From Wildlife Vet to Writer

When I was small I wanted to be an author. From the time I could hold a pen and form sentences, I knew writing was for me. By age eight, I was creating novels remarkably similar to Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series.

Then, at a family gathering when I was twelve, everything changed. A brusque paternalistic uncle declared writing was no way to make a living, and my dreams were crushed. But if my uncle was alive today, perhaps I would thank him. As a result of his loud pronouncements at that party, my life diverted into science, and the experiences arising from my career as a veterinarian with a special interest in wildlife have deeply shaped who I am and my work.

Careers never unfold as you imagine. I became a veterinarian because I loved horses but reality soon re-oriented me, and two years after graduating I found myself in mixed practice in a semi-rural town about an hour from Melbourne. The township of Healesville is famous for its proximity to the wet forests of Victoria, home to mountain ash trees, the tallest flowering plants in the world. Healesville is also famous for a native wildlife park which draws tourists from around the world to see Australia’s unique and amazing animals. It was at the Healesville Sanctuary that I met my husband-to-be, David Lindenmayer, a landscape ecologist studying the endangered Leadbeater’s Possum which inhabits the forests nearby.

Meeting David altered my life-course again, and set me on the path to becoming a wildlife veterinarian. I completed a PhD in wildlife health at The Australian National University, and then life experiences began to flow. My interest lay, not in zoos and wildlife parks, but in the study of native animals in their natural habitats.

This passion transported me to many wonderful places, working with a wide array of wildlife species. Mountain Brushtail possums in wet forests along the east coast of Australia. Kangaroos near Canberra. Quolls in the Snowy Mountains. Greater Gliders in tall temperate forests. Crabeater and Weddell seals in Antarctica. Fur-seals at Wilsons Promontory. Long-nosed bandicoots in Gippsland. Pythons and Ring-tailed possums at Jervis Bay. Koalas in the Pilliga scrub. Platypus in the Goulburn River.

The animals and wild places shaped me. They reinforced my passion for nature. I was confronted too, by the ethics of studying wildlife. The near-separation of a mother possum from her young affected me deeply. We managed to orchestrate a successful reunion, but I was troubled.

I wanted to learn about animals without impacting their chances of survival. During a trip to Antarctica, a seal died as a result of our research. I was part of a team sedating seals to glue satellite trackers to their backs so scientists could study their diving and haul-out behaviour. We had to guess the body-weight of each seal: an imprecise science. Losing a seal was devastating, and questions about the ethics of our work hung over me. Was it possible to handle wildlife without harming them? When was it time to stop?

An exploration of these questions has impregnated my work as a novelist. The Stranding explores the ethics of human interventions when a whale strands on a remote beach and hundreds of volunteers arrive to assist in the rescue. The Lightkeeper’s Wife questions the ethics of wildlife research on penguins in Antarctica. The Grass Castle hovers above the issue of kangaroo culling, delving into different points of view and exploring concepts of right and wrong and alternative values.

Throughout my scientific career, I have also continued to work part-time in small animal practice, caring for people and their pets. This has inevitably shaped me too. The importance of the human-animal bond is a recurring theme in my novels. In The Lightkeeper’s Wife, Jess is a devoted kelpie who supports her owner Tom, in ways no human ever could. In The Stranding, grieving radio-presenter Lex, who has lost a child to cot-death, is moved by swimming with whales migrating close to the coast where he lives.

My veterinary work also brings me in close contact with overwhelming grief when a family pet dies. Facilitating euthanasia at the right time is an essential part of my job. How do I deal with this burden? How does it influence my thoughts about death? In our society, where separation is carefully maintained between life and death, how can we learn about death as part of life? This is another recurring theme in my work.

Above all, my writing is a way to remind people about the beauty of nature. In our urbanised, computerised world, we have become increasingly disconnected from wild places, and I’m worried we may forget and no longer care. If we don’t care about the natural world, we won’t value it and won’t ensure it’s not lost.

A major purpose of my writing is to reconnect readers with landscapes, to move them to remember how it feels to be outside: wind in our hair, the smell of salt in the air. Through writing, it’s my job to take readers into the natural world through the medium of story. Perhaps people might visit those places and enjoy them. Then we might care just enough to save them.

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Karen Viggers is the award-winning internationally best-selling author of three novels: The Stranding, The Lightkeeper’s Wife and The Grass Castle. Her work has been translated into several languages, and has been particularly successful in France, with sales exceeding 500,000. In 2016, The Lightkeeper’s Wife/La Memoire des embruns was awarded the Les Petitis Mots des Libraires literary prize for a discovery novel, and was short-listed for the Livre de poche Reader’s Choice award. Karen writes contemporary fiction set in Australian landscapes, exploring connection with the bush, grief and loss, death, family, and friendship.

Her work tackles contentious issues such as dying with dignity, displacement of Indigenous people, whale rescue, kangaroo culling, clear-felling of forests, and scientific research on animals. Karen is a wildlife veterinarian, who has worked and travelled in many remote parts of Australia. Her fourth novel, The World Beneath the Trees, will be published in early 2019 by Allen&Unwin in Australia and Les Escales in France.

About The Grass Castle 

Secrets in the mountains. Two women ensnared by the past. A story of friendship, high country history and kangaroos.

Eighty-six year old Daphne and university student Abby meet by chance on land which used to belong to Daphne’s family. Now it’s part of a National Park grazed by mobs of kangaroos instead of cattle. Both women are lonely and lost. Daphne has never come to terms with being forced from her country, and Abby is still living with the memory of a traumatic childhood. Through their love of the mountains they find a connection, and they help each other in unexpected ways. But Daphne’s health is ailing, and Abby is struggling to commit to love, and there’s a proposal to cull the kangaroos. Both women must confront long-buried family secrets before they discover that perhaps friendship can deliver a new beginning.

Set in Miles Franklin’s Brindabella mountains, also the home of Gwen Meredith’s Blue Hills, The Grass Castle is a heartfelt, moving novel of friendship, loss and recovery, connection to the land and the Indigenous past.  By the bestselling author of The Lightkeeper’s Wife.

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing