Gunyah artist-in-residence program: 2025

Residency report: The Happy Mondays - Josepha Dietrich, Cath Johnstone, Betty O’Neill and Jodi Vial

The Happy Mondays: Betty O'Neill, Jodi Vial, Cath Johnstone and Josepha Dietrich

"... The Happy Mondays are a collective of four women writers who met in 2024 while studying memoir with Kris Kneen through an online Varuna course. We travelled from Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle and had never been in the same room together until arrival at The Gunyah, which added something special to the already wonderful experience of seeing the property for the first time.

Sunset from the Gunyah jetty

Our mission at Gunyah was multi-dimensional. We wanted to have time and space for our individual writing projects, as well as coming together at the end of each day to share any breakthroughs or blocks we might have encountered. We had learned, through the nine-month Varuna course, that the support of other writers is incredibly valuable to the writing process. We also had knowledge of each other’s work – emotional, vulnerable, sometimes difficult, as is the nature of memoir writing. It gave us a great foundation and understanding on which to build.

Writing by the window

We settled into our respective bedrooms and writing spaces, amazed at the serenity of the Gunyah site, and before long had something of a routine going. Most days we would cross paths at breakfast before going our separate ways, then inevitably meet up for lunch and a longer conversation about the weather, or the writing ‘weather’, and occasionally the sun would come out and allow us to bask on the deck for a while, serenaded by butcher birds and honeyeaters in the high gum trees. The water was a constant source of inspiration, with its multitude of colours and moods, and continual movement. Many walks were made to the property’s private jetty, but a highlight was experiencing the brilliant light of a full moon while standing over the water. Each night, we would come together for a shared meal to report on our day – the writing, the walks, the swims, the chance encounter with a friendly neighbour and their dog.

On the Gunyah jetty

There were a few days of rain – very conducive to writing! – but that only made the sunshine more welcome when it did appear. Whatever the skies threw at us, the view from the windows of Gunyah was always magnificent. We made day trips to Karuah for supplies, and to Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens for beach walks, coffee, a seafood dinner, and the Saturday farmers’ market. It was always comforting to return to our home away from home.

Beach walk

We all made great progress with our individual writing projects, and quickly developed a support network that valued and understood our respective writing process on any given day. We were able to allow one another time and space to write, while also being on hand for support and encouragement when needed. In return, the Gunyah Residency and the beautiful Gunyah property gave us time, space and encouragement too. On our final night, we sat in front of the fire and took turns sharing some of the work we had produced during our time at Gunyah, marvelling quietly at our good fortune. We are so grateful for the opportunity of the Gunyah residency and all it has provided, and hope that our individual and collective labour will soon bear fruit that would not have been possible without its support and sanctuary. Thank you for making this beautiful place available. ..."

Gunyah residency report, August 2025

The Happy Mondays - Josepha Dietrich, Cath Johnstone,

Betty O’Neill and Jodi Vial

@josepha.dietrich @cath.johnstone @oneill.betty @jodi_vial_writer

Mangrove growing in the sand, near Gunyah

Upcoming artists-in-residence: The Happy Mondays - Jodi Vial, Josepha Dietrich, Betty O'Neill and Catherine Johnstone

The Happy Mondays: Josepha Dietrich, Catherine Johnstone, Jodi Vial and Betty O'Neill

The Happy Mondays are a group of writers, Josepha Dietrich, Catherine Johnstone, Jodi Vial, and Betty O'Neill, who met last year through an online Varuna course titled Finish Your Memoir in 2024. Despite the geographical distance of being from three different states, they have continued to develop support and friendship following the nine-month online course. Now they will meet for the first time in-person for their group residency at Gunyah.

"... During our residency at Gunyah, we plan to continue our process of working together, which began with the Varuna course. Being part of a writing collective has been transformative for each of us. This Gunyah residency is a rare chance to write together in the same place. Alongside our individual projects that we will each be working on, we will develop our collaborative 'project' of building a writers' collective, expanding on the many benefits of support, feedback, workshopping and company in the writing process. We’re looking forward to spending part of each day of the residency coming together to explore this. ..."

Jodi Vial, with her microfiction The Span (published in the Landmarks anthology) at Newcastle Writers Festival 2016

Jodi Vial lives and writes on unceded Awabakal Land, Newcastle NSW. She recently graduated with a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle, with a focus on the intersection of literature, landscape and history. Her work has appeared in poetry anthologies by Spineless Wonders, Papatanuaku Press and Recent Work Press, and her short story cycle Lives of Girls and Women was acquired for UON’s permanent art collection in 2018. Her prose poetry has been shortlisted three times in the Joanne Burns Prize as part of Newcastle Writers Festival, most recently in the 2025 prize.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I’ll be working on the creative manuscript that formed part of my PhD thesis, 'All the Water a Body Can Hold', to reframe it for potential commercial publication. I will also be working on a book of prose poetry, refining my technique and approach to the form. ..."

@jodi_vial_writer

www.goodgirllilith.substack.com

Josepha Dietrich, In Danger: A Memoir of Family and Hope, UQP, book cover

Josepha Dietrich lives on Turrbal Land, Brisbane QLD. Her recent book, In Danger, was published by the University of Queensland Press (UQP). She works in Intelligence and Engagement at UQ, and is also a freelance editor. She previously worked as a university research assistant on improving psychiatric discharge planning and women’s wellness after cancer. Her prior long-term work was in assessing children’s and adolescents’ risk of harm alongside the Sexual Offences Child Abuse Unit of Victoria Police. To remain sane during this period, she flitted off overseas for months at a time to climb cliff faces while sleeping on beaches or in abandoned shepherds’ huts.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I hope to leverage the support and knowledge I’ve gained in 2024 as part of a professionally guided writing group to further develop my speculative memoir manuscript. The writing group provides critical feedback on one another’s memoir development as well as the incidental support of working alongside one another. ..."

@josepha.dietrich

www.josephadietrich.com

Stories of Place, book cover, 2025,

Anthology of short fiction, with stories by Catherine Johnstone

Catherine Johnstone is a queer writer from Wurundjeri Country, Melbourne VIC. She has a long association with the writing industry, having taught screenwriting and professional writing and editing. She has written and directed award-winning short films and received the Fiona Myer International Travel Award to work on her art in Venice, Italy. She has returned to writing fiction and creative non-fiction and in the last two years has been awarded writing fellowships at Varuna and KSP in Perth. She has been published in literary journals Meniscus and Westerly, and is shortlisted in the 2024 City of Melbourne Narrative Non-Fiction Prize.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to write the final essay for my memoir collection about the environment, climate change and loss, while I am in this beautiful location on Worimi Country. This essay will complete the collection, so I will also do second drafts of those essays not already published in literary journals. ..."

@cath.johnstone

www.catherinejohnstone.com

Betty O'Neill, The Other Side of Absence, 2020, book cover

Betty O'Neill is a writer and teacher, living on Gadigal Land, Sydney NSW. She has a Doctorate in Creative Arts from UTS, where she lectures in Creative Intelligence and Innovation. She wrote her doctoral thesis on her quest to understand her father, a World War II Polish resistance fighter who survived Auschwitz and Gusen. Betty has published academically and facilitated workshops in Australia and overseas on creativity, writing family history, the Cold War, migration and the domestic space as an archive. The Other Side of Absence: Discovering my father's secrets, 2020, was her debut memoir.

"... During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to review the first draft and complete a structural edit, of my current memoir project, which explores intergenerational homelessness with my own lived experience and tracing back five generations in my family. ..."

@oneill.betty

www.bettyoneill.com

You can follow The Happy Monday's residency at Gunyah on Instagram @gunyahartists

Residency report: Zipper - Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny

Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny on the Gunyah jetty

"... Upon arriving at Gunyah, we spent a day setting up our studio and getting familiar with our immediate surrounds. It was almost overwhelming thinking about how we might dig into the ten days that followed - it's rare to have the space and time to experiment and create, but time went quickly.

Liam Kenny at Gunyah

In the first week, we finalised guitar and vocal overdubs and mixed two songs for our project Zipper's upcoming double single (out November 2025) and spent some time working on graphic design for upcoming gigs. Knowing there was a storm approaching, we tried to spend some time each day out in Worimi country, finding inspiration from the landscape.

Celeste Aldahn at Bennet's Beach

We rose at 6am to hit the surf at One Mile and Bennet's, took our afternoon walks through the fire trails, and ended our days sitting by the fire and sketching out demos for new songs as the darkness set in.

Liam Kenny at Gunyah

Our second week saw us hit our stride. We revisited the rough sketches of songs made in week one and worked through refining them, walking away with a total of 8 demos - most of which had bass, drums, guitars, keys and sometimes vocal melodies. We feel mostly all of these demos will go on to form songs for our projects Big Echo and Zipper. We brought a surplus of instruments and recording gear, as we anticipated we might capture some more experimental recordings in our second week - but much of this was unused, as in the end we opted to keep things simple and to move through as much material as possible while we had the privilege of time and space time and space.

Celeste Aldahn at Gunyah

We also experimented with new processes, thinking about tactile methods we could use for our upcoming single artwork - testing out cyanotype and polaroid emulsion lifts. As musicians, time and space to explore and experiment is vital to our growth and development.

Zipper instruments at Gunyah

With busy lives and multiple bands on the go, carving out space separate to our day-to-day lives in precious and gives us the chance to focus in - think about the future - and feel excited about what's to come. Since returning to Naarm, we've started working on these demos with our band in the lead up to recording them late 2025. ..."

Gunyah residency report, June-July 2025

Zipper - Celeste Aldahn & Liam Kenny

@celphone @l_i_a_m_i @zipper.unzipped

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Zipper - Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny

Zipper - Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny

Celeste Aldahn and Liam Kenny are multi-instrumentalists who write music for post-punk quintet ZIPPER and duo BIG ECHO. Zipper’s 2020 debut EP ‘Dreamer’s Gate’ [Tenth Court Records, Australia and Urticaria Record, France] was textural yet taut, with lashes of new-wave pop brushing up against cinematic dueling guitar, while Big Echo is a dreamy synth-wave pop inspired by our continents vast and mysterious landscapes.

Celeste Aldahn

Celeste Aldahn is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts worker living on the Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Through a punk lens, her studio work investigates the hidden histories of women using sculpture, video, print, textiles and music. She is also a multiinstrumentalist, composer and producer, with numerous releases and international tours for projects Zipper, Nylex and Rule of Thirds, among others. She’s been involved in grassroots organising for over a decade, curating gigs, founding DIY venues and festivals and contributing to international music publications.

Liam Kenny

Liam Kenny is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and graphic designer, who lives on the Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. He has been writing, recording and performing music for over a decade in projects Delivery, Zipper, Wireheads and Nylex, among others. He has numerous releases and international tours under his belt and has recorded with luminaries like Calvin Johnson of K Records. As a record engineer, he has recorded and mixed albums for Zipper, Big Echo, Draino and Wireheads.

Wireheads, 'Potentially Venus' LP 2023 - Album cover art, photography

and layout by Liam Kenny

" ... We plan to use our time at Gunyah to write demos... collaborate on song structures and experiment with new sonic directions, with guitar, bass, saxophone, flute, synth and programming drums; using Logic and a four-track tape recorder. As previous Newcastle residents, we also have a network of nearby musicians to potentially draw on. We also plan to explore the area around Gunyah to shape ideas for our forthcoming LP art, merch and video clips by taking 35mm photos and capturing videos and experimenting with cyanotypes ..."

Rule of Thirds, s/t LP 2014 - Album cover art, sculpture/installation,

photography and layout by Celeste Aldahn

You can follow Zipper and Big Echo on Instagram @zipper.unzipped and hear their music on bandcamp

Residency report: Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen

Elise Harmsen on the Gunyah jetty, 2025

" ... The days were getting shorter and it was the middle of autumn and it was the beginning of May. Elise and I jumped out of the car with three jars of different kinds of pickles each. It was sunny and we collected kindling for the fire in the afternoon. It was a magical time in a beautiful spot. It was the first time I’d spent more than a night away from my son. We walked to the jetty and listened to boat and bird sounds. I made a series of watercolours in the afternoons and sat in the window seat watching the trees before that. The last days were sunny and rainy both and the evenings were devoted to long dinners and discussing our day’s pursuits. Elise read Vernon Lee aloud to me by the fire and by the outside sky, as I untangled a ball of wool. ..."

Nicola Smith @hellonicola

Gunyah residency report, May 2025

Elise Harmsen at Gunyah, 2025

" ... Every time I make a road trip, the sound work Via, 2000 by Caroline Bergvall travels with me. It is a ten minute recording of forty-seven different English translations of the opening line to Dante’s The Inferno. My favourite translation from 1911 provides the tone for our stay at Gunyah - a warm wooded resting place overlooking the beautiful water, land and sky of the Worimi People.

'Midway along the highroad of our days, I found myself within a shadowy wood, where the straight path was lost in tangled ways.' (Wheeler, 1911)

Nicola Smith untangling the wool, 2025

A car packed with three types of pickle, paper, watercolours, knitting supplies and enough wine and cheese to see us through the week. I had also bought with me a giant stack of photographic negatives that I had recently gained access to from the family vault at Koala Storage - a cache of images unseen in my adult lifetime. Antonio, Nicola’s son (and the subject of her latest body of work) sent off to kinder that morning not quite understanding the distance to Port Stephens or how many spoonfuls of ricotta he would receive that day. Antonio and Nicola’s partner Stefan would join us midway through our trip, bringing the wonderful chaotic that only a three year old can deliver. I can imagine it difficult for Nicola to be away from Antonio for an extended period of time. His curious nature and quick feet mark time and space in the precise present.

Antonio's quick feet, 2025

We arrived late in the afternoon and were greeted in the kitchen by a large yet timorous huntsman. Building the courage to manoeuvre all eight legs to the window with a long broom gave the introduction an other-worldly feel. After feeling pleased that we had completed the entry ritual, we realised that there was no escape once the panes were closed. The eventual release was cathartic - not knowing when or where we would next meet (and a lesser burden than a daily haunting of the window each evening). After dinner we spent the evening knitting and talking by the fire. Nicola managed to unfurl a ball of wool that had been causing trouble.

On the Gunyah jetty, 2025

The mornings bought fine and invisible rain. Mist sat heavy over the water and I would film the sunrise to send to my partner overseas. Fog and mist translate feelings of near and far so effectively. Nicola worked upstairs projecting scenes from a recent trip to Rome from which she painted from and I spent the days adapting a short story into film - The Compost of Rome 1906 by Vernon Lee (pseudonym for Violet Piaget), a French born British writer of the Victorian period.

Nicola Smith drawing at Gunyah, 2025

The days were mostly spent like this. Nicola working upstairs, myself downstairs until the sky decided to turn all the shades of blue in the world and we would reconvene to eat, drink, talk and knit the rest of the evening. The persistence of the past is heavy at Gunyah. You can hear it in the creaking walls made from deep rusty coloured tree boughs and the light that reflects up from the water and quickly moves across the rooms, seeking a place in which to rest before the million years of stars arrive at nightfall. We’re so appreciative of this time and space. Our knitting is unfinished. ..."

Elise Harmsen @esusannahh

Gunyah residency report, May 2025

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen at Gunyah, 2025

Upcoming artists-in-residence: Nicola Smith & Elise Harmsen

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen

Nicola Smith and Elise Harmsen met while working alongside each other at 55 Sydenham Rd’s Studios, on Gadigal Wangal Land, in 2015. They got to know each other through a shared a love of the cinema of Chantal Akerman and dill pickles. Nicola and Elise have gone on to have exhibitions together at 55 Sydenham Rd, Verge, KNULP, and 20 Macleay Street.

Nicola Smith, Je tu il elle, after Chantal Akerman, 2016, oil on linen, 45 x 60 cm

Nicola Smith is a painter living on Gadigal Land. She makes paintings in watercolour and oil looking to scenes from the cinema and from everyday life. From 2015 to 2024 Nicola was represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery. She has shown at Artspace, AGNSW, ACCA, AGSA, NAS Gallery, Firstdraft, 55 Sydenham Rd, KNULP, and MacDowell, USA.

Nicola Smith, I waited for me to believe in god, 2020, oil on gesso board, 25 x 35 cm

Elise Harmsen is a photomedia and performance artist who lives on Cammeraygal Land. Her experience working with archives drives her interest in the nuances of digital images and their relationship to memory, time, and space. From 2014 to 2018 Elise was a resident artist at 55 Sydenham Rd where she ran the adjoining studios. In 2022, she won the HIDDEN Films Award and in 2020 she was a finalist in the National Photography Prize, MAMA Albury NSW.

Elise Harmsen, Rests are moving silences, 2022, Dual video projection onto painted glass, installed at Verge Gallery, Darlington.

“ ... During our residency at Gunyah we will be planning our fourth exhibition together, to be staged late in 2025. Elise will be making a film, and Nicola will be making watercolours from Harmsen’s film. Our work will also be informed by the architecture of the house, and its surrounds. Having shared studio space in the past, and spent time making shows together, we have a simpatico way of working. We’re looking forward to being surrounded by the sounds of birdsong and lapping water ... ”

Elise Harmsen, Echo, 2022, Film stills after Antonioni's L'Avventura, at Knulp Camperdown, in Hear the echo... Why is it empty? with Nicola Smith, Photograph: Alex Gawronski.

Follow on their residency on Instagram @gunyahartists, Nicola Smith @hellonicola and Elise Harmsen @esusannahh.

Residency report: Bron Belcher & Harriet Gillies

"... We have spent two weeks in an amazing part of the world for what has been a peaceful, productive and inspiring residency.

Gunyah is the perfect setting for collaboration that allowed us to challenge ourselves to write with confidence, risk and ambition. On arrival, we immediately walked down to the pier and were met by over a dozen dolphins, who swam under our feet on the jetty before heading for the horizon. Day two day three, also dolphins, amazing. The residency was full of anticipation for when they would return. They played us hard.