All posts by Michael Burge

Journalist, author, artist
Writers

Mary Moody – growing like Topsy

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MARY'S Mary Moody with some of Glenray Park's geese.
MARY’S WAY Mary Moody with some of Glenray Park’s geese.

Another encounter with a great gardener.

MARY Moody told her friends she’d never dig another perennial garden bed.

After a decade presenting the ABC’s popular Gardening Australia series, the penning of respected gardening titles, and with horticultural credentials ranking amongst the country’s greenest, it seemed as though Mary didn’t have time to garden anymore.

Geography had a lot to do with it.

Mary had fallen in love with the way of life in south-west France, and relocated there for a good portion of every year.

Her family also moved its Australian base from the Blue Mountains to Yetholme (nestled in the ranges east of Bathurst) and took-on the degraded Glenray Park farm.

But, it seems, you can’t keep a good gardener down … this article was published in Blue Mountains Life (Sep-Jan 2012).

The constant gardener

Mary Moody’s been letting her garden grow … again.

“The garden in Leura had become a millstone around my neck,” Mary remembers. “I’d created what I’d call a collector’s garden, and I was absolutely besotted with alpine perennials. It was a constant job just keeping on top of everything, not to mention expensive.”

Glenray Park attracted Mary with its century-old homestead, complete with great bones for a classic Australian home yard, but, on moving in, Mary’s love of gardening had to be left fallow. With her writing expanding into best-selling memoirs; her media appearances focussing more on Mary’s life than her gardening pursuits; and time in France and Nepal leading tour groups, the verdant lawns of Glenray Park got mown, and veggies were grown, but that was about it.

When asked if there was a tipping-point that got her back into her ‘nice’ gardening gloves, Mary laughs: “It was insidious. I created a small garden bed off our verandah, for a few of my favourite plants, and they just started to self-seed. It grew like topsy, and eventually I needed to create wider beds to accommodate everything”.

“I have to admit that nothing I’ve done since in the garden was very difficult – it just can’t be. I mulched the beds very deeply to keep the weeds down while I was away, and when I came home I returned to my weeding duties quite naturally.”

THE GROWING KIND Gardener and writer Mary Moody with some of her grandkids.
THE GROWING KIND Gardener and writer Mary Moody with some of her grandkids.

In the lead-up to Bathurst’s annual Spring Spectacular, a weekend of the district’s finest show gardens, Mary leads me though the gate near her now much-expanded ‘new’ garden.

Covered by the fallen pink petals of a flowering cherry, the plantings occupy a sunny strip between the house replete with euphorbias, cat mint, bulbs and classic country favourites like pansies and Dutch irises, and plenty of dominant roses.

“I did have a moment when I thought ‘you are mad, you’re going to have 1000 people look at your gardening mess’.

“But there’s nothing like a deadline. My son Ethan has been helping me one day a week, and we’re almost ready,” Mary says.

Mary’s ‘new’ garden is a natural extension of the house itself, with a beautiful, uncomplicated structure, and everywhere you look you’re reminded that Glenray Park is a working farm.

Fences and gates give way to fields and enclosures for chickens, goats, geese and alpaca, meaning that Mary’s garden is a home yard indeed – if it extended any further most of it would end up as feed for the animals.

A new project – a classic potager – has been developed with garden designer Nicole Clout and is situated behind a sturdy fence in sight of the chickens. Mary is hosting gardening workshops for kids this weekend, and her garden has already been tested by regular visits from her swag of grandchildren.

This part of her ‘new’ garden is a clue to what got Mary into gardening in the first place – creating organic produce for the family table. It’s been just over three decades since Mary and her filmmaker husband David Hannay took their young family away from the city, enough time for her gardening fame to bury the basic truth that gardening was always a means to a gourmet end for Mary.

GREAT GARDEN BONES Glenray Park, Yetholme, a home yard with garden potential.
GREAT GARDEN BONES Glenray Park, Yetholme, a home yard with garden potential.

But at Glenray Park, Mary has plans reaching way beyond her farm garden.

“I’m starting to plan something we’re calling ‘Sustainable Bathurst’ as a working title,” Mary reveals.

“This region was one of the first food producing districts in modern Australia, but over time crop  and stock production has become predominant. We are hoping to bring the market gardens back.”

And Mary’s decade in France has inspired the creation of a network of ferme auberge (‘farm restaurants’). “The whole idea of eating local food in season, grown here and prepared in the home, is very inspiring. I recently had a go at making sheep milk brie and goat feta.”

With a network of four other local farms already on board, the gourmet potential of Glenray Park seems about to burst. But this new direction has been built on solid organic principles, and not just in the garden.

“When we arrived, the farm was overgrown. After years of stock getting into the waterways, everything was fairly degraded. Ethan’s worked hard on the environmental farm management of Glenray Park, with the creation of a wildlife corridor and contained stock fields. He’s my back-up for the farm.

“Our creek is called Frying Pan Creek, because travellers from Lithgow would stop here for the night where a frying pan was literally nailed to a tree for everyone to use. Over time willows were planted, and they sucked the creek dry, but we have removed it all. There were once platypus here and we hope to have them back one day.

“Ethan reminds me that the ornamental garden must not enroach on the natural environment beyond the fence,” Mary says. “As long as the plants don’t jump the fence, everything will be in balance.”

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

LGBTIQ Equality, My Story

Human rights of reply

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FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION Andreas Ohm and Jim Woulfe, Michelle McCormack and Lynne Martin with son Tom, Michael Burge, Maria Vidal and Susan Everingham with daughter Antonia, and Jiro Takamisawa. (Photo: Sahlan Hayes).
FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION Andreas Ohm and Jim Woulfe, Michelle McCormack and Lynne Martin with son Tom, Michael Burge, Maria Vidal and Susan Everingham with daughter Antonia, and Jiro Takamisawa.
(Photo: Sahlan Hayes)

A Writer discovers his voice.

SOMEONE once said: “Don’t get mad, get even”, which must have been on my counsellor’s mind when he suggested something towards the end of my two years of grief counselling after the death of my partner, Jono.

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), now the Human Rights Commission, were looking for people to make submissions to illustrate various aspects of their Same Sex: Same Entitlements investigation into financial discrimination against same-sex couples in Australia.

“Why not think about writing your experiences?” he put to me.

I said I’d think about it, although my first thought was that my experiences were somehow not relevant. Then I thought deeper.

The death of my partner, with whom I cohabited, ran a business, and had joint financial affairs, had cost me dearly emotionally, but it had also cost me economically.

Unlike straight people in my situation, Centrelink did not recognise the validity of my relationship in any way. I was unable to claim any kind of support linked to my grief or my monetary losses when I had to move house three times in one year, and take time off work.

Centrelink staff had been quite defensive about their organisation’s shortcomings, and told me to apply for Newstart (Newspeak for ‘the dole’) which came with the requirement to be seen to be seeking work and attending mind-numbing ‘how to write a resume’ courses.

I’d taken things into my own hands and gotten a part-time job in aged care, which I happily did for a few months until my car blew a gasket, and needed thousands of dollars for a new engine. I sold it as scrap, had to quit my job (for which I needed a car), and proceeded to hunker down in my cheap accommodation, a granny flat, until I had to move because the property was sold.

I headed back to Sydney and city rent, and tried to speed up my application for Jono’s superannuation, which was slowed by the machinations of his family. They threatened to apply for it in its entirety, then didn’t apply for it at all. None of them were in any way financially dependent on Jono when he died, so none of them were eligible.

I was, but, thanks to all the unwelcome nonsense, it was months before Jono’s super fund could simply do what the law required of them and send me a cheque.

I endured financial discrimination because my country had nothing for me by way of support. What was slightly galling was that certain demographics – straight divorcees over the age of 50, for example – were allowed to access the ‘widow’s pension’ automatically. No job-seeking or resume classes for them.

Me, a genuine widow, could get nothing.

ACTU-Worksite-Australian-Human-Rights-Commission

I didn’t feel like entering into a sob story, but when I contacted HREOC, they encouraged me to submit a written document on these experiences, because they had not received any accounts of people in my particular position, and many of the unequal laws applied to the circumstances of being widowed.

Like my affidavit to the Supreme Court of NSW, my submission to HREOC was easy to put together. They have strict guidelines, I couldn’t just cry: “It wasn’t fair!” and let them sort it out, I had to show where I fell between the cracks because I had lived in a same-sex de-facto relationship.

Part of the deal was the delivery of a live submission to the Commission, and a willingness to submit to media interviews afterwards. I agreed without thinking, because, when the day came, I had a plan to follow the contents of my written submission, but completely overlooked the possibility that emotions would take over.

I watched as other gay and lesbian people expressed their experiences, and, when my turn came, I forced my story out from beneath an aching heart.

Expressing the inexpressible about death is one thing. Defining negative behaviour by other people around that death is another. I struggled my way through my submission, masking hurt with the kind of plosives that hit the microphone with the cut-glass anger that is entirely suitable for such occasions.

As I exited the hearing I forgot about the media, and had more microphones shoved in my face to elaborate further. The interviews went live at midday, and many of my family and friends, and my counsellor, heard me explain the disenfranchisement to a State that finally seemed to be listening.

report_cover

Adele Horin, formerly of Fairfax Media, interviewed me at length on the phone after my HREOC submission, for an article which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It took her a few attempts to fully understand my position, and with hindsight I understood her difficulty was the same obstacle that many people encountered when coming to terms with my experience, because they simply could not understand why Jono’s mother and brother would do what they did, it was such an aberration.

In the end, I suggested she ask them directly for their reasons, to secure the ultimate right of reply, although I suggested she’d need to be tactful – their son and brother had died, after all, and the illegal actions they’d taken made them vulnerable to heavy fines and/or jail terms, had anyone really wanted to “get even”.

Somewhere in her research, Horin came to realise that my experience went way beyond financial discrimination and spoke to one of the final frontiers of same-sex equality in this country: marriage.

The last twelve months of the Howard government needed to pass before anyone in power was willing to read the Same Sex: Same Entitlements report.

So it was with great delight that many in the LGBTI community watched 11 years of conservative government swept away by KevinO7 and the ALP, who’d made the implementation of the Same Sex: Same Entitlements recommendations an election promise, and finally altered almost 100 pieces of discriminatory federal legislation in 2009.

The fight for full equality continues.

Michael’s story is published as Questionable Deeds.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

 

Write regardless!

The truth about writing advertorial

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AD OR STORY? Actually, look closer, it's both.
AD OR STORY? Look closer, it’s actually both.

LUCKY is the writer who has never had to turn their hand to advertorial, that postmodern (possibly ‘Newspeak’) phenomenon which fills so much of our media.

Apparently around since the late 1940s, advertorial has a few tricky names: ‘commercial writing’ is the latest on the list, which includes ‘infomercial’ (usually on television) and ‘cash-for-comment’ (the bane of commercial radio).

Writers could, of course, make a purist stand and never engage in creating content off the back of advertising revenue, but you’d probably never make much money if you did, because all writing (yes, even literary fiction) needs to be commercial at some stage.

Here are my best tips for editors and writers on surviving this trickiest of writing practices, and interfacing with the sales team!

Advertorial can get you noticed

Right now, commercial writers are making decent money finding what is interesting about everything from water tanks to washing machines, and producing serious editorial articles for PR companies and big media advertisers. To achieve excellent results, and get your by-line into the publication, make your article about plumbing products so darned engaging that the editor will run it whole in that week’s paper, and make it look like serious journalism. Think laterally, find the story, interview people in the industry, shape it as you normally would a feature, take the money and submit your by-line at the top of the piece. They’ll snap it up, simply because they have one staff writer and they’re drowning just getting the news together.

Don’t mention the weather

Writing about destinations for travel companies, or regional events, means you’re going to have to find the way to say all the nice things and none of the nasty. Weather and climate are particularly off-limits, because advertisers don’t want readers to waver about heading to their locale. Keep the weather conditions a secret until the Bureau of Meteorology commits itself to a forecast, and remember how often they get it wrong! You’re a writer, right? Embellish, imagine and invent.

Journalist, edit thyself!

Your well-paid advertorial is unlikely to be completely read, edited or proofed by anyone, so spell and grammar check (the computer can do it for you, remember?), but don’t forget to read your own work a few times before sending it in. There are very, very few sub-editors left in the media who will commit to making your work better than it is, so get any notions out of your head about old-style newsrooms with teams of people with their heads down poring over your work. Journos used to have an old trick of making the last four to five paragraphs of a story work as possible endings, and this is great practice for commercial writers too, because it’s likely your work will be used as filler, and be cut down. If any of the last five pars works as an ending, you won’t look like an idiot, and if there is a sub in the process, they’ll remember your name, which means more work down the track.

AREN'T THEY GREAT? The sales team, everybody's BFF!
AREN’T THEY GREAT? The sales team, everybody’s BFF!

Sales reps invented advertorial

But they’ve forgotten they are one half of the job. Everyone knows people buy newspapers and magazines, and click-thru to online media sources, because they are desperate to read ads, right? Well, actually, they don’t, they want to be distracted and entertained by stories. It was ever thus, and nothing is changing in that regard, so don’t buy into the sales rep lies about how their sales are paying your wages so you’d better write what they want you to. Truth is, sales reps and their clients love it when you make the dross they produce look like a real article. Get it right for them, but don’t become a sales reps’ slave (see below).

A businesses’ opening hours is not news!

This is a mantra I have often used on sales reps who have sealed an advertising deal with a promise of award-winning journalism about the local chainsaw supplier, written by me. It’s ‘advertorial’, an amalgam of two jobs – theirs and yours – so feel sanctioned to send them packing with a mission to find the story for you: an award won by the business, some interesting staff member, a business milestone. Make the rep work for the favour you’re going to do them and flush it out, write it down, and email it to you. If you do this from day one, the sales reps will respect you, or leave in disgust to find other hapless writers they can drive crazy. Sales reps change jobs regularly. When they leave, it’s not going to be because of you, but they’ll try to make like it was.

Don’t give your phone number to advertisers

Unless you want them to call you all weekend. Sales reps love it when you agree to meet their clients, because it leaves you to do their job for them. Be nice, wave and smile, but let the sales rep do all the schmoozing. There is no law that says you must do lunch with an advertiser. Keep an air of unassailable mystery, or they will eat you for lunch, and add to your workload like crazy.

Q&A The friend of all commercial writers. Fast, fab, flattering, and fills a page.
Q&A The friend of all commercial writers. Fast, fab, flattering, and fills a page.

Sales reps vs. account managers

I was once seated next to one of my magazine’s big advertisers at a political fundraiser, and once he’d gotten over the fear of me networking him for revenue, he told me something very interesting about advertising sales people: the good ones call themselves sales reps, and the crap ones call themselves Account Managers (their capitalisation, not mine).

The key words are ‘representative’ and ‘manager’: they must keep their energy on the job of selling from start to finish, but so often an account manager will drop their energy once the client has signed the contract. The only way to deal with this is to NEVER take the baton from them. Let it drop, they’ll soon pick it up to reach their sales target.

Be nice to sales reps

Because the publisher (your boss) won’t judge you by the quality of your writing (they don’t read it), they’ll judge you by how much the sales reps like you. Being ‘nice’ doesn’t mean being a pushover, it means being assertive without getting aggressive. Walk the line, forget being liked, go for respect.

Be nice to PR people

If you want to write commercially, public relations people are your friends. Don’t present with loads of writers’ angst, just deliver in a timely fashion. Knock-off your commercial pieces by 10am so you can get back to your novel. Tell them you’re writing a novel, because they might know someone in publishing …

WRITE REGARDLESSIf you can’t find anything nice to write

Make it up. You’re a writer.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

An extract from Write, regardless!