{"id":4121,"date":"2025-07-14T06:50:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T14:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4121"},"modified":"2025-07-11T06:52:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T14:52:33","slug":"eden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2025\/07\/14\/eden\/","title":{"rendered":"Eden"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the moment this post goes online, I\u2019m probably asleep in Eden, which is a town in coastal NSW. If the bus doesn\u2019t break down en route, if nothing goes wrong, if\u2026 if\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have to write much now that my thesis has been submitted for examination, and it\u2019s cold in Canberra, and Eden is in the middle of whale season. Three excellent reasons to catch a bus and visit the Sapphire Coast. I\u2019m not going for long. When I\u2019m back I might tell you about some of the work I did there. I don\u2019t want to jinx my writing by promising vast amounts of it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been through Eden a couple of times. I\u2019ve written Eden into a short story (\u201cAfter Eden\u201d) and into a novel (Borderlanders<\/i>). I might see if I have the courage to tell the owner of the pub from Borderlanders<\/i> that one of their staff members is in a novel. I haven\u2019t told anyone in Robertson (further north, in the mountains) that the whole town is in both story and novel so\u2026 maybe not. We will see,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never spent more than an hour in Eden, because I\u2019ve always been there on the way to somewhere else. It\u2019s on one of the most spectacular roads in the country, Highway #1, that goes (mostly) right around the coast. I\u2019ve dreamed of travelling the whole way round, but can\u2019t see how to make that happen. I can, however, go to Eden.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Eden is one of those places that\u2019s not well known but is rather special. First, whales. Also, tourist-watching, though I suspect it\u2019s the wrong season for the giant boats. Eden is, in fact, probably the Australian equivalent of Nantucket, if the whalers from Nantucket worked with orcas.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly, the town is a lovely place where I can walk down to the sea even on a bad day and it\u2019s not nearly as cold as Canberra. We\u2019ve been warned that the wind straight from the Antarctic is coming again, from tomorrow. Canberra will be bitter-cold for up to a week. In Canberra, as I love saying but don\u2019t love experiencing, that Antarctic wind travels directly over the biggest snowfields in the country and collects cold from the coldest mountains in the country and Canberra is its first city after all that collected cold\u2026 Canberra has a very solid wind chill factor on Antarctic days.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Sapphire Coast and its hinterland has complex and fascinating history, lovely cheese (best grassland in mainland Australia, around Bega), and is part of an overland trail that dates back thousands of years. I can\u2019t walk the trail, and I doubt I can get to Montague Island to greet penguins, but Eden contains enough architecture and history and whales and museums and a good local library so that when I get mental cramps from writing, I will not be bored. I will take pictures and research later fiction. Or I will walk five minutes to the nearest beach and watch for whales.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If all has gone well, this is where I am right now, while you\u2019re reading. Maybe at the beach, looking at Twofold Bay or out over the Pacific. If you\u2019re reading from California, wave at me, just in case.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the moment this post goes online, I\u2019m probably asleep in Eden, which is a town in coastal NSW. If the bus doesn\u2019t break down en route, if nothing goes wrong, if\u2026 if\u2026 I have to write much now that my thesis has been submitted for examination, and it\u2019s cold in Canberra, and Eden is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636,56,367],"tags":[1090,1092,1091,1094,1093],"class_list":["post-4121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-travel","tag-eden","tag-killer-whales","tag-orcas","tag-sapphire-coast","tag-whales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}