The Story Behind… The Grazier’s Son
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Fraud and Fairytale Castles
Several years ago, during a road-trip through southern New South Wales, we called into a country town to grab fuel. Inside the petrol station was a stand of those free magazines you often see about, full of local news and events and advertising. As we still had plenty of road-tripping to do, I grabbed one to read.
In it was a small article about the sentencing of a much-respected farmer and stock agent of long standing who’d reportedly misappropriated almost a million dollars from his agency’s trust account. Fascinated, I immediately began googling.
What I found left me flummoxed.
How could someone of this man’s standing and intelligence do such a thing? Not only to himself (he’d apparently lost an even greater sum of his own money to the Nigerian Loan Scam operation he’d become tangled in) but to the community who loved and trusted him.
It really got me thinking. How do good men go bad? Which then morphed into: could a good man go bad for good reasons?
I spent the rest of that trip thinking about this extraordinary case and just knew that I’d one day write about it. It was too interesting not to. All I needed was to develop a plot and find the right characters and setting to fit around it.
If you’ve been reading my books for a while, you’ll know how much I adore the landscapes of western Victoria and the south-east of south Australia. There’s a reason for this. It’s where I was born and grew up, and where my long-suffering parents spent many weekends carting me around to countless agricultural shows, pony club gymkhanas, training days, and dressage and jumping events.
It made for a pretty idyllic childhood and an abiding love for the landscape.
Something you may not be aware of is the number of historic houses scattered around these regions. There are some truly magnificent homes. By the mid-1800s, Western Victoria and the south-east of South Australia were agricultural powerhouses. The early settlers who had taken up pastoral runs made fortunes supplying meat and wool to a populace that had exploded thanks to immigration and the gold rush. Cashed up, they built stately mansions to reflect their wealth and prestige.
Times change and fortunes come and go, and, sadly, some of these houses have been left to rot, too expensive to maintain. Others are still there, as homes, or even as airbnbs (check out Chateau Kolor at Penshurst—it’s magnificent!), and the occasional business.
One such mansion is Struan House, 17 kilometres south of Naracoorte in South Australia. Completed in 1875, it is now owned by the Department of Primary Industries and Regions. Once, it had everything from a ballroom to servants’ quarters and staff stairs, to a ladies’ formal lounge, a library, and a knitting room.
I’d always been in love with Struan House. As a child, whenever we’d drive from Mount Gambier to Adelaide, we’d pass by the mansion and it would set my imagination on fire. It was so romantic looking!
I’d daydream about living on such a property, like a princess in a castle, and owning as many horses as I wanted. I suspect that, even then, I knew I’d one day write about a beautiful historic home like that. That admiration and those fantasies were just too strong.
Westwind, the house Stirling inherits in The Grazier’s Son, is loosely based on a beautiful Italianate villa called Gringegalgona in Victoria’s Southern Grampians Shire. The same architect who designed Struan House designed Gringegalgona, which is probably why I picked it when I was researching properties.
Gringegalgona was once the heart of a vast squatting run that was eventually broken up under the first Soldier Settlement Scheme. The villa is still there today, and the heritage register lists it as being in excellent condition and well restored.
As a private working property, I don’t have photos of Gringegalgona, but I do have some of Struan House. As you can see from the photo above, it’s quite magnificent.
Stirling’s Westwind isn’t quite as ostentatious as Struan House. There’s no tower, and the verandah doesn’t wrap all the way around. But, like Gringegalgona, it boasts pretty balconies and features a unique pink-hued stone construction, enhancing its romantic quality even more.
So I had my plot inspiration, my setting and now I needed characters.
Stirling was easy. He just seemed to appear, although he is (very!) loosely inspired by an ex-army helicopter pilot I once met. Darcy was a whole different matter. She flat-out refused to come to life.
Not having a heroine prevented me from starting The Grazier’s Son for a long, long time. It was incredibly frustrating! Usually characters come along organically—I mull and mull and over time they eventually just birth—but not in this case.
I had originally wanted my heroine to be a community nurse, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t get her right in my head. I also didn’t think Stirling needed another medical person in his life (you’ll understand why when you read the book).
With the rest of the story forming, things were getting desperate. I needed my heroine!
So I had a brainstorming session in which I listed potential character backgrounds and professions. The very last on the list was for a woman who ran an antiques and collectibles shop and adored all vintage style.
That one gave me a bit of a tingle. After some playing around, I changed her into a woman who ran her own vintage style clothing business. A woman who was glamorous and sexy, capable, fiercely independent and feminist, but with a big farm-girl heart.
And at last Darcy was born.
I had a ball researching her unique outfits. Besides spending hours down online rabbit holes and subscribing to a bunch of clothing sites’ newsletters, I found a couple of shops in Newcastle where the owners make and sell their own designs—just like Darcy. Visiting them was so much fun. It opened up a whole new world. A particularly gorgeous one.
I got so into the vibe I even bought a vintage style dress of my own—black with red love hearts. Perfect!
Here’s me wearing my Darcy inspired dress to the 2023 Romance Writers of Australia Conference cocktail party (it was a themed party, hence the tiara).
She might have a delayed birth, but I think Darcy, with all her verve and vibrancy, and like my girlish fantasies of Struan House, will be a character who stays with me for a long, long time.
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