Two Brave Souls: How Telling True Stories is Unlocking Local Talent
Mick & Jenny Kilp at Avoca Lake
One of the things I love about living in Avoca Beach is how many people I know in the village. I’m always running into someone at the Post Office or stopping for a chat outside the butcher. Being on a first-name basis with most of the business owners has built an easy rapport. The familiarity is comforting. This is what it means to feel part of a community.
But sometimes you share an experience with someone you’ve known only casually for years and suddenly your relationship shifts to a whole new level. For me, these deeper connections found in unexpected places are the gems of village life.
“In the back of my mind I thought I’d write a book one day. I didn’t know for sure what I wanted to write about, fiction or nonfiction, but the course just let me explore what I could write.”
— Jenny Kilp
About a year ago, I bumped into Mick and Jenny Kilp while we were walking our dogs. The couple run Aquafun, the local paddleboat business on Avoca Lake, and I hadn’t seen them for a while. I mentioned that I’d been running a writing course locally in creative nonfiction. Their eyes lit up. They told me that they’d both always wanted to explore creative writing, and now that they’d hit their 60s they felt it was finally time to begin.
Mick and Jenny ended up joining April’s Telling True Stories course. In it we explored the craft of life writing, memoir and personal narrative. Along with readings and discussion, I set a writing task for homework each week, and students wrote 5 new stories each.
I was blown away by the pieces Mick and Jenny brought to class. Their writing was honest, moving, lyrical and brave. I could see that I had lifted a lid on something powerful, and their voices grew stronger and stronger. If they had any doubt about their creative capability, it was well and truly dispelled by the end of the course.
Everyone has hidden depths, and yet we don’t often share the most powerful stories that lie quietly in our hearts — or not so quietly. Many people will only tell a story if they’re asked. Our thoughts can be hidden, even from ourselves, until we join a workshop or a class — become part of a supportive group — and give ourselves the opportunity to be prompted and reflect. Often it is only when others are truly listening do we trust there is space for what we have to say.
Written expression takes practice. But when the inner world begins to flow, it rises to the surface, clear and true, and connects with others. This sharing brings a feeling of pure joy.
Bulbararing Lagoon, aka Avoca Lake.
I met the Kilps the first summer we moved to the Central Coast twenty years ago. We wanted to explore Bulbararing lagoon, the expanse of wetland, creeks and inlets that divides the suburbs of Avoca beach and North Avoca. We hired a couple of Kayaks. Mick suggested we take them around the island. We didn’t even realise there was an island. He told us to keep an eye out for the black swans nesting, the colony of flying foxes in the northern paperbark grove. If we returned past the Scout hall, he said, we might spot some spoonbills panning in the reeds.
The prospect of encountering all this wildlife was thrilling, but I didn’t tell Mick that I was really keen to have a sticky beak into the backyards of the swanky lake houses hidden from the road. I didn’t know him well enough. Now I think he would have appreciated my curiosity.
Mick always wears a sunhat and shorts, whatever the weather. I have only ever seen his feet in thongs and they are deeply tanned. After 23 seasons of running a business at the mercy of the elements, he has become a human almanac: at any hour of the day, Mick can tell you what the BOM is saying and what the tides are doing, what the fishermen have left strewn around, and what Council are up to with their sudden high-viz gatherings and sand-moving equipment.
With his salt and pepper beard and watchful blue eyes, Mick’s has an Old Man of the Sea look about him. He’s full of local knowledge, and his face — so often inscrutable — comes alive when he’s sharing a story. He told me there was a plan back in the day to clear the island and build a caravan park there: ‘The place is crawling with snakes!’ He told me about violent storms that had stranded his paddle boats in trees, and funny tales about his weirdest customers.
When Mick found out I’d written a novel, he was thrilled. He confessed he was a voracious reader, had been since he was young, and still tears through two novels a week. As a kid he was often sick with bad allergies, and his medication made him wired, unable to sleep. Awake all night, he’d read until dawn: he reckons this kicked off his literary habit. A dedicated librarian kept him supplied with novels through school and he read all the classics from a young age.
“I’ve always been an observer. I find so many things interesting, and I’d tried writing before, but I always got stuck. Doing the course was like being given a key. It unlocked things that I just couldn’t access before.”
— Michael Kilp
Jenny’s father was a poet. She grew up reading his poems, English was her favourite subject, and at university she was good at essays, but always wondered if she had any creative talent. Plus, she told me, there was an early episode she’d been thinking about lately. When they were in their early twenties, she & Mick joined a religious commune that formed from a splinter group at their Baptist church. It was lead by a young charismatic pastor and later became a cult. They were there for 7 years.
“Where?” I asked, picturing Bellingen or Nimbin, somewhere remote and off the grid.
“Green Point,” she said. “You know the old theatre restaurant? Just next door to that.”
It was just up the road.
Jenny, Mick and their many books.
Now, whenever I run into Jenny and Mick we talk about writing. I caught up with them recently at their home in Terrigal to hear how their work was progressing since Telling True Stories had ended and to gather some feedback about the course.
“In the back of my mind I thought I’d write a book one day,” Jenny said. “I didn’t know for sure what I wanted to write about, fiction or nonfiction. But the course just let me explore what I could write.
“I didn’t realise how much of an art it is, and how when you’re writing you’re doing so not just for yourself, but for the reader. I was really surprised at how much there was to learn, and I was so pleased to learn it. If you’re thinking you’re not ready to write, you go to the course and suddenly you’re doing it — it’s happening!”
Mick loved the course. He said that without it he would never have known how much he enjoyed writing.
“I’ve always been an observer. I find so many things interesting, and I’d tried writing before, but I always got stuck. Doing the course was like being given a key. It unlocked things that I couldn’t access before.
“It gives you the tools to write and the know-how. And more than anything the confidence, especially being part of a group — you realise your writing isn’t so bad, and you think, I’ll start being a bit more creative and take more risks. There are so many stories bubbling inside me. And there’s nothing like a deadline to make you write!”
Both Jenny and Mick are now working on separate books. Jenny is writing a memoir about her time in the cult and has begun some research. Mick doesn’t want to revisit that period of life in his writing; he’s working on a fiction piece, an adventure story drawn from some of his own wild experiences. “I spent 18 years as a deep sea fisherman, seeing things the average person could only imagine: blue whales, giant squid.” They have both enrolled in the advanced Fiction/Memoir Masterclass this April and are looking forward to some more group time.
Together, Mick and Jenny are part of a growing community of writers on the Central Coast who come together support each other’s practice, develop new work and share their creative journey.
Just another couple of brave souls with amazing stories to tell.
A.F.
6-Week Writing Course
10-Week Course
FICTION/MEMOIR MASTERCLASS