The first two suburbs in Molonglo Valley were planned, named and gazetted in 2008. They were "Wright" and "Coombs" and were named for poet, environmentalist and Aboriginal land rights advocate Judith Wright and the prominent public servant and economist H. C. Nugget Combs, the first Reserve Bank Govenor. These suburbs are next to each other separated by John Gorton drive.
In 2009, it was revealed that Wright and Coombs had been involved in a 25 year secret love affair. Both Wright and Coombs valued their privacy, neither believed in censorship and agreed that the letters to each other should become available three years after both they and Mary Coombs (Nugget's wife) were dead.
Mutual concern for the common good and for their private obligations ensured that they maintained appearances until the end. It's a stance that, in a culture obsessed with celebrity and self-exposure, can seem heroically quaint. Not once did they attend an official function together as a couple or publicly declare their love. In April 1975, with her sixtieth birthday looming, Wright wrote to Coombs: "Barbara Blackman wants to give me a birthday party and asks who I would want to ask. Well - but perhaps not. Only a couple of weeks, but it's a long time, my love."
Over their 25 years together, they would write thousands of letters to one another, sometimes at a rate of three a week. But the story of the relationship as told through their correspondence is inescapably dominated by Wright's voice, as only a fraction of Coombs's letters remains. And anyone expecting ardent lyricism or sensational revelations will be seriously disappointed: these have little in common with the popular notion of the ‘love letter'. For Wright, a letter was neither a literary form nor a confessional. All her pain and passion went into her verse. A letter was a tool for maintaining friendships, a means of intellectual exchange and a way of making things happen. She wrote, on average, 12 letters a day for much of her life, and her voice in these is very much like her spoken voice: matter-of-fact, practical and wry.
The question though remains: did the public servant who decided that two suburbs, separated by one road should serve to united these two lovers in perpetuity? Was it co-incidence? Or was it perhaps some greater force in the universe that wanted to remind us that some love should be celebrated long after the lovers have passed?
This cache is dedicated to those two lovers.
Please replace the cache exactly as found. The cache is available 24/7, although stealth is advised due to the often busy environment. BYO Pen.