Finding Margot

 The last week has been one of the most extraordinary of my life.

 I was booked to do a Book Tour of Dubbo and Coonabarabran to promote my new novel, Painting the Light. It was something I’d been looking forward to for weeks.

 I taught on Monday and drove to Leura on Monday night to stay with a cousin whom I hadn’t seen for years. I was intrigued to know how she felt about the portrayal of her grandparents and mother, even if they were fictionalised. Thankfully, Sue enjoyed it.

On Tuesday I drove to Dubbo, having had a little nano nap in Mudgee on the way. When I was a kid, we had a farm out of Rylstone, which is near Mudgee. As I passed the Dubbo Airport, I remembered flying into Dubbo as a little boy.

 It felt like I was driving into my past.

 After getting lost in Dubbo, I found my way to 2DU where I did a quick radio interview before racing to the Macquarie Regional Library to talk about the book. My father had a radio program on 2DU during the 1954 federal elections.

 I began the library talk by discussing the process of writing the book before moving on to some talking points.

 Painting the Light is a fictional tale based on my parent’s lives.

The facts in the story are real but the characters are an amalgam of people I’ve known or discovered through research, as well as some I’ve just dreamt up.

 The male protagonist, Alec, is probably the one closest to a real person as his journey mirrors my father’s

 Nell, the female protagonist, is loosely based on my mother. I say loosely because I barely knew her. I was 12 when she died.

 I wrote the book to honour my parents and the sacrifices they made. I wanted my children, and other family members, to at least have some record of what their grandparents must have endured. What happened to a woman who from all accounts was an absolute firecracker with the world at her feet?

 What happened to all the women of that generation whose lives were stopped in their tracks by the war and who were left, in many cases literally, holding the baby.

 I have spent my life searching for my mother. Incredibly, this book has helped me find her.

 I found a photograph of her by Max Dupain in a copy of People Magazine in 1936. That stunning photograph was not only the key to creating the character of Nell, it shone a light into a past I knew nothing about.

 When I was interviewed by Richard Fydler,  (https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-ned-manning-lost-mother-painting-the-light/13867198 )

I was surprised that he opened the interview by asking me about my mother. I was, and am, happy to talk about her. I’ve been doing a lot of it. What I didn’t get until now was that I am still on that journey.

 In every talk I have given something has been revealed about mum. Often it is a comment from someone about their mother or grandmother.

 The talk in the Dubbo Library was another one of those events that opened the past up to me. I caught up with a cousin on my father’s side I hadn’t seen for decades. I remember her parents well. I caught up with an old friend from uni who reckoned I’d written his parents’ story. I caught up with a whole lot of people whose parents experience of war was not dissimilar to my own family’s. Many of them had been told as little as I had. Many had fathers who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about their war experience. Many had mothers who had sucked it up and got on with it. Whatever “it” may have been.

 It was a privilege to share my story with them and to hear theirs. I walked out of the library feeling very excited.

 I grabbed a Korean burger, itself a symbol of the changing face of rural Australia and headed off to Coonabarabran.

 I was born in Coona. It is where much of Painting the Light is set but I only had a very sketchy memory of it. Twenty one years ago I’d made a pilgrimage there with my wife, Marion, and one year old Lily. We had stayed out of Coona in a place directly under the Warrumbungles. We visited the Council chambers and found an Honour Board with my father’s name of it under the list of Shire Presidents.

“H.A.Manning. 1946-1947.”

 With help from people at Council we found the property we had lived on for the first five years of my life. It was now called Narradale.  It was once Wongan.

 Now, all these years later, I had planned to check it out on the way to Coona but, because I had run out of petrol and had to make a detour to Binnaway to fill up, I hit Coona as darkness was falling. I had to keep an eye out for ‘roos. By the time I drove into Coona, all I could see were stars. Stars so bright that I almost had to shade my eyes to look at them.

 I checked into the Imperial Hotel, chucked my bag in my room, and went down for a feed. The dining area was jam packed. I discovered that this was the final day of the Coonabarabran Horse Expo. That seemed apposite as my only clear memory of my childhood in Coona was when I was given a small horse as a reward for riding him around the front paddock.

 I called him “Mate”.

 The next day, incredibly, I was beckoned by the local taxi driver, Joe. It turned out that it was the same Joe who had owned Narradale and shown us around 21 years before. He gave me directions to my old home and, after brekky with another old mate, I headed out to Narradale.

 I parked and walked across the cattle grid. I could see the house clearly. I felt elated. It was a different feeling to the last time I’d been there. I suspect that was because of the book. I’d love to say memories flooded back but they didn’t. Whatever I was feeling was much deeper.

 I dropped into what had become the Warrumbungle Shire Council and was shown the Honour Board. I was even prouder than last time.

 The library talk in Coona was much like the one in Dubbo. Lots of comments about similar experiences from the audience. One woman, who was born in 1916 and lived in Coona all her life, remembered my dad.

 There were a few First Nations people amongst them. I introduced myself to Brenda. She gripped my hand tightly. She asked me where the property we’d lived on was? With a bit of help from one of the locals, I told her.

 “I know that place,” she said.

 “Bomber Bentley lived there.”

 I nearly fainted. In the book I’d written about a First Nations family living on the fictional property, Toongowan. I knew my father had First Nations people working for him. I didn’t know they lived on the place. This was a case of art imitating life without the artist knowing it. It was pretty wild.

 I gave Brenda a copy of the book.

 “I’m gonna take Bomber’s boys out there,” she said.

The “boys” were now in their 70’s.

 “Show ‘em where they grew up.”

The Coonabarabran Land Council had given me a lot of support in writing the book. I spoke to the Elders about it, telling them I couldn’t write a book about rural Australia without writing about the people who came from the land and still lived on it. I had given them the relevant chapters to read, and they had given me the thumbs up.

 Driving back to Sydney that afternoon, soaking up the Central Western plains, I reflected on how this book was taking me to places I’d never dreamt of going. Not physical places but emotional places. Places deep within my soul. It was as if I had researched the book, written it and was now researching it again.

 After teaching on Thursday and Friday I made my way to Gleebooks to talk to the inestimable Annabel Crabb. This was the cherry on top of a pretty special cake. Annabel dug deeper into the question of my discovering my parents, in particular my mother, through writing Painting the Light. We talked about how writing can help you open doors you may not have known were there. We talked about Australian history and how we seem to have brief periods of enlightenment and idealism followed by interminable years of stagnation and despair.

 At the heart of Painting the Light is idealism. The importance of striving for a better world. The need to find light in the darkness.

As is turns out, the book is shining a light onto my past in a way I never imagined.