Oliver Lees
After two years of delays, the Mountain Writers’ Festival has finally released its plans for 2022, with a literary lunch on Saturday, March 26 to preclude the two-day festival which will run in November. The festival’s driving theme will be ‘Place, Story, Nature’ and will explore the connection between the artistic process and the environment. For artists across the shire, this theme has a resonant meaning that has influenced their craft in unique ways. But what is the connection between art and nature? And why is that relationship so pronounced in the Macedon Ranges?
Lancefield resident Paul Carter has been interrogating these questions in his own way since he moved to the shire.
Arriving in the small town from London in 1986, Mr Carter was immediately captured by his surroundings.
“It all came as a complete and absolutely delightful surprise,” Mr Carter said.
“I landed on my feet and when I looked around, I realised the population was really talented, and with such varied artistic abilities.”
Mr Carter confessed that his move to the shire brought out his own creative urges.
He is an author of several books, an 11-time Archibald Prize semi finalist and a garden sculptor.
His most recent work, a documentary entitled Lancefield Dreaming, was a passion project of his own design. In it, he attempted to answer a question he had long held about his home: What is the source of Lancefield’s ‘specialness’?
His investigation took him back through the history of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung people, who are believed to have inhabited the area as early as 26,000 years ago.
Mr Carter said these communities would convey knowledge and creative expression in what is referred to as Songlines. Passed down between elders through generations, Songlines tied human expression to history, and often, naturally, with reference to the environment.
“Before the project I hadn’t appreciated the significance of the local first people’s population,” he said.
Mr Carter said this research helped clarify his own infatuation with the Macedon Ranges, and why it made him to explore his own creative urges.
“It makes sense. Even today, you can feel that you’re stepping into a very ancient place.
“In that feeling there’s a peace to it, and there becomes the space and time to be creative. It’s like the whole community feels they have the freedom to express themselves.”
In the modern context, the importance of the shire’s natural environment, and the need to protect, is also a recurring point of focus for the Macedon Ranges council.
In April 2021, the council officially declared a climate emergency. Macedon Ranges is also one of only four council areas in the state to receive recognition under the Distinctive Area and Landscape Act, which affords additional powers to sustain the natural environment.
As an author and a board member of the Macedon Ranges Literary Association, Michelle Scott Tucker was excited to jump on the team to organise the Mountain Writers’ Festival.
“Given the crucial nature of the environment at the moment, it just seemed like an obvious thing for us to do, particularly given that we are up here in such a beautiful location,” Ms Scott Tucker said.
In April 2021, Ms Scott Tucker led her own mobile writing workshop, which encouraged writers to step away from their desks and into the natural landscape.
“Almost anyone writing needs to have some sense of place. So even if you’re writing about other places, your embeddedness in your own landscape can make a difference,” she said.
“You connect with the natural element and somehow that acts on your subconscious in a really interesting way to help the story to fly.”
Ms Scott Tucker said she believed the pandemic and its associated lockdown measures had helped many to realise how crucial one’s surroundings can be to their mental health.
Mountain Writers’ Festival director Sonia Orchard said she was very excited to welcome “some very big names” to the festival later in the year.
“We’re in this good, beautiful environment that writers love, with such an easy day trip from Melbourne, the idea [for the festival] just came naturally,” she said.
On March 26, the festival will welcome acclaimed authors Tony Birch, Evelyn Araluen, Tom Griffiths and Sophie Cunningham to the Macedon Wine Collective.
Ms Orchard said she hopes the experience will give attendees a taste of what life is like in the Ranges.
“I think being at the base of Mt Macedon, I found that incredibly powerful, waking up and looking at that every day,” she said.
“I know most people living here can relate to that in some, and it’s something that is very strong in indigenous cultures.”
