"Just finished Being Lucy. What a fantastic book. You are a marvellous writer. Excellent research and a gripping storyline. I don't often find a book I want to finish. It's a winner. Love to see it at the movies." -
Ingrid, Cooma.
"Through your writing I felt I was transported into her world and that of the people who knew and helped her. It was a page turner posing questions I hoped would be answered in following pages." - Graham, KHA
"My first reaction after wiping tears from my eyes was to think what a wonderful film this story would make. I straight away thought that Judy Davis could play Ma and Sarah Snook, the young Lucy (say from 20 to 35 especially through her art years).
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You certainly captured the emotions of the two women. You cannot help but feel for Lucy and so sad that she had a bitter relationship with her mother - even in later years when maturity and self evaluation often seek reconciliation." - David Cooma
Beside the forestry road to Mount Delusion, on the edge of the Victorian High Country, stand two old huts known as Strobridge's huts.
The two-roomed hut facing the road, built of milled timber around 1935, is the more recent. This was Lucy’s hut. Behind is a much older hut of slab walls and bark roof with a dirt floor—Ella’s hut. Mother and daughter lived side-by-side for 30 years without speaking. Theirs was a complex relationship.
In all likelihood Lucy, a talented artist and musician, was on the autism spectrum, but such things were never talked about in this remote community. Twice, Ella tried to have her daughter committed, but twice Lucy was determined sane and returned to her beloved mountain and its animals to live a life of seclusion. She hated intrusion on her private space, and was not averse to raising her rifle to see off unwanted visitors.
After her mother died, the people of the Brookville community kept an eye out for the old girl - to see if she was travelling okay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Dale Lorna Jacobsen is a freelance writer who has the good fortune to live in the bush just outside Maleny in the Hinterland of the Sunshine Coast.
She is passionate about grass-roots history, which led to the publication of three novels: Union Jack (2011), political intrigue set in Queensland in the 1920s; Yenohan's Legacy (2013), a story of love and life in the High Country of Australia, Being Lucy (2018), the story of a mountain recluse set in East Gippsland. In 2019 she co-authored Antarctic Engineer: Memoir of John Russell with 99-year-old John.
In 2013 she fulfilled a life-long dream, taking part in an expedition to Antarctica, and produced an eBook, Why Antarctica? a Ross Sea odyssey (2015). Dale has since returned twice to the Antarctic.
