Mike Ranger — A Time of Memories

My task was to write about finding the Mermaids that Australian author Charmian Clift wrote about in her book Mermaid Singing during her time on the small Greek island of Kalymnos, where she lived in the mid 1950s with her husband and two young children and wrote about her observations of Greek village life in a small community. 

 In April 2025 an eight day workshop was organised for a small number of dedicated ‘Clifties’ from Australia.

 This was also a time for me to re-visit the island I had first visited in the early 1970s. Much has changed but my fond memories are still with me

 Over eight days the workshop was led by Nadia Wheatley who wrote the wonderful biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. We all talked and walked and toured the island and ate in tavernas and drank retsina and ouzo and discussed events from the past and from Clift's books.

 My own personal journey to find the Mermaids was based on Clift’s observation that it was the Greek women who were strong, independent, and the mainstay of the village community when the village men were away for six or seven months of every year, diving off the north coast of Africa, collecting sponges for a meagre living.

These strong women were the back-bone of island life and this is what Clift wrote about.  I wanted to find images of these women from the past who still existed in photographs on Kalymnos.

 So, in my travels with my colleagues, I found images of these island women who personified these strong and impressive women we had read about and discussed in our workshops

 My photographs of these women and my thoughts are now part of my own ‘Time of Memories’ from Kalymnos.