The festival is being held in August to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the poetry awards for schools, with a literary lunch.

The poetry festival will include the presentation ceremony for students on Friday, August 29.

Susan Duncan had a successful journalistic career spanning 25 years,  including editing two of Australia’s top selling women’s magazines – The Australian Women’s Weekly and New Idea. 

She threw in her job after a series of personal crises – including the death of her husband and her brother from cancer – and moved to Scotland Island on Sydney’s Pittwater.

Life dealt Susan another cruel blow  when she was also diagnosed with cancer, which she fought with tenacity.

 Today Susan lives with her second husband Bob at Tarrangaua, the beautiful home on the island’s Lovett Bay built for poet Dorothea Mackellar in 1925. 

The Mackellar family already had a main residence in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and landholdings at Kurrumbede, Gunnedah.

The poet, who never married, intended the house to be a summer retreat away from the steamy heat of Sydney where she could indulge her passion for swimming, reading and the bush.

Susan Duncan wrote in her beautifully illustrated book A Life on Pittwater (2009): “She was rich, reclusive and would probably have been forgotten but for a single poem that fired the imagination of a brave new world.”

The house and its surrounds feature in her best selling books Salvation Creek (2006) and The House at Salvation Creek(2008).

Susan and her husband regard themselves as custodians of the house as well as a few of the poet’s possessions – Dorothea’s personal letter seal, a few books, a shawl, a cigarette case and lighter, an old cane suitcase belonging to Kurrumbede’s Malcolm Mackellar and a hand-typed calendar that Dorothea made for a local doctor – are among their memorabilia.

The original keys have been passed through the three owners of Tarrangaua.

The home has a long, columned verandah with views through the trees to the bay below. 

It’s handsome proportions belie a foregone era – 60,000 bricks, terracotta roof tiles, tons of tallow wood and Queensland maple, which all had to be transported on a barge at high tide before being carted uphill during construction.

Susan Duncan has since turned her hand to fiction centred around her beloved Pittwater – The Briny Cafe and Gone Fishing are two recent titles.

The literary lunch will be held at Wild Orchards Restaurant, at noon, on Saturday, August 16. 

The cost of $45 per person will incude a two-course lunch and a drink on arrival.

• To book visit www.trybooking.com/88309. For inquiries phone 6742 1200.