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The story of their meeting, their love and their shared passions provides unique insights into the dreams and disappointments of a generation.
Judith Wright, among Australia's foremost literary figures, poet, essayist, activist, dedicated herself to writing and fighting for a more humane Australia. Her passion was the land and the first Australians. She was often furious about what she saw as the betrayal of both. Her creative enterprise as a poet engaged deeply with very contemporary concerns of philosophy and language. H. C. 'Nugget' Coombs (1906- 1997) and Judith Wright (1915-2000) are without doubt two of Australia's most admired figures.
Nugget Coombs, the policy intellectual, 'sage', advisor to governments at the highest level from Curtin to Whitlam and beyond, devoted the last decades of his life to the most rigorous commitment to Indigenous Australia. They each had enormous ambitions for Australian culture and society; their meeting in the early 1970s -Nugget was 66 and Judith 57 -was at a time of great optimism that must have mirrored for both of them, the early post war when shared ambitions for a new kind of Australia seemed achievable. This is a story of two people whose love, work and knowledge have much to tell us still.' (Source: ABC website)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Love Blooms in the Afternoon
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 20-21 April 2013; (p. 20-21) 'A documentary based on letters between poet Judith Wright and influential economist Nugget Coombs charts their enduring later-life love affair...' -
Such a Bloody Wonderful Place
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: Inside Story , April 2013;'THE main credits open onto an image of the planet, a curved section hanging in a dark sky, and for a second, the whole globe. Those shots will have delayed impact; at the end of the film, almost half an hour later, we’ll know why they’re there. Almost immediately then, we’re in the bush, in Kakadu, looking through the trees at a vast rock wall, while a woman’s voice – a friendly, humorous, matter-of-fact kind of voice – delivers a memory of time there. Nugget, says Meredith McKinney – meaning H.C. Coombs, widely known as Nugget – always wanted to show this place to her and to Judith Wright, his lover and Meredith’s mother. Judith is then quoted; she said, as Meredith remembers it, that the high wall with the ancient rock paintings was “far too sacred” a place for her; she would meet them at a bench along the path.' (Introduction)
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Love Blooms in the Afternoon
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 20-21 April 2013; (p. 20-21) 'A documentary based on letters between poet Judith Wright and influential economist Nugget Coombs charts their enduring later-life love affair...' -
Such a Bloody Wonderful Place
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: Inside Story , April 2013;'THE main credits open onto an image of the planet, a curved section hanging in a dark sky, and for a second, the whole globe. Those shots will have delayed impact; at the end of the film, almost half an hour later, we’ll know why they’re there. Almost immediately then, we’re in the bush, in Kakadu, looking through the trees at a vast rock wall, while a woman’s voice – a friendly, humorous, matter-of-fact kind of voice – delivers a memory of time there. Nugget, says Meredith McKinney – meaning H.C. Coombs, widely known as Nugget – always wanted to show this place to her and to Judith Wright, his lover and Meredith’s mother. Judith is then quoted; she said, as Meredith remembers it, that the high wall with the ancient rock paintings was “far too sacred” a place for her; she would meet them at a bench along the path.' (Introduction)
