In appearance, the town today must be almost exactly what it was in the days of the merchant princes, for practically no houses have been built in the past 120 years. It rises in tiers around a small, brilliant, horseshoe-shaped harbour - old stone mansions harmoniously apricot-coloured against the gold and bronze cliffs, or washed pure white and shuttered in palest grey: houses austere but exquisitely proportioned, whose great walls and heavy arched doors enclose tiled courtyards and terraced gardens. The irregular tiers are broken everywhere by steep, crooked flights of stone steps, and above the tied roof-tops of uniform red tiles rise the octagonal domes of the churches...Above the town the mountains shoot up sheer, their gaunt surfaces unbroken except for an odd white mill or two...and three monasteries, the highest of them so close to heaven that at night its lights are looped among the stars (Clift 1959:25-26).

Johnston/Clift books - written whilst in Greece

GJ = George Johnston;  CC = Charmian Clift;  GJCC = collaboration;
SM = Shane Martin (GJ's 'pulp-fiction pot-boiler' pseudonym)
* a 'serious' work

Kalymnos, Greece: Dec 1954 - August 1955:
 

GJCC	The Sponge Divers	*	1956 Collins, London
CC	Mermaid Singing	*	1956 Bobbs-Merrill, USA; Michael Joseph, London, 1958

Hydra, Greece:  August 1955 - Oct 1960; (London - 6 months);
April 1961 - GJ Feb 1964, CC & Family July/August 1964:
(Nb. The Johnston/Clift family would spend a total of 8 years and 5 months living on Hydra).
 

SM	Twelve Girls in the Garden		1957 Collins, London
SM	The Saracen Shadow		1957 Collins, London
SM	The Man Made of Tin		1958 Collins, London
GJ	The Darkness Outside	*	1959 Collins, London
SM	The Myth is Murder		1959 Collins, London
CC	Peel Me A Lotus	*	1959 Hutchinson, London
GJ	Closer to the Sun	*	1960 Collins, London
CC	Walk to the Paradise Gardens	*	1960 Hutchinson, London; Harper, New York
GJCC	The Serpent in the Rock		(1962, unpublished)
CC	The End of the Morning		(1962; 1968, unpublished)
SM	A Wake for Mourning		1962 Collins, London
GJ	The Far Road	*	1962 Collins, London
GJ	My Brother Jack	*	1964 Collins, London
CC	Honour's Mimic	*	1964 Hutchinson, London
GJ	The Far Face of the Moon		1965 Collins, London

N.B. "Peel Me a Lotus" is the travel book of Clifts' specifically about life on Hydra.
N.B. These titles are not the whole literary output of Johnston or Clift. They wrote many more items whilst in Australia and London, before and after their time in Greece.

• Garry Kinnane, George Johnston - A Biography, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1986.

• Nadia Wheatley, The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, Flamingo/HarperCollins, Sydney, 2001.

Another book has been written by Charmian's first-born and adopted daughter, named by Clift as Jennifer, about the search for her mother -
• Suzanne Chick, Searching For Charmian: the daughter Charmian Clift gave away discovers the mother she never knew, Macmillan, Sydney, 1994.

At Hydra, the small semicircular port is flanked by white houses rising steeply in an orderly manner, like the seats of an amphitheater. A cobble esplanade runs along the waterfront, harmonizing the cluster of homes that surround it and reach up the hillside. Only the bell tower of the cathedral attached to the Monastery of the Virgin’s Assumption disrupts the horizontal tableau. The structure of the town emulates the classical theater of Epitaurus, with the port the equivalent of the orchestra. Access to and from the port follows the theatrical frame of the parodos (side entrances and exits) with the houses mimicking the stepped seats of the theatron. Towering above the port is the two-thousand-food Mount Ere, and on a high hill just below it, the Monastery of Profitis Elias (the Prophet Elijah).

In the morning the port is the commercial center where boats are unloaded, where fish and vegetables are sold, and donkeys are hired. At midday and into the evening it becomes the social center, the focus turned toward the restaurants and cafes. During religious or public holidays, it is the site of celebration. When Cohen arrived in 1960, only four coffeehouses and one bar ringed the waterfront.
 

Tradition, rather than a master plan or building code, determined the urban layout and architecture of Hydra. When a child married, a new house was built within the uncovered space of the family lot, treated as a separate unit, and given entry from the public street. The result was odd lot shapes and dead ends (most houses are rectangular or “L” shaped and composed of stone walls, timber or tile roofs, and tile floors.) The doorways are unique in that they face downwards to the port, rather than horizontally to the street. Offsetting the whitewashed walls of the homes are the orange tile roofs and weathered cobblestone steps. It was the anarchy of the homes that prompted Henry Miller to remark on the “wild and naked perfection of Hydra.”

The narrow island was named for water though it actually has little. Rain is rare, the average yearly precipitation being only an inch and a half. When the first home with a swimming pool was built by a Greek American in the late sixties, the owner had to pay for barges of fresh water to be brought in and pumped up the hilly streets. It is little more than a barren rock, four miles wide and nearly eleven miles long, about four miles off the southeast coast of Argolis.
 

There are no cars or trucks on Hydra, since the land is too steep and the streets too narrow to permit them. Donkeys, which bray in an agonizing manner throughout the night, and occasionally horses, are the only transportation on the steps and ramps. The widest streets were originally designed so that two basket-carrying donkeys could pass each other; secondary street provide passage for only one. An important site is Kala Pigadia, the Good Wells or Twin Wells. Situated above the port, this is where water was drawn and people gathered to trade news and stories; the two small wells are shaded by several large trees.

When Cohen first arrived on Hydra (1960) there was limited electricity, few telephones, and virtually no plumbing. Kerosene or oil lamps lit the homes; cisterns were used to collect water, and no wires obstructed the views. One of the views disco used a battery-operated record player, since the small electrical plant generated power only from sundown to midnight. Except for the kitchen, which was heated by the stove or Turkish copper braziers, rooms were heated with a three-legged tin filled with charcoal embers. Many of the homes were run-down and in desperate need of repair. In 1960, half of the homes were uninhabited, and virtually no new homes had been built for nearly a century.
 

Cohen first met George and Charmian at Katsikas’ Bar, which consisted of “six deal tables at the back of Antony and Nick Katsikas’ grocery store at the end of the cobblestoned waterfront by the Poseidon Hotel.” Amid flour sacks, olive jars, and strings of onions, an artist’s club of sorts flourished. Evenings were spent arguing, drinking, and entertaining one another. George, the writer-in-residence, held court, often speaking “in a wild spate of words, punctuated with great shouts of laughter and explosion of obscenity.” Members of the foreign community appeared, withdrew, and reappeared. The port became a “horseshoe-shaped stage” and the Johnston’s circle “the actors of some unbelievable play the intriguing plot of which unrolled in front of the eyes of a totally flabbergasted audience---the locals, who watching it all commented on the side like the chorus of an ancient Greek tragedy.”

Cohen soon joined in, absorbed by the discussions, social relations, and sexual maneuvering of his new crowd. He gave his first formal concert at Katsikas’ grocery and formed an important and lasting friendship with the Johnstons. They gave him a big work table that he used for writing and eating, as well as a bed and pots and pans for his new house.
 

NB. Text: Nadel, Ira B., Various Positions; taken from the website "HOW LEONARD COHEN FOUND HYDRA" - http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/hydraB1.html

The family originally lived on the Greek island of Kalymnos for approximately six months (Clift's book "Mermaid Singing" describes this time in delightfully personal detail), then they moved to Hydra in late August 1955, originally renting a house close to the waterfront. Clift's book "Peel Me a Lotus" (published in 1959) paints a vividly personal and detailed picture of daily life upon Hydra's rapidly changing island community during their initial 18 months - their first living as house owners on the island. At first, the island was relatively unknown to foreigners and tourists, although this was already beginning to change even by the time the Johnstons arrived.

The local Greeks were astonished to see a foreign family, complete with children, suitcases and domestic odds and ends. Usually foreigners were either tourists passing quickly through, or else strange artistic types, with whom the islanders could not relate to. People with children were more accessible to, and are more respected by, Greeks in small towns and villages, so the Johnstons were soon treated as familiars, which made their settling-in period easier (Kinnane 1986:150-151).
 

The "xeni" or the resident foreign community (as differentiated from the Greek locals) living on Hydra at first numbered just four, including the Johnstons. They would meet at the Nick and Toni Katsikas brothers' waterfront store as they waited for the steamer to arrive with the mail, and stay to talk and drink from midday afterwards. They would turn this place into their own little 'clubhouse', and was the focal point of much of the social activities of the increasing 'xeni' for the majority of their time on the island (Wheatley 2001:324; Kinnane 1986:151-152).
 

The Johnstons, in their first year on Hydra, attempted to get on with the business of living as a family and adapting to the local community. Martin and Shane attended the "Down" Primary School (distinguished from the "Up" school higher up the eastern-hill), being immersed in Greek culture, yet coming home at lunchtimes to an English-speaking environment. In 'Peel Me a Lotus', Clift observes their school juts out over a cliff overlooking their house, and is so close the children are encouraged to call out to their parents, working on the terraced roof together below (p.80). The children later observed their bi-cultural experience as a positive situation. Their friendships with the local 'paithia' (children) were important to them all, not least because it smoothed relations between the adults. The familys' Hydriot neighbours proved to be extremely kind and helpful, whilst the Katsikas brothers would credit the familys' bills until money from published writing was available. (Kinnane 1986:161).

The 'house by the well' (or 'The Australian House' as it also came to be known) that the Johnston's brought was set in the neighbourhood behind the waterfront, which looked onto a small cobblestoned square at the centre of which was a brackish well where the local women and children would gather to collect water for washing. The house itself was the traditional Greek square white block three-storyed nine-roomed stone house, with blue shuttered windows at ground and first floor level. The second story was invisible from the street, for it was set back behind the wide roof terrace. It was built in 1788, a date Johnston would see as a fateful coincidence with the first settlement of Australia, and had been empty for 16 years prior to its purchase. In need of some minor renovation before they could move in, there were no panes of glass in the windows, and the roof leaked. Renovations included painting, interior plumbing and not one but two toilets (due to a language misunderstanding with the Greek workmen and Johnston).  With no running water, it took upto half an hour first thing every morning to pump water into the house from the underground water cistern underneath the house - often an exhausting task.
 

Entering not by the heavy front door but through a door in the side wall, visitors stepped into a small courtyard with grapevines and fruit trees; later Charmian would plant a bougainvillea that splashed scarlet down the outside wall (cf picture below). From the courtyard a door led into the house, and down a couple of steps. Blinking at the sudden change from sunlight, visitors now found themselves in a large, cool cavern, cut right into the island rock. Here, divided into three sections by archways, were the kitchen and living area, each section up or down a couple of steps from its neighbour...Moving on upstairs, on the first floor were the bedrooms. And then above that, the whole of the second storey was the sunny studio, leading out to the terrace where the spectacular view stretched across the gulf to the mountains of the Peloponnese. It was the first piece of property either of them had owned in their lives. (Clift 1959:27-33, 47-49; Wheatley 2001:329-330; Kinnane 1986:154).

Yet Clift's domestic life was fairly typical, regardless where they lived, let alone on an isolated Greek island. "Even to keep a semblance of order in such a big house is an all-day job. Upstairs and downstairs, to sweep, to pick up children's litter, to tidy, to ferret out dust...marketing, making meals, cleaning up after them...the baby needs attention, the pot is boiling over, the kerosene stove has blown up in your face again, Shane can't find her clean socks, your hands are covered with charcoal and no water in the tap..." (Clift 1959:110). Clift found the mundanity of chores preventing her from her main passion - writing. Eventually, they traveled to Athens and brought some good furniture, and a new porta-gas stove to replace the old oil-burner that had singed Charmian's eyebrows. She managed to create an austere peasant-like galley-style kitchen atmosphere, years before this would become fashionable. This proved to be the focus of the house, where people would feel comfortable to socialise when they visited or stayed for meals (Kinnane 1986:166).

The daily routine was that after the children had gone off to school, Johnston and Clift would work at their typewriters (sitting opposite one another at a work table, typewriter at each end, passing their writing across to one-another as it progressed) until about midday, when the mail boat came in. Jason would usually be left with the older children during the siesta period, and George and Charmian would head for the port, check the mail, then meet the 'xeni' either inside or outside the Katsikas store, depending on the weather. Here the talk, and the drinking, would begin and last maybe well into the afternoon. Then they would go home to sleep, perhaps do a little more work in the evening, eat and then either have friends around or go out. But the drinking and talking would pick up again and last until late into the night. Regularly they would fall into bed with skinfuls of wine or brandy, regularly they had smoked prodigiously, and regularly they had called on a great deal of nervous energy (Kinnane 1986:173).
 

It was their conversations together that would enflame the creative spark within themselves. They needed part of the socialization around the Katsikas' bar as a form of sounding board for their ideas - grabbing and mentally filing-away phrases, words, expressions, passions. A friend staying with them at the time observed, "They were like a double-act, except that it wasn't an act: they would feed each other lines - Charmian would give George a cue, and he would respond. They would support each other all the time" (Kinnane 1986:146-147).

There seems to be a certain timelessness quality about Hydra..."the white two-storey houses that have a blue haze for that twenty evening minutes, the kites that jerk up into the blue and white sky, the brilliant mainland that you can touch across the satin ribbon blue, or pewter or yes wine red agean, the naked mountains that glow and stand up like cardboard cut out against a primrose cloud..." (Cynthia Nolan 1956, quoted in Kinnane 1986:156). "There is no rush here where no wheel turns and everything moves to the gentler pace of the plodding mule or pattering donkey, where hours rest easy on the couch of peace, and the calendar is a slow ratchet of unfretful customs and sanctified days and innocent festivals (Johnston 1969:172).

During the warm summer months, the family enjoyed swimming from a platform just around from the harbour at Cannon Rocks, where they could play together near a small cave in the rock ledge. They would dive from the rocks, and Clift would ably demonstrate her swimming ability, a result of her childhood living on the beach at North Kiama. Johnston managed to buy a small boat (which promptly sank), yet a second small fishing/sponge boat (a caique), 'Slithey Tove', proved to be a source of fun for sailing and fishing (Kinnane 1986:165-166).

"kefi" is an untranslatable word that describes the spirit/joy/passion the Greek culture upholds (often experienced in their joyous dancing and celebration), which the Johnstons quickly grew to identify with, sensing this was a lacking ingredient in their Australian psyche. Hydra has its seasonal celebrations, religious and cultural, which the family participated in joyfully.  Yet, if the Johnstons ultimately failed to merge fully into the Greek way-of-life, it wasn't the Greeks' fault. They both already had a cultural identity as Australians, in their own and Greeks' eyes, and this could not simply be shed by a change in location. It was some years before George came to see the fundamental difference between being a resident in a country and being part of that country's culture; until he did, he "allowed himself to be caught up in a sometimes absurd self-deception" (Kinnane 1986:161).
 

The children of the island, the 'paithia', of which Martin and Shane were numbered, had the total freedom to play and explore the island (Wheatley 2001:341). Jason remembers by the time he was 3 1/2 (late 1959) that "the island being small and self-enclosed - a safe space - almost my earliest memories are of running around alone, being sure to come back by the time Zoe (the family house-help) was to take me home" (Wheatley 2001:383). Jason only spoke Greek, and found communication with his mother difficult. "The older children also communicated with each other in Greek. This made it very hard for their parents to adjudicate their frequent battles. With Martin turning twelve and Shane aged ten, the two elder siblings had a stormy relationship...this was all part of the complex business of raising a family away from one's homeland and home language" (Wheatley 2001:383). Any arguments between the three children, growing into their teenage years, were verbalised in Greek - which both Johnston and Clift had never mastered any more than just the basic rudiments of the language. "Although the parents would know the gist of what was going on, they would not be able to intervene and adjudicate fairly" (Wheatley 2001:415).

Johnston would write in 1964 that the lifestyle on Hydra was far removed from the social comforts of his homeland, Australia. "One has to rely on one's own resources. No telephones, no TV, no roads going anywhere, no cars, no cinema to speak of, no cabarets. The simple life. It has its pleasures, and it has its problems" (Wheatley 2001:408). A visiting friend wrote of Greek Hydra, "It's the most difficult country and the strangest to adjust to of any I've been in" (Kinnane 1986:155). The familys' continuing financial struggles, and poverty-based lifestyle, took its toll on George's health. In fact, Johnston suffered a bout of pneumonia over Christmas 1956 whilst living through an icy Hydriot winter. Various chronic aliments affected his lungs over the following winters, leaving him with a "frightful cough" (Kinnane 1986:162), greatly exaggerated by his endless heavy smoking and drinking habits. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1959. By 1961 his laboured breathing was much in evidence, and he was having trouble getting up and down the steep lanes and steps of the hilly town (Wheatley 2001:412).

Johnston was continuing to find the stifling summer heat and the annoying visitors to the island irritating. "He broods about them (the heat, foreigners, the island), in the sweaty windblown watches of the night, and threatens to sell the house and go back to London. From being a gregarious, warm-hearted, talkative, generous and romantic fellow he has become suspicious, moody, unfriendly, irritable and despairing, His work, too, is causing him concern. Nothing seems to go right with it, although he works harder than ever, patiently exploring every avenue, every corridor of possibility that might lead to some sort of security..." (Clift 1959:163). Johnston's mood swings, often aggravated by too much drinking, saw him disliking Hydra itself for it's terrible food, claustrophobic atmosphere, and the way in which it was changing. Clift, on the other hand, loved the place (Kinnane 1986:172).
 

Rising tensions and public fighting and sometimes violent brawling between Johnston and Clift became almost legendary upon the island during progressive summer seasons. Clift had some short affairs during her time on Hydra, and Johnston's suspicious jealousy contrasted to Clift's open honesty, combined with their excessive drinking, nearly destroyed their marriage. "After a night of the bitterest conflict they could surprise and exasperate everyone the next day with displays of affection and good-natured loyalty" (Kinnane 1986:174). Despite their ongoing relational struggles together, they could never seriously live without each other.

Despite these energy-draining emotionally-physical events, they doggedly kept up their writing workload as normal. "If there was one quality that distinguished them totally from most of the other foreigners on the island, it was this. Whatever the situation, rain, shine, ill-health, or bad blood between them, they never shirked that morning's slog at the machine...they both realised...that without this the whole point of them being there was gone...the occasional glance into this black pit (of self deception and drunken oblivion) was enough to drive them to the typewriter each morning, regardless of hangovers" (Kinnane 1986:174). Clift asks the question of themselves in 'Peel Me a Lotus': What are they doing it for? (1969:162, 164).

The family made an attempt to move back to London for six months to re-group, during October 1960 until April 1961, the results of which Johnston described as a "ghastly flop" (Kinnane 1986:203). By the summer of 1961, Hydra had certainly changed and become a fashionable place for the rich-and-famous to come, visit and be seen. Tony Perkins sat in the Johnston kitchen that summer, drooled over by Shane and Charmian. Clift was especially pleased about the publicity stirred up by such big names (including Jacqui Kennedy), not only because she wanted to sell her books, but also because she, as well as Johnston too, sometimes indulged in a degree of their own 'celebrity-collecting'. This represented a huge shift of ground from their beginnings on Hydra, when they had wanted a quiet retreat in order to 'write something worth-while'. That ideal was fading almost unnoticed, as they attempted more and more to derive some sort of benefit from the invasion of sophisticated tourists. George still felt, along with some of the other permanents, that the tourists were mostly a nuisance, and if he'd had enough to drink was prone to get into heated arguments with them outside the Katsikas store, only to end up trading insults (Kinnane 1986:206).
 

One failed venture from this period was a Johnston/Clift collaboration writing of a tourist-type book, the unpublished "The Serpent in the Rock", which echoed their confinement within the general deterioration of the social climate in Hydra (Kinnane 1986:211). Johnston agreed with a friend that claustrophobic Hydra was the most destructive place for human relationships they'd ever known. 'There is a legend on Hydra that a huge serpent is said to lurk in the upper rocks...but I know now that the serpent is the foreign community'. He believed that the presence of this 'xeni' community had poisoned his own marriage (Kinnane 1986:188).

During their time on Hydra, the number of international films being shot at this unique location was growing, even if their standards were dropping. "Island of Love" was a lowbrow comedy filmed on Hydra in 1962, released by Warner Bros in 1963. Starring Robert Preston, Tony Randall and Walter Matthau, directed by Morton DaCosta. "A glimpse is sometimes to be had of a stylish woman in a large-brimmed hat, sitting at a harbour cafe. She is Charmian, acting herself...In the...film, Shane and Martin can be seen running down a cobbled lane, followed by Jason and his little friend Ellenitza" (Wheatley 2001:699).

Wheatley sums up the basic points that would be the Johnstons' difficulties they experienced whilst living as a family on Hydra. Of course, it's easier to see this in hindsight, which the Johnstons didn't have when they arrived in 1956. The main issues would be the very "unpredictability" of their futures (Wheatley 2001:372). "We can...see, by the end of this first year on Hydra, all the factors that would eventually lead to the failure of the whole Greece venture: the poverty/tax nexus; isolation from business contacts; the decadence and disruptiveness of the summer tourist season; the claustrophobic clubbishness of the resident foreign colony; the exhaustion caused by dealing with primitive conditions ranging from long-term water shortages to the daily pumping of water; the difficulty of maintaining a family home in a society with different cultural values; George's health problems; George's jealousy; Charmian's frustration at the lack of working time; and the establishment of a lifestyle in which drinking a few glasses of retsina and sitting down talking to friends would be part of the ritual of going shopping or collecting the mail" (Wheatley 2001:344).
 

A young Canadian songwriter and poet, Leonard Cohen, remembers his experience with the Johnstons on Hydra. "They were extremely helpful to all young people coming to the island. Many stopped at their table at Katsikas bar, to drink with them and get advice - on everything from where to buy their kerosene to what chemical to use to stop the toilet smelling. They were the focal point for foreigners on the island. They had a larger-than-life mythical quality. They drank more than other people, they wrote more, they got sick more, they got well more, they cursed more and blessed more, and they helped a great deal more. They were an inspiration. They had guts. They were real, tough, honest. They were the kind of people you meet less and less" (Wheatley 2001:410-411).

By 1962, Johnston was seriously considering his future as a writer living on an Greek island, far away from his native Australia. The many books he had written were not commercial successes, and Clift herself struggled with successful publication of her books. Their very isolation was a large factor in this - they were wholly separate from their buying public and literacy agents. Deep soul searching and inner exploration saw him begin the journey that would produce arguably his finest and most acclaimed novel, "My Brother Jack". Johnston was later to report that he and Clift spent most of seven months talking to each other every day about their specific memories of Australia, as Johnston wrote the book. Clift, who had experienced much frustration at her inability to produce her own books during her time on Hydra, willingly continued as Johnston's sounding board, and put her own writing on hold during this crucial time. This was really make-or-break for the family, struggling to survive.
 

By late 1963, both Johnston and Clift realised that a period of separation was needed for them both. Johnston returned to Australia in February 1964 to promote the hugely-successful launch of "My Brother Jack", yet kept the family informed of developments in the Australia they had not visited and ignored for over 15 years. Clift and the family struggled for five months over whether to stay or follow Johnston home to Australia - they loved their Hydra island home, despite all the painful times they had experienced there together. Yet, finally, Clift made the decision to go back to Johnston, and Australia, and the family arrived via the Greek migrant steamer 'Ellinis' in Sydney on 28 August 1964. Her loyalty to her husband Johnson, and the positive benefits of an Australian education for the children, eventually swayed her. The "House By the Well" would eventually be sold, but the family would never forget their Greek roots.
 

Bibliography

(maljam/mallard, July 2003)

Short Bios on George and Charmian