Two weeks ago, I was in Sydney visiting an old friend. We went to Coasters Retreat and drank champagne, ate a ridiculous amount of delicious food, swam in the ocean, basked in the sun, and generally made the most of every moment. It had been a long time since I’d felt so present in the ‘now’ that I didn’t start my five-and-a-half-hour journey home until 6pm on the Sunday night.
I took a risk, a leap, a jump off the cliff of safety. 2020 was going to be my year, as though asserting ownership and dominance assured me control over the next 365 days. I’ve been utterly lost, right at home. Blind-sighted and grieving. Once restless and anxious, now languid and idle. In a year where I had all the time in the world, the world felt awfully small, and
I come from a long line of farming families, on both sides. I grew up on a farm in rural NSW and had one of the best childhoods a kid could have. We’d spend hours climbing and gorging on mulberries from the tree out the back of the Colwell’s. Mum would make the most impressively decorated birthday cakes that we’d share with our family friends down at the riverbank. We’d
A few weeks ago marked the first anniversary of my grandma’s passing. Though it was October, Melbourne provided plenty of cooler days, so I wore a few of her jumpers and coats that I had opted to take when all of her things were divvied up among the family (the woman had amazing style!) as a way of feeling her presence during those weeks. I was sad because I obviously
They say history is written by the victors, which is true in warfare, but when it comes to family history, it’s written by the living. The living who are separated from history by a good many years. Twenty years ago, my grandpa wrote down his ancestor’s history of arriving in Australia. I’ve just finished rewriting, editing and laying it out in a book as a keepsake for my family. I’m