' Paradise is a Place is an essay in images and words, offering a glimpse into the pleasures of being a child. Sandy Edwards' evocative photographs, taken over eight summers in the mythic landscape of the far south coast of New South Wales - amid spotted gum forests edged by sea - chronicle a young girl's passage from childhood to adolescence. Her luminous and moody portraits emphasise the vulnerability and freedom of childhood.
Novelist Gillian Mears' childhood was characterised by idyllic camps with a Field Naturalists Club on beach and mountain. Here she writes of those years with a camera's eye for detail and nuance, with the honesty and insight that mark all her work. Her essay is a meditation on innocence, memory, the act of seeing, and the particular poignancy of auntly love.' Publisher's blurb on inside of front cover.
'I first met Gillian in 2004 on a sparkling November day. She was staying at a cabin at the Brown Hill Creek Caravan Park in the Adelaide foothills. I’d suggested the location because I knew she’d prefer it to a city hotel room. In the caravan park she would have birds, a creek, fresh air, and rates an artistic writer could afford. Gillian had come over to plan her move to South Australia to write her novel Foal’s Bread. There were several reasons behind the move: she wanted the peace and obscurity of the Adelaide hills and she found the cool winters and dry summers less aggravating to her multiple sclerosis than the steamy warmth of her native Grafton. There was also a guru she was attracted to here – someone who promised an alternative way to treat her disease, or even cure it. With Gillian, there was often a guru in the picture somewhere.' (Introduction)
'I first met Gillian in 2004 on a sparkling November day. She was staying at a cabin at the Brown Hill Creek Caravan Park in the Adelaide foothills. I’d suggested the location because I knew she’d prefer it to a city hotel room. In the caravan park she would have birds, a creek, fresh air, and rates an artistic writer could afford. Gillian had come over to plan her move to South Australia to write her novel Foal’s Bread. There were several reasons behind the move: she wanted the peace and obscurity of the Adelaide hills and she found the cool winters and dry summers less aggravating to her multiple sclerosis than the steamy warmth of her native Grafton. There was also a guru she was attracted to here – someone who promised an alternative way to treat her disease, or even cure it. With Gillian, there was often a guru in the picture somewhere.' (Introduction)
