Historic Hydro Writers Collective Weekend Writing Retreat A Great Success
What do you get when you combine a group of writers, an iconic historic landmark hotel, a stormy weekend, a beautiful, bountiful rural landscape, a town steeped in Art Deco history, and food and wine galore? You get an explosion of creative inspiration. You get adventures, bonding, opening up, breaking down, reaching out and risk-taking. You get wonderful stories and writing. You get the very first Historic Hydro Writers Collective weekend writing retreat.
The inaugural Hydro writing retreat was held on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th September. It saw various members of the Historic Hydro Writers Collective book in the Historic Hydro for a weekend focusing on their writing practice. The idea was to claim a private creative space to rest, dream, and write, to share discussions with their fellow group members and to explore their individual imaginative processes.
One thing that became very clear from the moment everyone began to check in and settle into their rooms, is that The Hydro – the Grand Old Lady, the ‘Gothic Mansion’ on the Hill in the centre of Leeton – is a perfect place to hold a writing retreat. The individualized rooms, with evocative historical features from carpet to light fittings to ornate tiled fireplaces. The wrap-around Federation-style verandahs, three metres wide with greying wooden floors and tucked under majestic bullnosed awnings, with views for miles across the roof tops and out to the blue of the Colinroobie Hills and the sacred Bunganbil Mountain. The evocation of days and times past, echoing the Lakes District of England, the misty vales of another time and place. The magic light in the long deep corridors, enhanced by the glow of leadlight, the lamplit nooks and hidden passageways. The regal staircases, the high ceilings in the carved teak wood foyer, the ballroom with its heritage chandeliers, the saloon bar – The Freckled Duck – with an atmosphere of conviviality, community, comraderie. The list goes on.
The weekend was a wonderful experience. There was the Friday night of socializing and getting to know one another in the great atmosphere of The Freckled Duck, telling stories, everyone letting their hair down after a week of work. There was writing and wandering, discussions in twos and threes, visits from family, reflections and gossiping. There was a perfect Saturday night at The Wade Hotel, sharing a meal and swapping stories in the newly refurbished bistro and a languid Sunday afternoon in quiet discussion and laughter over the adventures of the weekend. A big thank you to Frankies Pizzas, and to Stacey and Bart at The Wade for the wonderful food over the weekend.
But amidst the social time and bonding, some amazing transformations were also taking place. People began to find their rhythm. People began to feel liberated to write the things they had been holding onto, given permission to open up simply by the act of claiming a space of their own to write. Everyone moved at their own pace. Some people got up at dawn, and, pen in hand, wrote as they watched the sun rise the horizon. Some sat til well past midnight writing into the wee small hours. Everyone learning more about themselves as writers, but also as people – confronting, joyous, unsettling, exciting. Ideas flowed. Friendships were cemented. Stories and secrets were shared. Tears were shed. Drinks flowed. We had it all.
A big thank you and congratulations to all those who attended this very first writing retreat - Leonie, Aly, Ben, Christie and Emily, and Mel, Deb and Lyndal. Special thank you to Christie's children - Rosie and William - who joined us for dinner on Saturday night and had an exciting sleepover in the big house on the hill. Thank you to Anthony and Rose and the staff at The Hydro for their ongoing unwavering support, both in regards to the retreat, but also to the group and the whole writers residency program that is now just over six months old! And to Camille from Western Riverina Arts, who took time out of moving house to come and take some really lovely photographs of us all.
The Historic Hydro Writers Collective is one of those beautiful, unexpected consequences of the incredible upheaval that is COVID-19. Who could have ever predicted this time, this upside-down-ness, this terrible impact, this calamity? The countless separations, losses and griefs, the shaking up of all the assumptions we have had about life, the economy, health, community, travel, work, school? And yet, the opening of windows, the resetting of parameters, the unearthing new ways of being, and new pathways lying like magic sunken Roman roads, Gaelic pilgrims paths, secret songlines beneath the leaf litter, earth and moss of a hurried half-conscious older life. Here is where we have found the writers collective waiting to be brought into being, born of the Historic Hydro Writers Residency program, but also of a need long-harboured by many in our town.
The residency itself had sat like a germ of an idea in my mind since I was a child. As I roamed the streets of Leeton, writing in my little notebooks, wondering where to put myself in this not quite friendly universe, I used to look up at The Hydro verandah and wonder about sitting there, watching the horizon, inevitably writing. Inspired and tortured by the Gothic Romanticism, the history and ghosts, the regal elegance. It took a grant from Leeton Shire Council, a leap of faith by Hydro management, a twist of Fate, love and COVID to turn that idea into substance.
On the weekend, inspired by that sometimes Gothic Romantic atmosphere of Leeton’s oldest public building, especially at night, group discussion turned to the our relationship to Place, this Place, our Place. The group uncovered the complex web of love and fear and freedom and oppression that characterised all of our differing relationships to our town, our landscape, our seasons and our shared and a personal histories. How our stories speak to both a sense of Belonging, and of being Outsiders. How our memories, our family histories, our failures and triumphs are so tightly bound to where we live. A quote by one of the first white explorers to venture down the Murrumbidgee and to this part of the Wiradjuri Nation, what we now call the Western Riverina, Charles Sturt, encapsulated the mystery of what we decided was our very own gothic aesthetic:
This is from Sturt's diary, published in London in 1833. Following the Murrumbidgee from Wagga to Hay was slow. "The plains were open to the horizon. Views as boundless as the ocean. No timber but here and there a stunted gum or a gloomy cypress. Neither bird nor beast inhabited these lonely regions over which the silence of the grave seemed to reign."
Of course we now know this place in a very different way, and also Sturt had no knowledge of the richness and diversity of our natural landscape here like First Nations people did and do. But this diary entry from nearly two centuries ago provides a dramatic historical canvas for the growth of an imaginative life in the Western Riverina, and one that will help shape the work of the Hydro Collective.
We wrestled with these ideas together on the weekend. We got closer. We are looking forward to all the things we want to achieve. The group is very excited about the impending publication of our first collection of writing – out soon.
We look forward to building on this at our next writing retreat, planned for early November. Stay tuned for details. All new members, curious participants, interlopers, secret writers, people who have never written anything – are encouraged to come along to the next retreat, as well as to our weekly Wednesday Night gatherings @The Freckled Duck from 6:30pm. Every Wednesday. See you there.
Story by Sarah Tiffen, Images Camille Whitehead.
