HOLLY RINGLAND IS A JOY BEACON
SUBJECT Holly Ringland
OCCUPATION Writer
INTERVIEWER Nathan Scolaro
PHOTOGRAPHER Supplied
LOCATION Yugambeh Country. Southeast Queensland
DATE July 2021
I came to know Holly Ringland through the ABC series, Back to Nature, in which she and actor Aaron Pedersen travel through vast, awe-inspiring Australian landscapes hearing the stories of the land. I was struck by Holly’s presence – at first, the butterfly broaches, gorgeous blouses and botanical tattoos decorating her arm, and then her nature – how she moved through these wild spaces with this bright, grounded curiosity.
Given she’d just spent a year exploring some of the most remote and sacred parts of this country, I knew I had to talk with Holly for this issue. But what came out of our chat was so much more than I expected. Holly spoke of treating our selves as treasured spaces – that we can create a thriving garden in the backyard, and we can create a thriving garden within. She shared her experience of actively “putting life back in” after a period of serious trauma – seeking and creating spaces of comfort and pursuing the things that fill her with pleasure and joy. One of those things has been writing. In her early thirties, Holly moved to the UK to do an MA in Creative Writing, fulfilling her childhood dream to be an author. Her first novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart – about a young girl with an abusive father who is taught the language of Australian flowers by her grandmother to say the things that are too hard to speak – has become an international bestseller, and is currently being adapted into a television series produced by and starring Sigourney Weaver.
Last year, when Holly found herself unable to travel to her second home in Manchester due to the pandemic, she bought a 1968 Olympic Riviera caravan named “Frenchie,” parked it up at her folks’ place in the hinterlands of southeast Queensland, and made it her writing office. Frenchie is adorned with potted plants, art pieces and fairy lights, and lets in glorious views of the surrounding trees and paddocks on the property. Holly calls it a “joy beacon.” When I learned this, I thought, That’s Holly, too. She’s a joy beacon. In this conversation, she shares just some of her many delightful treasures.
NATHAN SCOLARO: So I have really enjoyed getting to know you and observing you and your work over the past couple of weeks. I haven’t read your book yet because you are a new discovery for me!
HOLLY RINGLAND: [Laughs].
I’m really excited to read it now! But I’ve been watching you on ABC’s Back to Nature series and I watched the Gardening Australia segment and learned a bit more about your story. You have all of these incredible connections to place. I feel like you are the hallmark of this treasured spaces theme! There are so many intersections from your upbringing in the hinterlands of southeast Queensland, travelling to all these wild places with the show, and then to discover your incredible caravan Frenchie as well! Perhaps to open the conversation I’ll ask where it lands for you, this notion of treasured spaces. What does it bring up for you?
I think treasured spaces are, to me,the caravan, but they’re also the kinds of spaces that I seek out. Filming was an experience of understanding nature as a treasured space, and also about the possibility that there is treasure to be found in every space.
