by Fiona Capp
JW’s ASIO file: CRS A6119/79, M/82/108, Volume 1, Australian Archives, Canberra.
Quote ‘Well my love . . .’, 18 June, 1992, Papers of Nugget Coombs, MS 802, Box 49, Folder 379, NLA.
Quote ‘I miss Edge severely . . .’ from letter to Len Webb, 1 November 1992, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, NLA.
Quote ‘I am glad [your] sense of being watched . . .’ from letter to JW, 6 May 1993, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, Box 72, Folder 514, NLA.
Quote ‘sound stale with repetition and remoteness, but believe me . . .’ from letter to JW, 21 June 1994, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, NLA.
Quote ‘simply because I cannot finish . . .’ from letter to JW, 6 May 1993, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, Box 72, Folder 514, NLA.
Quote ‘Thank you my lovely woman . . .’ from letter to JW, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, Box 72, NLA.
Quote ‘I don’t think he is in physical misery . . .’ from letter to Len Webb, 12 December 1995, Papers of Judith Wright, MS 5781, NLA.
Quote ‘good tales and memories . . .’ from WLF, p. 544.
Quote ‘To look at landscapes loved by the newly dead . . .’ from ‘Landscapes’, CP, p. 141.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkinson, Ryan, Davidson & Piper, eds, High Lean Country: Land, People and Memory in New England, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2006.
Bates, Jonathan, Song of the Earth, Picador, London, 2000.
Blomfield, Geoffrey, Baal Belbora: The End of the Dancing, Alternative Publishing Cooperative, Sydney, 1985.
Brady, Veronica, South of My Days: A Biography of Judith Wright, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1998.
Coombs, H. C., Aboriginal Autonomy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994.
The Return of Scarcity: Strategies for an Economic Future, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Curtis, Eve, The Turning Years, self-published, 1990.
Eldershaw, F., Australia As It Really Is, Darton & Co., 1854.
Fraiburg, Selma, The Magic Years, Fireside, New York, 1996.
Holmes, Richard, Footsteps, Penguin, London, 1985.
Hope, A. D., Judith Wright by A. D. Hope, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1975.
Jung, Carl, The Basic Writings, The Modern Library, New York, 1993
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Flamingo, London, 1983
Essays on Contemporary Events, Routledge, London, 2002.
Lines, William, Patriots: Defending Australia’s National Heritage, UQP, St Lucia, 2006.
McKernan, Susan, A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years After the War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989.
McKinney, J. P., The Structure of Modern Thought, Chatto & Windus, London, 1971.
Mead, Philip, Networked Language, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2008.
Rooney, Brigid, Literary Activists: Writer-intellectuals and Australian Public Life, UQP, St Lucia, 2009.
Rowse, Tim, Nugget Coombs: A Reforming Life, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.
Scott, W. N. Focus on Judith Wright, UQP, St Lucia, 1967.
Somerville, Margaret, Wildflowering: The Life and Places of Kathleen McArthur, UQP, St Lucia, 2004.
Strauss, Jennifer, Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, Melbourne,1995.
Walker, Shirley, Flame and Shadow: A Study of Judith Wright’s Poetry, UQP, St Lucia, 1991.
Judith Wright: Australian Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1981.
Wright, Charlotte May, Memories of Far Off Days: The Memoirs of Charlotte May Wright, 1855–1929, Peter Wright (ed), self-published, 1988.
Wright, Judith, Collected Poems, 1942–85, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1994.
Half a Lifetime, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999.
The Nature of Love, Sun Books 1966, re-printed by Imprint, Sydney, 1997.
Range the Mountains High, Judith Wright, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1962.
Because I Was Invited, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1975.
Tales of a Great Aunt, Imprint, 1998.
Generations of Men, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1959.
The Coral Battleground, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1977.
The Cry for the Dead, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1981.
We Call for a Treaty, Collins/Fontana, Sydney, 1985.
Born of the Conquerors, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1991.
The Equal Heart & Mind: Letters Between Judith Wright & Jack McKinney, Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney (eds), UQP, St Lucia, 2004.
With Love and Fury: Selected Letters of Judith Wright, Clarke & McKinney, (eds), National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2006.
Portrait of a Friendship: The Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright 1950–2000, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2007.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been so very fortunate, when researching and writing this book, to have had the support and encouragement of three exceptional Wright women—Judith’s daughter, Meredith McKinney, and Judith’s oldest nieces, Pip Bundred and Caroline Mitchell. I am deeply grateful to them all. My Blood’s Country would be a very different book had it not been for their willingness to share their knowledge and experience of Judith and the Wright family, and for helping me navigate Judith’s heartland.
Meredith provided me with permission to read her letters to her mother in the NLA, put me up when I visited her at ‘Yuen’ and was generous in her recollections of her mother and of her own experiences as Judith’s daughter. She gave me access to Judith’s only remaining dream diary (not previously cited in any account of Judith’s life and work) and transcribed many of the dreams for me. She also provided family photographs, useful information about her father’s philosophy, and invaluable advice about how to track down important places in Judith’s life.
When I was researching Judith’s childhood years in New England, Caroline Mitchell and her husband, John Mitchell, were wonderful hosts. Caroline not only gave me and my friend Cheryl Donohue a roof over our heads and meals during this unforgettable week, but also orchestrated our visits to Wallamumbi, Wongwibinda, Thalgarrah, Point Lookout, Jeogla and Hillgrove. She was generous in her recollections of Judith and her own memories of growing up in New England, and with books about the family.
Pip Bundred was equally generous with her memories of Judith and life in New England and with books about the family, and provided some memorable lunches at Red Hill.
Many thanks to Sally and Edward Wright for lunch at Wongwibinda and for the tour of the property, and to Geraldine Robertson for the hours she spent showing us around Thalgarrah, even though this visit did not, for thematic reasons, make it into the book.
It was a real joy to have the company of two good friends, Cheryl Donohue, during the New England part of the journey, and Anna Murdoch, in Brisbane, Mt Tamborine and Boreen Point.
For their knowledge of the history and natural history of Mt Tamborine, I am indebted to Eve and Raymond Curtis. I am also very grateful to local historians, Paul Lyons and Ron Pokarier, for guiding me through Judith’s landscapes on Tamborine and for providing useful information.
While my book is neither biography nor academic analysis, it has benefited from the scholarship and insights of many fine thinkers in the field. A number of books on Judith’s life and work have been particularly helpful and illuminating: Veronica Brady’s biography South of My Days, Jennifer Strauss’s analysis of Judith’s poetry and activism, Judith Wright, and Shirley Walker’s Flame and Shadow: A Study of Judith Wright’s Poetry. Also invaluable have been the two collections of Judith’s letters, The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters Between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney, and With Love and Fury: Selected Letters of Judith Wright, both of which were edited by Meredith McKinney and Patricia Clarke. It was a stroke of good fortune that the letters between Judith Wright and Nugget Coombs became available from the NLA at the beginning of 2009, while I was still researching and writing this book. There is still much to be wri
tten about this remarkable relationship.
I am also grateful to:
Nonie Sharp, who kindly shared her memories of Judith, along with her essays on Judith’s writing and activism; Jean Newall, archivist, New England Girls’ School for tracking down the poems of Judith’s that were published in the school magazine; the librarians at the National Library of Australia for their help with the Judith Wright and Nugget Coomb papers; the librarians at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald libraries for copies of Judith’s juvenile poems published in the Sydney Mail; and to John Shilliday, who, as Principal at Ivanhoe Girls Grammar during my time there was responsible for inviting Judith to the school.
As always, my final thanks go to my partner, Steven Carroll, and to my son, Leo Carroll-Capp.
