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Soaking up the sun at Alma Bay , Magnetic Island , are the late philosopher John Clendinnen and wife, Inga, a noted Australian author, historian , anthropologist and academic.***
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Different to the usual glossy, formula written books about choice locations on the Great Barrier Reef is Magnetic Island-A sense of place by concerned photographer and conservationist, Vandhana.
In the volume she married her striking photographs with a range of poems and prose from islanders and former residents in a bid to capture and portray the essence of the place that she has known for some 35 years , first going there on holidays with her parents.
There are contributions from a wide range of people, ranging in age from eight to a woman in her nineties . Olivia Illidge, 12, at the International Day of Climate Change Action on the island before the 2009 Copenhagen conference, urged world leaders there to give her some hope for the future and that of the planet. Eden Pi-Gram, 11, expressed his concern about the treatment of water in a poem for World Oceans Day 2010.
There are odes to the sea , the pub , Maggie Magic , Dawn on Anzac Day , an acrostic poem spelling out Magnetic Island by another 11 year older, Marley Hannan.
Wulgurukaba elders , the postman on his round, a drumming workshop , interval at the Magnetic Island Film Festival and the old jetty are captured in sepia in a work of love that took five years to come to fruition .
The book sells for $35, postage $11, Contact: magneticvandhana@hotmail.com . Vandhana was selling the book from a stall at Horseshoe Bay ,when an American student , who had been in a car accident which had impaired his eyesight , peered at the book. Realising he had a sight problem , she asked him what was the matter and he explained , saying it was hoped that his vision would be restored in six months . On hearing this, she gave him a copy . Later she received an email from him saying his eyesight was back to normal and that the book she had kindly given him had brought back fond memories of the island .
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Magnetic Island from the old jetty at Picnic Bay .
*** For years the Clendinnens escaped the cold of Melbourne by coming to Magnetic Island where they had a house in Henry Lawson Drive, Horseshoe Bay, and held lively dinner parties .
In 2001, at a function organised by the Magnetic Island History and Craft Association , Inga Clendinnen officially launched the book The Island and Me by Tom Wetherell, 90, whose 18 year-old- brother, Henry, had been fatally attacked by a shark at Alma Bay on Australia Day weekend 1929, this being where the Clendinnens were photographed for Vandhana's book.
In her speech, Inga said historians and local historians usually did not get on very well because the professionals were jealous of the local historian's guaranteed happy readership.
She referred to part of Wetherell's book in which he discussed the death of his wife in 1991 after 60 years of marriage . A day after her death, he noticed the Butch Birds were silent , which left him feeling lonelier. He hoped they might be nesting , she said . "They were , and a little later they brought their two chicks to visit . He happened to be listening to a flute concerto at the time , and the chicks were mesmerised , listening intently to what the famous Butcher Bird James Galway could do , and Mr Wetherell was comforted."
Wetherell , who described himself as an ordinary bloke , was 101 when he died .
Inga received the Order of Australia for services addressing issues of fundamental concern to Australian society and for contributing to the shaping of public debate on conflicting contemporary issues . Her books covered Aztec and Mayan cultures , the Holocaust (voted one of best books of year in 1999 by New York Post ) and another, Dancing With Strangers, examined the relationship between the First Fleeters and Aborigines .
Published by Text, Melbourne , 2003, Dancing With Strangers, contains unexpected Northern Territory references.In the introduction , Clendinnen wrote that during a boat trip across the top of Australia with her husband they made a brief visit to the early, ill fated British garrison settlement at Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula, which, unknowingly, eventually led to the writing of the book after she read the descriptive journals of British Marine officer Lieutenant-General Watkin Tench in the First Fleet that set up Port Jackson .
Clendinnen's bibliography listed The Day The Sky Fell Down : The Destruction of the Tribes of the Sydney Region 1788-1850s, by one-time Darwin journalist and three time Walkley Award winner, Keith Willey. Clendinnen wrote that Willey had constructed a near continuous narrative from the major sources to provide the most coherent account of Aboriginal-European interaction through the early decades of settlement. (After Willey left the Territory he took an honours degree in Australian history at the Australian National University and lectured in journalism at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba ,Queensland).
Inga presented a copy of her book to an island resident , the late Peter Le Grand on his 60th birthday with an inscription, see below , which acknowledged his concern for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islands and passion for the arts, social justice and the environment. During his involvement in Queensland politics he was on the personal staff of Townsville Labor State politician , Mike Reynolds ,who held several ministerial portfolios , his last post in government that of Speaker . Reference to the " tower" in the inscription is thought to have related to Inga and her husband looking at things from the academic ivory heights , a self deprecating term , but one Peter raised in the lively evening debates with the Clendinnens on the island . 
The Clendinnens sold their island property (now occupied by artists Sharon and Steve Crowe ) when John became ill and settled back in Melbourne , where he died in 2012. When Peter Le Grand's partner , Linda Wootten , secretary of the Magnetic Island branch of the ALP and a wildlife carer , went to Melbourne for a wedding , she visited the Clendinnens and Inga said she missed the cry of the Curlews on the island .
As a result of that statement , Wootten bought a special card on the island which emitted the cry of a Curlew when opened and sent it to Inga who was then in a retirement home. A nurse opened the card for Inga and got a fright when it let loose with the distinctive Curlew wail. |
TO COME : More interesting photographs and tales from Vandhana .
