My first two books were set on my beloved Mountain, home for 36 years. Here I practiced ‘civilised conservation’ – having my cake and eating it too — before the wallabies did.
Please contact me if buying from overseas as the postage is for Australia only.
| The Woman on the Mountain – ($25.00 inc p&p) |
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| Mountain Tales – ($15.00 inc p&p) |
The Woman on the Mountain (Exisle, 2007, 2012, 269 pp), still being discovered and loved. Here’s how it starts:
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| Scott Hawkins, Notebook magazine |
Wherever you live you need to feel safe, and in tune with your surroundings. I do. Yet my place is a 90 minute drive from a post box, police station, shop or mechanic, let alone a Big M or a Big W or whatever other letter is considered crucial to modern survival. Half of that drive is over a dirt road, partly through a National Park which verges on wilderness. I have no neighbours within sight, sound or coo-ee, or not in the accepted sense. My neighbours are the wild creatures who live in the National Park.
I have a telephone, but I must take care of my own power, water, sewerage and garbage – and of myself, for I live alone. I had never intended to live by myself, way out here in the mountains; you’d have to be mad…
And here’s a taste of what was said about it:
• Womans Day, May, 2007, Julie Redlich
Many of us dream of taking a bold new step into a brand-new life away from it all. This is just what happened to Sharyn … Why she went there, how she faces the challenges and accepts with wholehearted love the trees, wildlife and magical space around her is a story to inspire us all to make the world a better place.
• Dr Peter Hay, environmental writer, essayist, poet, and Reader in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tas.:
Machinery? A bloke’s thing. Arthritis? Disabling, debilitating. Snakes? Terrified of ’em. All this applies to Sharyn Munro. And that, you might think, should absolutely preclude life alone on a remote mountain for a woman nearing 60. You might think so – and you’d be wrong.
Munro invites you to share her adventure in this warm, inspirited Memoir. She casts an incisive eye upon the foibles of blindly productivist politics, an engaged eye on the furred, feathered and sapful neighbours who share her mountain, and a gently amused eye upon the follies and the triumphs of her own extraordinary life.
And before you know it her deft prose has drawn you to her evening hearth. You are with her on the mountain. You are cheering on her impassioned manifesto for the land and its rich, embattled mesh of life. And you know you are reading a book that might change your life.
Mountain Tails– The lives and loves of my animal neighbours (Exisle, 2009, 167 pp). Written for animal lovers, who, delighted by my wildlife’s escapades in Woman on the Mountain, wanted more. Short, funny, sad or sweet tales, illustrated by me, with threatened species as the underlying theme. Here’s how it starts:
Being the only human resident of a wildlife refuge, on the edge of a national park that is far from any town, I see lots of creatures behaving ‘wildly’. They can be so natural because they ignore me, as they should.
After all, I’m obviously of an inferior and inadequate species: no tail, only two legs, pathetic hearing, poor vision that’s shockingly so at night, no built-in insulation of fur or feathers, and an apparent inability to survive on the local abundance of grass, leaves, roots and other creatures…
Come take a walk in my gumboots and meet my neighbours.
And here’s a brief taste of what was said about it:
• Gardening Australia, August 2009, Denis Crawford
Delightful… a lively and personal account of the animals that share the author’s wildlife refuge… clearly written… illustrated with the author’s own whimsical drawings. It would be enjoyed by anyone who had even a passing interest in the natural world and is the sort of book to while away a winter afternoon.
• The Adelaide Advertiser, August 1, 2009
Munro’s …style is engaging and informal, as if telling stories over a cuppa, and her enthusiasm and concern for the creatures is infectious.