At 94, acclaimed biographer Brenda Niall has just completed her latest work, a biography of Joan Lindsay, the author of *Picnic at Hanging Rock*. Niall reflects on her approach to biography, emphasizing her preference for insightful portraits over theoretical interpretations. She discusses the challenges of writing about Lindsay, a woman who carefully crafted her public image and lived a life deeply intertwined with her home, Mulberry Hill.
Most of us would like to know the secret of a long and fruitful life. Perhaps we could ask Brenda Niall who, at the age of 94, has just completed another full-length biography. This time her subject is Joan Lindsay, the author ofIt’s hard to escape the conclusion that the secret to long years of creativity is being more interested in other people than you are in yourself.
She laments the fact that few Australians call themselves biographers. We are more likely to have historians who occasionally dabble in biography. England celebrates writers such as Claire Tomalin, Hermione Lee and Richard Holmes. She mourns the loss of our Hazel Rowley who died in 2011. She appreciates the work of Jim Davidson and more recently that of Bernadette Brennan.
The book’s early roots lie in bush paintings on which Lindsay was working in the 1920s. Her mentor had been Fred McCubbin. Sadly, her husband’s artistic career was expected to take precedence.was a late-life success for Lindsay, even more so when it was made into a celebrated movie by Peter Weir and Pat Lovell. Daryl, by now Sir Daryl, struggled to cope with his wife’s move into the limelight. At the launch of the film, he described the whole thing as “bloody nonsense”.
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