Category: Australia

An autobiographical essay entitled “The Retired Hermit” in the Australian web site New Age. The byline is: “Peter Davis chose the life of a solitary in the high country for two years where he found the space to care for himself.” The first paragraph gives a sense of the quiet mission he set about pursuing for those two years. “I became a hermit gradually. It started in 1987 on a mountain near the small town of Harrietville in north-eastern Victoria. This was soon after my HIV diagnosis, when I was 19.”

Perhaps Peter Davis is better know in Australia; there is no further elaboration on this page, which is part of the book review section of New Age, for non-Australian readers.

URL:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/the-retired-hermit/
2006/08/10/1154803029570.html.
Note: URL of complete version submitted by a friend of Hermitary:
http://www.thylazine.org/thyla11/thyla11i.html.

A brief newspaper item in Sydney, Australia, indicates that a grant from a national historical commission will be used to preserve and restore a famous hermit’s house. Part of the item says:

One of few known hermit dwellings in NSW, the historic cave, near Griffith, was home to Valerio Ricetti, who arrived in Australia from Italy in 1914, aged 16, and moved to Griffith in 1929.

The cave includes rock shelters, stone structures, gardens, a water well, stairs, kitchen, chapel, gardens, lookout and inscriptions.

URL: http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,19151934-5001028,00.html.

From Radio Nederlands, an intriguing half-hour audio program by Australian producers and writers Stewart Nestel and Peter Davis, who “went in search of people who have chosen to become hermits, and of people who encountered them.” Essentially on wilderness hermits, but interesting reflections on the psychological and spiritual realizations discovered by those who live in the “bush.” Narrative inserts of hermit poems, too.

Here is the website’s description of the program:

The Australian bush can be brutally harsh and unforgiving as well as hauntingly beautiful. It is also an ideal place to seek a solitary life. Being so totally alone in nature can be a unique experience. It can unlock all sorts of secrets of one’s true self. It can teach a person to stop time. It can be a place of escape, and of discovery. “In Search of the Hermit Within” is a story about people in search of something that only solitude could provide.

URL: http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/radioprogrammes/voxhumana/050715vh?view=Standard.
Or access the audio directly:
Windows Media Player (http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/rnw/smac/2004/in_search_of_the_hermit_within_050715vh.wma)
Real Player: http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/rnw/smac/2004/in_search_of_the_hermit_within_050715vh_
low.rm.

Originally broadcast by Australian Broadcasting Corporation in February 2005 but audio not available on their web site: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/radioeye/stories/s1285016.htm.

Brief news article about a Solomon Islands man who lived as a hermit for forty years in a mountain jungle cave. He returned to his native village because his fire had gone out. The villagers urged him to remain with them, and he decided to do so. The man is about eighty years old. URL: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15486825%255E1702,00.html.