. I think again of Sue during meditation. As the asana twists me to look up at the sky I think of a series of, a different view from my yoga mat’ perhaps….

I get dressed and head out for 1.5 hrs walk. The track is beguiling, I always want to go further but the day is going to be hot and I have promised myself 45 mins each way. Back at Moora Moora, I work on the feather scatter. When it comes time to take off the masking fluid I strike a problem. The paper is too porous and pulls off with the masking fluid. For now I hope I have redeemed it enough to make some reparations when I get home. All is not lost.

Later I speak to Leilani and to Michael….the duties of everyday life loom large as we consider phone plans, and purchase of batteries so we can get off grid…This in turn means tax returns, forms, and MY GOV administrivia.

Sigh. My bags are packed. Home is calling.

Day 15

What have I achieved?

It is 9 am. I had my last yoga and meditation practice at the Hut of Happy Omen early this morning.

While I meditated I recorded the sounds of bird call, the morning rooster and planes flying overhead.

Everything changes. This hut : its timbers drying and cobwebs gathering seems imbued with peace. Despite the sounds of creeping suburbia this bush, this hut, this place, this legacy is a refugia from modern times and the worries that ail us.

While I have been here I have made a sketch of the view from the veranda at Moora Moora, I have stitched pages of a book artwork based on Marie, I have made a map painting of the Peppermint gums, begun mapping out the path from Cobran Rd though Ahimsa. I have also made a start on a mapping the walk from Day Rd to the Great North Walk path to Thornleigh. I have taken resource photos of puddles, shadows, bark, flowers, leaves. I have documented my time here daily, I have researched both Marie Byles and Gillian Mears at the State Library, I have revisited my family home, walked the streets and tracks of the place I grew up in , on , amongst. I Have submitted the project pitch for Paradise is a Place - the Gillian Mears Project to Grafton Regional Gallery.

It feels like a lot but not enough. How could I paint the smell, the feel?

If I could only bottle it.