Memoir: We Were From the Mountains In 2009 the Brisbane City Council asked me to contribute to an anthology they were publishing called One Book Many Brisbanes. I grew up on Tamborine Mountain, a rainforest community in the hinterland of the Gold Coast, about an hour’s drive south of Brisbane, but both of my parents had been born and raised in Brisbane and I’d always considered it the big city to my mountain home. I came to know the place better after I moved there to go to university. I met and married my husband in Brisbane, had three sons there, and by and by a not-insignificant portion of life was passed on the slopes of Paddington; and yet, when I sat down to write my essay, it seems that my mind did not fix on those events, that place: it went back further still. For I have known two Brisbanes in my lifetime and they refuse to merge, both held simultaneously and discrete in my memory. There is the Paddington of my adult life, in which I move with comfort and ease; and there is the Brisbane of my childhood, a strange, shimmering place, where exotic things like grandparents and Christmas windows and council buses belong, where it is always hot and I am an outsider, a mountain kid, observing, admiring, and always taking notes.
Author
KATE MORTON is an award-winning, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author. Her seven novels - The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The Lake House, The Clockmaker's Daughter, and Homecoming - are published in over 45 countries, in 38 languages, and have all been number one bestsellers around the world. Kate Morton was born in South Australia, grew up in the mountains of south-east Queensland, and now lives with her family in London and Australia. She has degrees in dramatic art and English literature, and harboured dreams of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company until she realised that it was words she loved more than performing. Kate still feels a pang of longing each time she goes to the theatre and the house lights dim. "I fell deeply in love with books as a child and believe that reading is freedom; that to read is to live a thousand lives in one; that fiction is a magical conversation between two people - you and me - in which our minds meet across time and space. I love books that conjure a world around me, bringing their characters and settings to life, so that the real world disappears and all that matters, from beginning to end, is turning one more page." You can find more information about Kate Morton and her books at https://www.katemorton.com or connect on http://www.facebook.com/KateMortonAuthor or instagram.com/katemortonauthor/ To stay up-to-date on Kate's books and events, join her mailing list here: https://www.katemorton.com/mailing-list/
