By Sarah Halfpenny Photos Yanni
When bestselling Australian author Kylie Ladd needed a fictional house with six bedrooms for her latest novel, The Mix-Up, the answer came naturally. “Where else in Victoria are you going to find a spare house with six bedrooms? Portsea was the obvious answer,” she laughs. We’re sitting in her family’s Sorrento holiday house, where the Mornington Peninsula has been both muse and sanctuary for Kylie for decades.
The Mix-Up, brings readers into the heart of Portsea for some pivotal scenes, and it’s this intimate knowledge of the peninsula that makes her writing authentic. “Because I have connections to the area, I really enjoyed writing the sections set in Portsea,” she explains. She named the fictional house Tideways, after the beach in Sorrento where she spent summers with her young children, and which also featured in her 2014 novel Last Summer.
At the Sorrento Writers Festival this year, a local approached her with a photo. “She said, ‘Is this the house?’ And she showed me a very Portsea-looking front gate; it was big and white, with a big hedge fence. I didn’t know it existed,” Kylie marvels. “So, there is a Tideways house in Portsea. Somebody might even read this and say, ‘That’s our house!'”
The peninsula also serves as a creative retreat. “I don’t do my main writing here, but I’ve come down when I have to do edits and need to really concentrate,” she says. Her writers’ group has visited several times for writing weekends, and she admits, “Every time I’m here, I think, ‘Why don’t I come more often?'”
For Kylie, the peninsula connection runs much deeper than simply being the perfect literary backdrop; it’s woven into the very fabric of her family’s story, spanning generations and marking some of life’s most precious moments.
It began when Kylie was just six years old. Her parents, not content with the weatherboard house they’d bought in Beaumaris, put it on a truck and transported it to a block of land on Dundas Street in Rye. “I went to Rye Primary School for a year. I was in Grade One,” she recalls.
That original Rye house – “really like a shack; a classic weatherboard beach shack” – even served as a special destination for Kylie in 1995. “My husband and I actually had our honeymoon at the Rye house, because we had no money for anything else,” she laughs.
It was during that same year that her parents built their current Sorrento home, inspired by a guest house in Rye called Hilltonia Homestead. The location couldn’t be more tranquil. “There’s only the house next door and then it’s National Park and the back beach,” she says.
The peninsula also holds deep emotional significance for Kylie’s family. Her brother Piers and mother Sue have a memorial bench at Jubilee Point, just a 10-minute walk from the house. “That’s where their ashes were scattered, so we come and visit them. There are a lot of great family memories, but also a lot of emotional ties to the area as well.”
These days, the house – complete with an official looking plaque announcing its name as Rento, a nod to the way Kylie’s son pronounced Sorrento when he was young – continues to be the backdrop for family celebrations. “We had Christmas here again last year, we’ve always had it catered, because we’re pathetic, and my sister and I don’t want to do the work, and neither did mum,” Kylie admits with characteristic humour and honesty. “So we started getting it catered by Stringers, which is the lovely providore at Sorrento, or we go to a winery for lunch.”
In addition to writing, the peninsula has shaped Kylie’s recreational life. She’s a keen swimmer who has tackled the Portsea Classic multiple times and completed the challenging Pier to Perignon twice – a 4km swim from Sorrento pier to Portsea pier. “It’s a beautiful swim,” she says of the popular February event.
The Red Hill area holds special memories too. “I used to ride horses there. I got into horses down on the peninsula when I was younger, which led me to send my daughter to a horse-riding camp… and now we bloody own a horse! So that actually stemmed from down here as well.”
For someone who balances two demanding careers – she holds a PhD in neuropsychology – Kylie sees connections between her professions. As a neuropsychologist, she specialises in diagnosing brain damage, working with people “who’ve had strokes or head injuries or too much alcohol or who have dementia.
Basically, I think all novelists are psychologists
Her approach to both vocations reveals her storytelling instincts: “When I sit down to write the report I think it has to be a story. Obviously, it’s a diagnostic medical report, but it’s really important to me to get in all the facets of a person’s life and why you’ve made the call that you have.” “Both jobs are about stories. They’re about narrative,” she explains. “Basically, I think all novelists are psychologists.”
This unique dual perspective enriches her fiction, with psychological themes woven throughout her work – from exploring organ donation and post-traumatic stress disorder in previous novels, to the nature versus nurture debate in her seventh published novel, The Mix-Up. The story centres on two Melbourne families whose lives collide when a DNA test reveals an earth-shattering truth: 14 years ago, their embryos were mixed up at an IVF clinic, forcing both families to navigate the devastating emotional repercussions of this life-changing mistake. While fictional, the scenario reflects a troubling reality, with several devastating embryo mix-up cases reported in the media this year already.
With her distinctive blend of psychological insight, realistic settings, and timely themes, it’s clear why Kylie’s work resonates so strongly with readers – and why the peninsula will always be home to both her heart and her stories.
Find out more about Kylie at her website.
kylieladd.com.au