THERE was a buzz in Port Macquarie last Friday, and it wasn’t just from the Ironman crowd.
Gina Chick was also in town.
Warming up with book signings at Collins Booksellers earlier in the day, Chick was the guest of Port Macquarie-Hastings Library that evening.
Barefoot, wearing loose clothing, and waving a fan near the end, the former reality-show winner was refreshingly frank about being 50-ish and menopausal.
“I would rather talk to a human than write a celebrity memoir, or about Alone Australia,” she said.
“There is not a single mention of it in my book.”
Chick left her chair empty for the hour she spoke to the room about her book We Are The Stars.
“As you dive in, you will meet little Gigi, and she changes as she ages.”
Chick talks and writes about being a misfit, being told most of her life that she is “too big, too much, too wild” and about her journey of “wisening”.
She also talked about her mother Sue, who was adopted and only discovered at the age of 48 that her birth mother was the iconic writer Charmian Clift.
Clift was the first Australian female columnist, and wrote about feminism and Indigenous rights.
She lived a bohemian life on Hydra in the 1950s with her husband and fellow writer George Johnson (My Brother Jack).
Sue’s Chick’s book, Searching for Charmian – first published in 1994 – has just been republished.
”The genius of [Charmian’s] writing is that it is as relevant now as it was groundbreaking then.
“The genius of my mother’s is that it helps us get close to Charmian, and in doing so, perhaps understand our own wild genes a little better.”
Gina Chick’s book is also about grief.
After losing her three-year-old daughter to cancer, she started to write about the experience.
“I discovered something powerful, about love and hurt,” she said.
”Then I wrote myself out of it, and people would write back with their own stories of grief.”
Many at the library event walked away with signed copies of both Gina’s and her mother’s books, personally inscribed “with love through the generations” or “with love and wolf howls”.
Gerry Walsh, who provided photos of the event, said it was “great that she included Port Macquarie in her travels”.
“The library staff sure know how to put on a great night.”
Ann Kathrin, who also attended, said, “Gina was inspiring – so raw and authentic.
“Our world needs more of her.”
By Pauline CAIN
