words byYolande Szery
You know the old lines: life is a rollercoaster, life is a ride, life is
a winding road. How tired those phrases are, until you meet
somebody whose life truly has twisted and turned, looped,
peaked and troughed in the way of the rollercoaster.
Mecki Kracke, the potter from Herberton via Germany, has
lived a life of colour, joy, love, craft, challenge and change.
Her life really has been a ride.
She was the first-born of five on a small family farm in
northern Germany. She emancipated herself from the toil
and drudgery of farm life and began to live independently
from the age of 15.
As a young woman, with friends from Sydney, she made
her first pilgrimage Down Under in ’82 and returned shortly
afterwards. Here she met her first husband, who was an
adventurous type. He wanted to do a long-distance cycling
pilgrimage and, with much convincing, took Mecki on a bike
ride from Brisbane to Cairns, and then to the Tablelands.
The couple settled in Herberton but split soon after, leaving
Mecki with the debris of a breakup and the responsibility of
mothering two young boys. But, in her true style, this was
merely a hiccup on the way to what has become a fulfilling
creative life.
“Herberton had neither childcare, nor work, and I didn’t have
family, nobody. I had to go on the single parent pension but
I knew I needed a job I could do from home or I would have
to go back to Germany. If life is already really, really bad I
thought well in that case you’ve got to do something which
is what you want to do,” she says.
Since then, her craft has seen her run a home-based studio
and shop, sell at markets and teach pottery at schools west
from the Tablelands. In fact, teaching has given her some of
the greatest joys in her life.
“My joy really comes when I saw the last lot of the children’s
pottery with this local glaze. I have been teaching for 31 years
now. I think it’s fortunate that I have all these skills that I can
go out all these places and kids can learn skills to do things
they can do all their lives.”
14 What’s On & Where To Go August 2019
Mecki is now one of the most skilled women potters in
Australia, in terms of the technical ability she has with
composition, firing and kiln production. It’s tempting to think
that pottery is the thread that has run through her life with
serendipitous timing, but it’s actually tin that has woven
through her story the most.
These days, Mecki glazes her work with a tin-oxide glaze
made from local, Herberton components and it’s through
Herberton’s richness of tin supply that she met her husband,
Rod. Already well established in Herberton, Mecki met Rod
after he moved to the area while working as a geologist. As
Mecki says, “it’s all about the tin!”
Together, the pair have raised five sons (Mecki’s two from
her previous marriage, and Rod’s three from his former
marriage). Added to their brood of sons is a growing bundle
of grandchildren, the sixth of whom was born just three
days before Mecki was interviewed for this article. As she
spoke, she was readying herself for a three-month holiday in
Germany to be with the newest arrival, born in Berlin.
Despite the satisfaction pottery brings Mecki, appealing
to the academic, practical and creative aspects of her
intelligence, it is family that gives her life its colour, joy and
love. It’s the first special cuddles of a newly-born addition to
the clan that are most magical for this creative powerhouse,
and it’s these cuddles that she is most looking forward to in
the immediate future.
Beyond that? Mecki is enjoying the fact that, though she is
nearly 64 – an age when many women unfortunately begin
to fade from demand – she is just hitting her strides.
From her humble beginnings on a small farm in Germany, to
the trials and triumphs of adulthood; the joy of parenthood,
the sorrow of divorce and the renewed happiness of a new
family and a flourishing career, Mecki Kracke’s has been a
rollercoaster of a life but one that continues upwards.
Yolande Szery is a writer, marriage celebrant and
an admirer of strong, determined women.