Once a biographer, always a biographer...
I recently returned from a brief holiday at a B&B called The Burrow at Wombat Bend, a wonderful mudbrick cottage set in a wildlife retreat at Dixon's Creek in the Yarra Valley, about an hour north-east of Melbourne. I have been meaning to go there for many, many years - since I'd published The Unusual Life of Edna Walling in fact, because during my research for that biography I had met Sue Forrester, the daughter of one of Edna's dear friends - and Wombat Bend is Sue's home and co-creation. 'The Burrow' is the B&B mudbrick cottage that overlooks a vast billabong surrounded by all manner of native trees and plants - and native wildlife, including wombats. This paradise was once a basic cow paddock and its creation echoes Edna Walling's magnificent self-made Bickleigh Vale Village in nearby Mooroolbark - also once a cow paddock. (See previous blogs re Walling's career as a landscape designer etc.) Sue and I had much to catch up on - and I wished