Meanwhile in Mount Merry-Glen: Episode One

A serialised small-town romance novel.

G’day book besties and welcome to Mount Merry-Glen!

I’m so glad you’re joining me in this small-town story! Every week, I’ll give PAID SUBSCRIBERS a brand-new chapter filled with twists, romance, and good old-fashioned small-town drama. But here’s the exciting part: you get to help decide what happens next! Got a quirky idea, romance or a mystery you want me to explore? Jump into the comments, vote in the polls, and let’s shape this story together.

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Episode One

Welcome to Mount Merry-Glen – Population: 2,358 + 1 Seagull

Mount Merry-Glen is like every small Aussie town you’ve ever known – tight-knit, gossipy, and with a precarious balance of charm and chaos – yet somehow, also, entirely unique. The nearest beach is three hours away and there are no actual mountains, unless you count the dirt mound at the BMX bike track. Like most things around here, it doesn’t make any sense, but no one’s ever bothered to question or change it.

The main street boasts an IGA and a Foodworks and you’re either Team IGA or Team Foodworks. People have ended friendships and threatened to change hairdressers – even though there’s only one – over less. We’ve got a post office that also sells town souvenirs, like tea towels, t-shirts, and postcards that are older than most of the graves in the cemetery. There’s a bakery with a cult following for its vanilla slice (people drive hours for it) and a café that’s changed name and owners seven times in ten years but still can’t make a decent flat white. The fancy dress shop (yes, you read that right), almost as big as both supermarkets put together, is stocked with everything from cowboy hats and wizard capes to 1920s flapper dresses and wigs in every colour you can imagine. Around here there’s always a reason to dress up, whether it’s Book Week at school, a fundraiser at the bowling club or just a Tuesday night at the pub.

Just down the road, the town hall stands majestic with red brick walls that glow warmly in the summer sun and a bell tower that once kept time for the whole town. These days it only chimes on special occasions – its old mechanism too fragile for everyday use. Besides, since the invention of the iPhone, the town clock is about as necessary as a wristwatch. It’s the tallest building in Mount Merry-Glen, which isn’t much of an accolade when most places are single-story, but it’s solid brick facade and white steps gives it an air of grandeur. And, like a no-nonsense old farmer’s wife who’s weathered drought, flood, fire and a scandal or three, she’s witnessed a lot in her 120 years – from wartime fundraisers, bush dances, lamington drives and the theatrical society’s annual pantomime.

Some say the old hall is haunted and to be truly respected in Mount Merry-Glen, you must spend the night of your eighteenth birthday alone there with the ghost, a coming-of-age tradition that goes back generations, though no one can quite pin-point when it exactly begun. And who exactly the ghost is?

Well, that’s a mystery for another day – the truth is, your guess is as good as mine.

Mount Merry-Glen is the kind of place where the unusual is usual. You might spot a bloke driving around with his sheep riding shotgun, decked out in a top hat and bowtie from the fancy dress shop. Norm, the town’s pet seagull, struts around like he owns the place, more of a local legend than the footy team. Rumour is there’s a swinger’s club – discreetly meeting at different farms around town – though nobody has ever admitted to being part of it. Meanwhile, romances and marital affairs keep the local gang of grannies gossiping as they knit and solve the problems of the town (and the world) over cups of Earl Grey tea.

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to stay that the locals here have always been a touch eccentric, but to be truly considered one of them, you’ll need to have called Mount Merry-Glen home for at least thirty-seven years.

Even better if you were born in the old hospital before it gave up delivering babies in 1983 and embraced its nursing home persona, complete with questionable meatloaf and delicious scones. Bonus points if your dad played footy with someone’s uncle who once dated the shire president, and your cousin still edits the local newspaper. Between you and me, ‘newspaper’ is a generous term for a photocopied newsletter that only comes out when the printer at the local Community Resource Centre works. But don’t tell Sandra I said that! If your surname is Pashley, Davidson or Peacock, you’re practically royalty and your family’s’ probably got a street named after them, not to mention a plaque (or statue) at the RSL Memorial Park.

Everyone else? You’re a outsider newcomer. Even if you’ve been here twenty years, volunteered on three committees and are raising your kids here.

You’re not a local.

Not yet.

Don’t take it personally. It’s not that Merry-Glenners are an unfriendly bunch, it’s just the way it is. Always has been. Likely always will be. Everyone knows everyone else, and if your surname doesn’t ring a bell, you might as well be from Mars. The locals would hate to be called snobby…it’s not about shutting people out. It’s just that to them you’re like a character who appeared in the plot halfway through the novel and they still haven’t quite worked out where you fit.

Although did you hear what happened when that newcomer won first prize in the Sponge Cake section of the show last year? True or not, word got around pretty fast that her ‘secret ingredient’ was actually store-bought jam. Yikes!

But where were we?

That’s right…

The class system here gives Victorian England a run for its money. Forget the newcomers, the drifters and those that are ‘just passing through’ but somehow end up on the committee for the Ag Show, the Progress Association or the Historical Society. What really matters is if you’re a farmer or a townie. The farmers drive around in expensive four-wheel drives or dusty Utes and play polocrosse, and the townies can usually be found at the pub playing pool.

Except during footy season, the two camps rarely meet.

Everyone plays footy though, and that’s the only time the locals and newcomers – townies or farmers – really come together. Not out of love, but out of necessity. Because there’s nothing like bonding over a mutual love of muddy boots, meat pies and the righteous thrill of beating nearby town Jollyup on their own turf. Every weekend during winter, the farmers swap their Akubras and Blundstones for red-and-pink beanies and footy boots, the townies put down their schooners and pool cues, and the Gang of Grannies swap their knitting needles for sparkly pom-poms that bounce with every cheer.

Yes, Mount Merry-Glen might be small, but it’s never been boring, and you’ll never guess what’s just been posted on the local community Facebook page…

Thanks for reading… in the comments, let me know what you think might be on the Facebook page or what you hope is!