Paradise Is A Place Gillian Mears

Paradise is a Place is an essay in images and words, offering a glimpse into the pleasures of being a child. Sandy Edwards' evocative photographs, taken over eight summers in the mythic landscape of the far south coast of New South Wales - amid spotted gum forests edged by sea - chronicle a young girl's passage from childhood to adolescence. Her luminous and moody portraits emphasise the vulnerability and freedom of childhood.

Novelist Gillian Mears' childhood was characterised by idyllic camps with a Field Naturalists Club on beach and mountain. Here she writes of those years with a camera's eye for detail and nuance, with the honesty and insight that mark all her work. Her essay is a meditation on innocence, memory, the act of seeing, and the particular poignancy of auntly love.