The debut novel by Perth writer, teacher, fashion designer and artist, Jules Van Mil, takes inspiration from somewhere close to home – the renowned Mount Macedon landmark, Derriweit Heights.
Van Mil’s ‘A Remarkable Woman’ is the story of Avril, a young Frenchwoman and Dior apprentice who emigrates to Australia following World War II, carrying a dream to forge a career in fashion.
A personal event forces the protagonist to flee from Melbourne to Queensland to work as a nanny on Monaghan Station cattle station, where meets Tim, and their attraction is immediate. But Tim is engaged to another.
Van Mil says it was the time she spent at Derriweit Heights as a child, when her grandparents owned the property, which informed the work’s sense of place.
“It was a wonderful house to be in as a child, [to play] hide and seek, and the gardens and everything,” Van Mil says.
“When I had to create a fictitious property, I drew on my memories of Derriweit … and another rural property I lived in in Western Australia and different ones I had visited over my life.
“Monaghan Station is a combination, but the very first seed of the idea was from that property.”
The property Van Mil played in as a child is different from the one on the Mount Macedon property today – in 1983, the original homestead was lost in the Ash Wednesday Bushfire.
“It was a very large house, and I remember vividly being on one piano downstairs, and my sister being on the piano upstairs, banging away,” she says.
‘A Remarkable Woman’ was published by Macmillan Australia in June.
Elsie Lange
