A return
to you, and a return to Australia
Firstly a note, a note to say thank you for reading my words, for being part of this — it’s so hugely you that brings me the joy, the pleasure that is early mornings spent putting moments into words, distilling thoughts and stories. Starting this last year has been part of a project I’ve had simmering away in my mind for years, and I’m excited for it to keep bubbling, for it to evolve. Merci for being here, truly. I’m sorry for my quiet, a return has had my mind elsewhere, but I’m back here now, and that’s so nice. I’ve missed you, I’ve missed this.
It’s been so easy to see the romance amongst the olive trees in the Mediterranean landscape over the last year, but as I drive down this road under a canopy of gumtrees, I see their beauty, I feel the romance of this country in a way I never have before. Black and white cows dot the fields that flick by; soft hills of green grass with tall silvery gums and an occasional bright red flame tree; army-green bins with yellow and red lids sitting at the end of driveways; road signs with a red circle outlining the numbers 8 0 declaring the speed limit. Such mundane fixtures of our landscape suddenly feel special. As I drive I have to keep reassuring myself that I’m on the right side of the road as I stick to the two white lines in the middle. The sky is intensely sky-blue, the clouds fluffy, red dirt and wild fennel line the road. The country feels peaceful, hard and harsh to look at in many ways but soft and peaceful in feeling. How utterly bizarre, utterly beautiful, to see a place so familiar with foreign eyes, to be hypersensitive to a people and a place that for all my years here have just been there. And there is a sadness to being back here, knowing I’m in the country that voted against finally giving its indigenous people a voice. A sadness and an anger. Unbelievable, unforgettable.
I wrote that from the car, pulling over on the side of the winding road to get words out of my mind and onto paper. It was the week after I got back and I was driving home from a most beautiful property just south of Sydney, Glenmore House. I remember feeling so grateful to be there — on that drive and that property — in that state of being so sensitive to my surroundings, to all things Australia.
Landing back here, the country I’ve called home on and off for thirty years since my parents left Tonga with me at three months old, it’s been a privilege these past few months to see a world I’ve known so well through fresh eyes, like experiencing something you love for the first time. A month or so later and that feeling starts to wear off, but not completely — the sensitivity to the light, to the colours of the landscape, to the sounds and the smells; my heart still skipping a beat and ears perking up when I’m out and hear an Australian accent, the way it did when I was away, only to remember that ah yes, I’m back.
I think endlessly about home, about what home means, about how lucky I am to be able to jump on a plane and return to such a haven as we all watch those in Gaza losing theirs. A glowing best friend at the airport when I arrive, the smiling parents standing on the platform at the train station as I pull in. And another summer ahead.
Things I scribbled down in my red leather notebook those first weeks of being back:
A wander down to the local shops, I walk by the small bakery and overhear a young man wearing a ripped Bunnings t-shirt, a cap and Volley’s with high socks, ordering two sausage rolls with tomato sauce in that Australian twang
Gosh the birds are loud, varied and vibrant, with such a purity to their joy
My first weekend back, on my way down to the sea, I shove a purple five dollar note into my pocket to pick up the paper on my way back, mostly to be reunited with the Saturday quiz, only to be told at the check out that I’d need more than that five dollar note to get the newspaper these days
The Mollymook sea isn’t as salty as the Med, and the water is laughably clear, like something you see in an ad for a week in Bora Bora
Standing across from my Papa at the kitchen bench, slicing a raw chicken down its breast bone, popping the thigh bone out of its socket, to eventually stuff it and sew it back up for Christmas lunch — something he does every year
No Vegemite in the house, I go and buy one of those little yellow-topped jars and the woman in the always-too-cold IGA hands over my change with an enthusiastic, “And I’ll give you five buckaroos back.” The accent and lingo equal parts comforting and jarring.
A loaf of bread from the local bakery is $9, a coffee $5 and well a croissant, that will be a nice $7
The air is clean, the light so clear
Being able to chat away with the woman at the post office, a conversation that goes beyond the necessities, I didn’t realise how much I have missed those simple stranger connections
Sitting around a picnic table at North Bondi with dear friends and some family, doing the Saturday morning quiz in our wet togs with Bondi Beach in the background covered in practically naked, toned and tanned bodies
Wow I feel foreign sitting amongst a full room at North Bondi Fish
Strawberries in plastic, depressing
I feel a repulsion to all the X, like they ruin the landscape (I can’t read my writing, what ‘X’ is, makes me laugh to think what it could have been)
In some ways it feels like I never left, like a year has happened but it hasn’t, like I was asleep for a year while everyone carried on as usual
From a seat at the Beach Hut, the classic Australian kiosk sitting just off the beach, I realise how homogenous dining across the western world has become. I feel a new appreciation for the ‘low-fi’ places, perhaps as a result of spending time in the equivalents in Marseille or in Paris, they feel to be a true and pure representation of a place, of a people — the surfer necklaces dangling from the carousel stand, the Devonshire Tea on offer, a menu listing ‘burger with the lot’ and ‘salad sandwich’, the line full of shoeless, salty, sandy and sun-kissed beach goers, numbers being called out over the loud speaker followed by a, “your fish and chips are ready”, those white cardboard takeaway boxes that a junior would’ve folded piled up high at the back of the kitchen
Mystery vs certainty, comfort vs discomfort, predictability vs the unknown
Deb, the waiter at the Golf Club, handing over my meal of barramundi with a, “and the bara,” in the most potent Australian accent
Coles at Christmas is very red, very fluorescent and quite aggressive, I buy a Cherry Ripe
We sit around the family dining table, back with the familiar plates and tablecloths and cutlery that feel like home, we eat roast chicken, Papa’s fish tajine, Mama’s moussaka, and have bowls of stewed rhubarb for breakfast on the back deck
The familiar groan of the coffee machine warming up each morning
The uncontrollable laughter that comes from talking what would be absolute gibberish to anyone but my brother; the feeling of being so purely understood in a way that can come from no one but your sister
Why is there so much plastic involved in food here? It’s dreadful
The sun is hot, in a way that penetrates your skin — it feels good but naughty, I’ve missed how aggressive the sun’s heat feels here
Long red dirt roads lined with skinny gum trees, every second one black from the fires a few years back, the others a grey-silvery trunk leading up to silvery-green leaves
Standing around a fire, True Blue by John Williamson becomes the soundtrack for my first ever sip of a VB beer — it’s pleasant, it’s cold, the feeling of the small glass bottle feels good to clutch, good to sip from
And a few moments from the year that was …
A photograph: A late summer, golden tomato, grown by Les Trois Parcelles farm in Yèvre le Châtel, France
A book: The Years, Annie Erneaux
A meal: Sitting on a rock by the sea in a cove down the road from St Tropez with the woman I’ve called my best friend since the age of 11 with a baguette, with a tomato and peaches and two types of cheese — chèvre and comté — and a bunch of radish and a few apricots. Smearing a slab of goat’s cheese onto a torn piece of baguette, squishing half a ripe apricot on top and shoving it into our mouths as we drip dry on the rocks in the afternoon sun.
An artist: Johanna Solal
An ingredient: Olive oil
A snack: Panisse, hot panisse
A snippet from a poem sent to me by a new friend:
So dive right in, understanding
that you live by life,
live inside the wave, inside the light,
and all you truly have to do
is what you believe is right.
Words sent to me on my 30th birthday by a woman I feel oh so lucky to have found: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." — Joseph Campbell
A recipe: Danielle Alvarez’s pissaladière — life changing pastry, and a perfect meal
Something to remember: Letting yourself float in the unknown is extremely difficult and extremely exciting, and extremely rewarding
A song: I Feel in Love, Again, Sinj Clarke
A drink: Vermouth on ice, and fresh grapefruit juice, not together
A city: Marseille
And words on leaving a city you fall for, despite its flaws, via a wonderful new friend: “But what they don’t tell you — what I’m telling you now — is that after you leave, you don’t remember the quotidian dysfunction or even the ever-present existential threats. You just miss the magic. No matter how permanent your departure supposedly is, despite tangible documentation of change, like the new driver's license in your wallet and the freshly painted walls in your new house, leaving New Orleans always feels like a temporary inconvenience. Like you're just taking a break, needing some space, spending some time focusing on you. Like you two might still end up together in the end.” — Bitter Southerner, Folklore Project
A restaurant: Chez Gilda, Marseille — paper plates holding hot panisse, fried little fish, prawns in some harrissa-type sauce, it’s cash only and there are zero frills
A change in habits: Going to a new city and just walking, exploring, talking and listening, no more of this staring at your Google Maps trying to hunt down every place you’ve flagged
A message I write to send to someone I hold dear: Do you want to just put some sausages in an esky, get in the car with your tent, and drive and see where we land? We can stop at petrol stations for lemonade icy poles and sausage rolls with tomato sauce, we can have all the windows down and take turns choosing songs, or maybe just pack all of our old CDs. We can stop and swim and chat to strangers. And maybe it’ll help make decisions about life, love and the pursuit of happiness?
A first: Hitchhiking, in Corsica, twice — the first rather alarming, the second wildly joyful
Speaking of alarming moments, an alarming moment: Waking up at 2am, halfway across the stretch of sea between Corsica and the Continent, I pull my eye mask off and look around the small room I’ve been assigned on the ferry. There are about 30 seats in rows, the lights are dim but still on, the room is swaying with the waves. I look over to my left, to the middle of the room a few seats away from me, only to see a naked bottom, quite a toned bottom I might add, going up and down, banging against the person lying underneath them. Unsure what to do I immediately pull my eye mask down, back over my eyes, and go back to sleep. When we arrive at Toulon, our destination, I look over to see what the people who’d be into this type of behaviour might look like, and sitting there are two women, one about my age, the other in her sixties. I’ll never know if it was them or if it was another couple, and there’s a small part of me that wanders whether I was dreaming, though I know I wasn’t. Quite wild.
An inspiration: Sarah Espeute of Œuvres Sensibles embroidery
A lesson: A 10 hour train journey will always be better than a one hour flight
Something I missed: A bookshelf, where your books live, for you to look at, to know where they are, to pull from and to play with, the thought of all the goodness that sits on those shelves
A poem shared with me by a new and dear friend:
Perhaps the World Ends here, Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
A year that in many ways felt so wrong for our world, but at the same time, for me, a year to remember; a year that feels like seven, a year to treasure. A year that I could spend a year sitting and thinking about, of writing about.
A year that opened my eyes to the endless women in this world doing incredibly brilliant, beautiful, important things. I wrote a list of these women that I’d met, worked with, danced with, played with in my diary towards the end of last year — it’s long.
A year of heartbreak and hurt and horrifying for our world.
A year that enabled me to peel back the frills, see the world in a completely different way.
Where to from a year like this? Exciting.
Wishing you a year ahead full of the very best things. A year of taking pleasure in the simple things because the world is a harsh place, and for us lucky ones, who have comfortable beds and family and friends that are safe, we have gratitude to feel and we have a spark to keep alive.
Some of my simple things:
A ripe peach
An early morning
A lingering hug
Toast for dinner
A block of cheese in the fridge to slice from as you cook
Listening to a favourite old album from start to finish
A book that lingers in your mind when you’re away from it, that makes you excited for bed
A walk
Sitting around the table with family, with friends
Afternoon light
Sitting around a fire with someone you adore
Parents, siblings, a grandmother
And a grandmother’s uncontrollable laughter
Embroidering a fig leaf onto an old French sheet
A good sleep
The sea
Sitting in a café writing to you, it’s nice to be back, see you next week. X
Oh and, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, here’s a recipe for a chilled cucumber soup that I popped together for INBED Journal, inspired by a dish by the brilliant Jeni Glasglow that we served while cooking togethering in Provence last year.
Love to you JG.
Once again and again and again! 🔮🤍
So beautifully written. This made me nostalgic for places I haven't yet been to. Thank you.