Barbara Hartmann King, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Barbara Hartmann King
The Passion - the Personal relationship with the land 11/8/2011 12:40:07 PM
The passion, the personal relationship with nature are ingredients one must come to terms with while writing the all Australian saga. We live in a harsh, strange country....
My fourteen years at Oakdale was the true apprenticeship for country living that I utilised so well in my novels. Here are some more reflections from that time:
There was a great deal of debt and struggling with the rearing and education of children. And, of course Mother Nature has her spontaneous outbursts on a regular basis in the guise of bushfires and floods, cyclones, army worms and locust to name a few; while there was always the continual need to keep the banks happy. I can honestly say there was not a day when I did not appreciate a personal relationship with living on the land, with the resultant emotions, passion and pain,which are the necessary ingredients essential to penning the all-Australian epic saga. One must feel the sentiments and enthusiasm, the connection to the life and the land to make it believable. I had to bring the people and the land they occupied to stark reality. I could not have penned my country sagas if I had not experienced the living breathing essence that comes from actually living the life. I have indeed stood in those cattle yards and smelt the fear and danger of wild beasts….
