Category: Gardens

‘The Passage of Seasons’ Book Launch took place last Friday evening (18 November) at the Drill Hall Studio in North Ward, Townsville. Colwyn Campbell was joined by family and friends from all over North Queensland and beyond to celebrate the launch. Peter Cooke provided a splendid introduction and opening speech which is reproduced in full below (with permission).

We’re here tonight to launch a book in which long time friends Colwyn Campbell and Di Lucas generously share with us their experiences and thoughts generated by their deeply shared passion for the natural world. 

Through the pages of “The Passage of the Seasons” we are privileged to join the life journeys of Di in the savannah of the NT’s Top End and Colwyn in the cloud forest of Paluma.  

This is a book of many parts. It is a nature book, but a very special nature book in which people, particularly the authors’ families and friends, are centrally placed in the landscapes which inspire their conversations.  

Alongside scientific observations and descriptions are embedded the feelings and experiences of the observers as the seasons turn month by month ….. whether against the background of wild nature or in the cultivated nature of their home gardens. 

The letter-writing form of the book is also special and increasingly rare in the digital age. The inventor of email, Shiva Ayadurai, observes that texting, SMS, chat or Twitter have destroyed letter writing. In this not-so-brave new world, wise and elegant wordsmithing has been largely replaced by the five-second video grab headline or 140-characterd micro-blogging. 

The establishment of a postal service in England in 1606 allowed anyone with price of a stamp to communicate with anyone with an address. 

Women were quick to take advantage of the improved logistic advantages and the creation of a private space for two people to converse across slow time and far distant space. 

Linguists credit women writers of the 17^th and 18^th centuries with inventing a more personal, private and introspective form of letter writing, using informal styles that were conversational and spontaneous, more like speech and just as lively, vibrant and at times as playful as speech, while addressing subjects from the mundane to the profound. 

Di and Colwyn have built on that tradition of style and The Passage of Seasons confirms it still works just fine in the 21^stcentury. 

Another ancestral influence and inspiration for Passage of the Seasons was the emergence of the genre of nature diaries, a genre not exclusively female but one which continues to resonate strongly amongst biophile women writers and their audiences.

Both Colwyn and Di acknowledge the strong inspiration and influence of the English woman writer Edith Blackwell Holden, who fashioned her Nature Notes for 1906 as a model for her students’ work while teaching art at the Solihull School for girls in England.

Edith Holden’s collection of seasonal observations, poetry, and pictures of birds, plants, and insects wasn’t even considered for publication when it was composed and it wasn’t until 1977 that her nature notes were finally published and became a world best seller under the title The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. 

Other seminal sources of inspiration acknowledged by Di and Colwyn include 

• Earth, fire, air and water, an exchange of letters between two women artists Anne Dangars and Grace Crowley, edited by Helen Topliss. 
• Densey Cline’s formidable catalogue of nature books, especially the Garden Jungle
• Jackie French’s ‘Seasons of content‘
• ’The 3,000 Mile Garden’, conversations between Leslie Land and Roger Phillips focused on their gardens on different continents 
• And finally ‘A Gardener’s Log’ and other books by Edna Walling which Di’s mother passed to her.

As well as these shared European influences, Di brings to The Passage of Seasons perspectives on nature and human relationships drawn from decades of interactions and friendships with the indigenous people of Western Arnhem Land. 

For Colwyn, Pen Pal friendships with contemporaries in the US and the UK helped make her into a self-confessed life-long compulsive letter writer. 

In the mid-20^th century school children were encouraged to engage with pen friends in other countries. 

Some of these formally encouraged pen-friendships were very long lasting. 

In 2018 the record for a pen friendship was between Ruth Magee from Canada and Beryl Richmond in the UK who at that time had corresponded for 78 years and 160 days. They did manage to meet but only twice and only briefly. 

For Di, going off to boarding school at 10 going on 11 ramped up a regular pattern of letter writing. Di and her dad exchanged letters on a weekly basis. Mum, she says, was just too busy in her garden and keeping house. 

The conception and gestation of Seasons began back in Darwin some years after Colwyn and Di were introduced in Darwin in 2001 by a mutual friend, Leonie Norrington, at the launch of Leonie’s Tropical Food Gardens”, a book which Colwyn illustrated.  

They found they shared lifelong interests in gardening, writing and art. They got to know one another better as Diane often called in at Colwyn’s husband’s book exchange in rural Darwin.  Diane at that time was part-time teaching and already writing books for children.   

Colwyn says: “I was rapt when Diane told me about a book that was germinating in her mind and asked if I would illustrate it.” 

And so began their collaboration with Waterlilies, their first book together and self-published in 2007. 

It was a great learning curve, says Colwyn and they were thrilled when Waterlilies received a “Notable Book” award.  It has since had four reprints.   This book, along with three others, are on the recommended reading list for Indigenous literacy and they have three other books in the pipeline, also for children.

So began five or six years of letter writing that has culminated in our being here tonight to launch The Passage of Seasons — a literary journey during which personal nature diaries have been folded in with intimate stories of family and friends, initally in private correspondence between Di and Colwyn across a great distance. 

What the authors are sharing now is a sensory feast for all, from Colwyn’s lovingly created and charming illustrations to their mutual keen written observations and commentary on the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touches of nature that await those who open their hearts and minds to the call of the wild. 

As Colwyn says “what we hoped to achieve was something that would take the reader away from everyday worries to a peaceful mindset, not too taxing, requiring no serious level of concentration but rather to be conducive to contemplation of the natural world around us all”.

The Passage of Seasons achieves all those goals and is a magnificent celebration of nature, of friendship and lives well lived. Enjoy and share. 

Text by Peter Cooke. Photos by Michele Bird and Juanita Poletto.