Notes of Substance

Morning walk.  I wake too late to do my nature writing workshop so I decide to get out into nature instead! Head off at about 7 am, sustained on half a cup of hot water with lemon, a banana and a snack KitKat. Make it to the backbeach in time to see the gold coming up from behind the sand dunes, flowering light from the lighthouse. Tiny black and white wren on the rocks, the Plover family just foraging. A heavy gull takes off when I approach. It flies past me, sits and waits, and flies back as it senses I’m no danger. I take photos and slow-mo videos. I can hardly make out the flying birds as they rise into the dark clouds.  I keep stopping to look at things. At one point I lie with my back in the sand on the edge of the dunes. All around the waves continue coming in and the birds call. What would I do without this?  At the lighthouse, Galahs wheel and screech, their pink bellies exposed as they fly above me. A couple fall behind, screeching ‘wait for me, wait for me!’ Further around t

When the branches of Eucalyptus botryoides fall, as they often do, they root again and continue to grow. The tree is its own ecosystem. Currawongs, sleek black birds with their flash of white at the tail, build their nests, made of sticks and lined with soft material, high up in trees like this.  Some months ago, I stood in shock as arborists began to cut this tree on the next block down, over two days of vicious chain-sawing and woodchipping. I filmed the screaming tree, as it shuddered, shook and then gave way, limbs falling with the ‘thunk’ of a human body.  The tree danced a ballet for its dying and the currawongs lost one of their homes. Many love the currawong for its song, a mix of honey, with a note of uplift, a soaring whip almost, mellifluous on the updraft, ringing from up high. It sounds like an entreaty, a lament and an invitation. The onomatopoeic word, currawong , depicts the sound of their call.  Decades ago, for me these birds were synonymous with NSW, and it was a st

It was October 2000, and I was in New York, contemplating working in Manhattan. I was sleeping on a couch bed while attorneys checked out my visa. 'Brian' said I could do website maintenance and client accounts for his Lexington Avenue finance company.  From the Staten Island Ferry, October 2000 I walked the streets, feeding myself on Coke and trips to galleries. In the evenings, we ate late, danced in gymnasiums, did group art projects and drank in bars. Deep Dish Cabaret, punching and drinking. The thing is, I was 35, not 25. I had just lost my job, and in shock, had taken this leap to New York City to recalibrate. Manhattan rents were high, and while the idea of finding an affordable cell-like room in a convent or sharing a floorspace with strangers had some appeal, I had a sense that my life might have already put down roots back home, and that transplanting myself could see me, well, come unstuck.  Back home in Northcote, there were nasturtiums tumbling across the garden b

Inside the pages of the old school atlas, the small boy holds the pencil, angling it as he edges around Australia’s shores. My father’s hand has been here, tracing the coast, the grey lead pencil pushed down hard into the paper. My father’s atlas appeared in the family house pack-up after he died and somehow made it home with me. ‘Could I take it? Just to look at,’ I had asked my mum. I held it tight to get it home. Few of the family records had ever left my parents’ house, and this felt like contraband. Along with the atlas, I took some of dad’s tracing paper; a lined grid book; and a ledger notepad, pages torn out and numbers gone. Things which speak to me of finding a way. For some time I did not dare to open the atlas. His name alone, scrawled across the torn brown paper cover, was enough to suggest what I might find in its pages. A sort of journey. A charting of a life. A discovery. Now I’m tracing back, beyond my time, to see the boy of ten, a 3-D image arising from a 2-D format,

I’m gazing into a postcard of the mountains of Massachusetts, a bookmark with an Emily Dickinson quote in my other hand: ‘It’s all I have to bring today…’ the quote says. But there’s more. Before me are four pages of a handwritten letter, from a stranger in Birmingham, Alabama. For privacy reasons, I won’t be sharing what my new penpal told me of her life, but I know I urgently need to write back to her. Letter writing has become a way for people to connect during lockdown. Penpaloooza was started by New Yorker writer and editor, Rachel Syme, with an Instagram call-out that has grown from an initial 100 participants, to more than 4000 people, writing letters, collecting stamps, sourcing small gifts and sharing words. There are writers in more than 30 countries, and people post their treasures at the hashtag #Penpalooza.  When my first piece of mail arrived, the excitement I felt was beyond reason. The pure thrill of a package, holding pieces of a person–a bookmark, a sticker and words

When I heard a woman remark ‘I’d rather die than not have my hair done,’ I wrote the words down, stunned. It's strange what has been deemed ‘essential’ in the time of Covid-19. Shopping for food, sure. Medical appointments, yes, if necessary. Exercise, OK. And until recently, a trip to the hairdresser. What? As a person who usually gets a haircut once every 12 months, it was beyond me. But soon enough, Melbourne’s stage four restrictions ripped this ‘essential’ service away, along with other things we had taken to be ordinary aspects of our lives: going out between 8pm and 5am; being outside for more than an hour; and going further than 5km from our homes. And then it came back to me: going to the hairdresser had been a sort of lifeline for me last year. Yes, me of ungroomed locks and untended knots. It seems a hairdo can offer people so much more than a tidy and trim.    Hannah McCann, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, notes that "in Western cultur