Author: Steve Fendt

I'm an educational author dipping his toes in the murky waters of literary and contemporary fiction. I mostly write short stories and novellas around themes of love, loss, guilt and banjos, set in coastal and rural Australia. Working on that first novel.

On the water

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Being on the water is special. Particularly in a sailing boat, kayak or canoe, you can glide along (almost) effortlessly and silently. It gives you time to enjoy the babble of the water, the song of birds, maybe dolphins playing in your bow wave or fish just visible in the deep.

I’ve sailed and paddled coastal waters, lakes and rivers in the UK, in the Baltic and in the Ionian Sea and around Victoria, Australia. It’s just magical. To be able to move across this beautiful, alien, sometimes terrifying element through your own skill, but always by the grace of a primal power which can put you, an insignificant human, in your place – there’s nothing better.

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Baking Day

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Routines and rituals

I have been baking sourdough bread more-or-less regularly since March 2013. ‘More’ in the first flush of my enthusiasm; ‘less’ when the routine became a chore after a few years; ‘much more’ since the coronavirus pandemic has given my leisure pursuits a more homely focus.

My sourdough culture has survived the vicissitudes of those eight years remarkably well: it remains ever ready and willing to rise to the occasion. This loyal little community of bacteria and yeasts has stuck with me through the lean times (six weeks in the back of the fridge while I was travelling in Europe) and the times of plenty (two loaves a week during the pandemic).

This is my baking routine.

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Never too late

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Like so many kids of my generation, I left school thinking that I had no musical ability. Music theory just baffled me, and my croaky, deep, unruly singing voice embarrassed me.

I envied my mate Jon, with his electric guitar and his apparently magical ability to understand what the hell our music teacher, the fearsome Mrs Dix, was talking about. (Four beats to a bar? Really? Why?? Who decides where the bar starts and ends? And where’s the four in 3/4 time?)

Later at uni in Germany, one of my friends was a competent sax player and I’d tag along to his Dixieland gigs. I loved music, was moved, delighted, captivated by it, but music wasn’t something I was ever going to make. I couldn’t even keep a beat while dancing.

Fast forward 30 years …

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Wood carving

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Back in the day, I was a keen amateur sculptor. I was lucky enough to live in Oxford, England, where there is a strong tradition of carving and sculpture going back to the Middle Ages. There was a broad spectrum of adult education classes in the visual arts. I used to take my entire annual leave in Wednesday mornings, so that I could attend life sculpture classes. (Yes, I was still an employee — that’s how long ago it was.)

My favourite medium was wood. It is such a wonderful material for carving. The sculptor has to go with the flow, follow the wood’s infinitely varied nature – a product of its species-specific characteristics and the environment in which it grew as a tree: the cycle of the seasons, flood and drought, heat and frost, trauma from fungal and insect attack, etc.

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Getting started in beekeeping

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My wife and I started beekeeping in 2012. We were interested in permaculture and organic gardening and had been keeping hens for a few years. Keeping bees seemed the obvious next step in creating a productive suburban garden.

At present we have two beehives in our garden. In the past we have also kept bees at our friends’ property. Beekeeping can be labour-intensive or laissez-faire, depending on the beekeeping practices that you adopt.

Here are some of my recommendations for would-be beekeepers, based on our experiences.

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Jewellery making

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Most of my life I’ve been involved in creative hobbies of one kind or another: drawing, woodcarving, sculpture, ceramics, music – and these days, writing fiction, of course.

Jewellery making is another craft that I wanted to try. A handcrafted piece of jewellery is a small thing, but potent with meaning. All the more so if you make it yourself, or if someone you love makes it for you.

I now have the chance. A new art and craft space has opened up in Drysdale, offering classes and workshops, and one of the artisans is John McAleer, a master jeweller with nearly 40 years’ experience.

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