Recent Visit to My Cora Villa
After nearly twenty years we have returned to another season living in Victoria. Last time we were stationed in Geelong and this beautiful house was the inspiration behind the story ‘Cora Villa’. Just after Christmas our long time friends from Geelong invited us down from Melbourne for the day. We took a walk along the foreshore – the setting for ‘Cora Villa’ and we made a special stop in front of the house. The following piece is found at the front of the novel, and gives you some insight into how the story came into being:
Author, Meredith Resce, standing in front of Corio Villa Geelong, the home that inspired the novel ‘Cora Villa’. 2014
From 1989 to 1994 my family and I lived in the Victorian city of Geelong. This was my first real excursion outside of my own state, and I very much enjoyed the culture of this compact little city.
We were working with a church near the waterfront on Corio Bay, and each day we used a route that went right along the bay front. Every time I drove by this magnificent white house, set in picturesque gardens, I would admire it. Old houses and other buildings were often the source of my inspiration for a story, in fact, I had begun to write about a little church out in the countryside, not too far from Geelong, and it became the central focus of my ‘Heart of Green Valley’ series.
But this white house on the bay front fascinated me. I began to say to my children, and our boarder, I’m going to write a novel about that house. I must have said it so often that one day my boarder said to me: ‘OK, so what’s the novel going to be about?’
Right there in the car, she and I began to discuss the mystery that has since turned into this novel.
One particular day as I was driving down the other side of the house, I saw a plaque on the gate, ‘Cora Villa’. That was the moment I decided to call my main character ‘Cora’. It wasn’t until sometime later I discovered my eyesight had let me down, and the plaque actually said ‘Corio Villa’. Too late! Cora Stewart was well and truly fixed in my imagination.
I hope you enjoy this story, but I must make clear that though it is inspired by a real house, there is nothing in the story that is anything other than fiction. ‘Cora Villa’ does not represent the history of ‘Corio Villa’ in any way shape or form. It is merely a drama romance novel that developed in my imagination as I pondered all the secrets a house like that might hold.
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