Ngarigo country, otherwise known as the Monaro, is a high plain halfway between the far south coast of New South Wales and the Snowy Mountains. It is a place of big skies, where sheep graziers battle short summers and long, intense winters.
Tucked away in and between the district’s scattering of towns and villages are folk eking out different kinds of living, including artists.
They, too, must work with the pleasure and pain of the environment.
Lucy Culliton is one of Australia’s most revered painters, having been selected multiple times for the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. She is the only Australian female finalist in all three prizes in the same year – 2016 – and her work is in many significant collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and Parliament House in Canberra.
Bibbenluke, which Culliton has called home for 15 years, comprises about a dozen houses, a relatively new concrete bridge and not much else. The nearest groceries and fuel are at Bombala, where a number of shops stand empty.
Yet Culliton appreciates the 18ha (44acre) space, where she cares for dogs, horses, cows, sheep, goats, poultry, pigeons and emu.
“I love gardening,” she says. “I love animals, especially rescue animals. I get up early, have a coffee, I feed all my animals and then I’m down in the studio by 9am. I do that every day of the week.”
Her current body of work is about one of the properties that adjoin hers, the owner of which is dedicated to regenerative agriculture.
“During the drought, on one side of me was a dustbowl, but this guy [on the other side] destocked so there was grass on the joint. The creek had stopped flowing but all the ponds were full. There were reeds and birdlife, platypus,” she says.
“So, that’s what I was painting: good farmer versus bad farmer. But I didn’t want to paint the bad farmer. I wanted to pay the good stuff forward.”
Any art supplies Culliton needs she orders from Sydney, and they arrive in the mailbox two days later. Despite that convenience, she does worry about being forgotten.
“But my work is so removed from other artists’ work that I’m either in fashion or out of fashion, so seeing people or not seeing people [in the city] is not going to help.”
Culliton cannot see herself returning to Sydney, where she was raised.
“Only if I get dementia,” she says.
Nature boy
For Michael Simic, home is Braidwood, halfway between Batemans Bay and Canberra. The singer-songwriter is best known as frontman for Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen, a band formed in 2000 that has recorded four albums and toured the world, giving much-lauded performances, including at the Edinburgh Festival and London’s West End.
Simic has been described by the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas as “one of the great showmen of the Australian indie music scene”.
He’s new in town, having moved last year with his wife Rose and their two children from Majors Creek 15 minutes’ drive away.
Born and raised in Canberra, Simic spent time in Wollongong and south of Hobart. For some years, he and Rose lived on a sheep property down on the Monaro. Having spent his adulthood as a gigging musician, Simic is now responsible for feeding four hungry mouths (as he puts it) so has taken on the role of regional officer with MusicNSW. He spends his days travelling the Southern Tablelands, Southern Highlands and Illawarra helping musicians progress their careers.
“I picked a good time to pause my gigs, considering the pandemic,” he says.
Like Culliton, Simic says he could not afford to buy a property in a metropolitan area. He is planning to build a house out the back of his mother-in-law’s place. Meanwhile, he and his family live on the other side of town, which overlooks a creek.
“To keep all your plates spinning as an independent artist requires a little bit of mania. The fact that I can walk out the back of our house, go down the hill and sit beside water – it resets my nervous system,” he says.
Simic’s role with MusicNSW is likely to end soon – the funding is running dry – and he is contemplating a return to performing to make money. He is also thinking about recording a solo album in the bush, surrounded by nothing but trees.
“I’m Croatian from my dad’s side,” he says, “so I can build up, I can overwork. In Braidwood I maintain my equilibrium through a close connection with nature. Getting my feet on the earth grounds me to the place. I’m a nature boy at heart.”
Simic’s advice for emerging singer-songwriters who live in the regions is succinct.
“Build relationships,” he says. “Sometimes, as artists, we think people will just support us because we’re talented, but if you put time into relationships, people will help you. Also, don’t pretend to be something that you aren’t.”
Quietness and stillness
Half an hour’s drive north of Canberra, novelist Robyn Cadwallader has called Murrumbateman home for 13 years.
She says the village has an energetic community with its vibrant market, strong progress association and annual field day.
Her first novel, The Anchoress, was published to acclaim and has been described by the New York Times as “a considerable achievement”. Her second, Book of Colours, won the 2019 ACT Book of the Year.
As to why she lives where she does, Cadwallader says it is about the idea of breathing.
“I can breathe well here – physically but also creatively,” she says.
“I don’t need beautiful scenery to create something. I can shut off what’s out the window when I’m trying to be in, say, a medieval city. But the quietness and the stillness [is what I need]; and I love looking out the window and seeing a wren hopping by. It doesn’t feel as though they’re striving like we do.”
In terms of challenges, Cadwallader says there is still the impression that everything happens in Sydney and Melbourne, that people in cities write “the really edgy stuff”, and that regional writers produce only “nice” books.
Recently, Cadwallader spoke online to a group of school children about the work of a writer, explaining that she does not always know what she thinks until she writes, how she writes herself into her subconscious.
Asked if she believes living in Murrumbateman helps her do that deep diving, Cadwallader says: “Oh, I sure do.”
Nigel Featherstone lives in the NSW Southern Tablelands. His new novel, My Heart is a Little Wild Thing, is published by Ultimo Press.
