Peter Ludlow talks about his writing and Moreton Bay...
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THE BAY AN INSPIRATION
For
me, creative writing has always been a form of escape. I grew up in
Brisbane in the 1950s in an environment that I would now label ‘stifling
conformity’. The arts were almost something foreign – imported from
interstate or abroad for our entertainment, but not really originating here. Brisbane was parochial, to say the least. So when
Ian Fairweather, an aging and reclusive Scottish artist, chose Moreton
Bay’s Bribie Island to set up camp in a large Polynesian style grass
hut, he immediately grabbed the attention of the local community. Here
was someone who had travelled the world from England, to China, the
Phillipines and Bali; had sailed a raft from Darwin to Indonesia; had
been imprisoned there and was released only after the intervention of
the Australian authorities. Here was a real adventurer who chose Bribie
as a home to settle down and paint his masterpieces.
Many
years later, after I had exhausted my urge to write short stories and
poems, I was searching for a suitable subject and remembered Ian
Fairweather’s twenty year stay on Bribie. I pondered why such a world
traveller would have chosen Bribie to live out the rest of his life for
he had never stayed in any one place for too long. I approached the ABC
radio using this premise and they suggested a dramatised documentary
involving interviews with Bribie locals who had known Fairweather. How
had they interacted with Fairweather and how did his eccentricities
affect them? What was Bribie like then and why did he find it so
attractive?
Suburban living had never been a great turn-on for me, and I suppose I
was envious of Fairweather’s grass hut. This radio documentary was my
way achieving, in art, what having a wife and family had made an ‘
impossible dream’. I had once spent a holiday at Bribie as a kid, and
perhaps recreating Fairweather’s lifestyle on Bribie stirred my
childhood memories of a time when life was simpler, less stressful, and
not so far removed from Nature.
From
an isolated individual, I next turned my attention to writing about an
isolated community – the leprosy patients at another Moreton Bay island
– Peel. Like Fairweather, these people lived out their lives in
isolation, but unlike him, their isolation was forced, not voluntary.
How did so many people live for so long on such a small island? What
could life have been like for them? How had their Biblical disease come
to Queensland? What was their fate? I set about writing down the
answers.
At
this point I discovered that virtually nothing had been recorded about
the Leprosarium, partly because of Government secrecy and partly because
of the stigma of the disease. I began to realise then that my writing
might be worth more historically than artistically. The interest shown
in the small book I produced about Peel prompted two more. Like a fish,
I was hooked on Moreton Bay.
Writing about Fairweather and Peel had brought me into contact with many
Moreton Bay personalities. Each had provided revealing reminiscences of
their life in and around the Bay, and I was struck by just how much it
had changed since European colonisation. So for my next, and final,
writing about the Bay, my idea was to preserve, in print at least,
perceptions of the Bay by its inhabitants. Five volumes, a chronicle, a
book of letters and fifteen years later, people are still sending me
material about Moreton Bay and its people. It’s proved to be a magic
pudding – the more I dig into it the quicker its replaced. Or perhaps I
am more of a sorcerer’s apprentice, like Mickey Mouse, clumsily trying
to control an ever increasing number of mops. Or maybe it’s Pandora’s
box I’ve opened? No, no. It’s Moreton Bay we’re talking about – it has
to be a can of worms.
Peter
Ludlow
