Melbourne

The Author Pics

2009

Share house in Brooklyn, Wellington.

Wry smile

slightly open window

poetic lean

baby face.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2013

A park in Wellington.

My favourite vintage dress

embracing the glasses

looking optimistically

out towards the future.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2016 & 2021

Melbourne backyard with compulsory brick wall.

Middle parting

best dress.

Photo credit: Richard Wise.

2017

Mapua, NZ.

Not intended to be an author photo, just a nice pic my mum took when I was visiting.

Red cardy was hers.

Photo credit: Jan Marsh.

2025

At our house.

World-weary smile

just one of many things

that needed

to be done that day.

Photo credit: Jason Strachan.

The Magic

Spring, 2024

If I had looked at the forecast, I would have known there was a storm coming, but I could never have predicted its magic. At the end of the weekend, the sky crashing, flashing alight blue, pink, orange over and over. The closest thing to fireworks the four-year-old had ever seen. ‘Nature’s fireworks,’ I almost said, but decided to leave the noise-making to the world outside the darkened room for once, an inversion of the usual chaos of dinner and bedtime. We stood close, still, looking out to the west in astonishment at the intensity, the electricity of plain air.

The days leading up to the storm had been windy, sure, but not unbearable. Good laundry days, I called them. The onesies and tulle dresses billowed out then defied their own pegs. Tiny socks spread themselves about the garden, but at least it all dried. And a good laundry day is a good kite flying day.

We stuffed the nine-dollar Kmart kite into a pannier, rainbow tail flapping eagerly, and rode down to the reserve to set it free, let it tug us gently, let it let us tug it gently back.

The kids got bored long before I did —  ran to the playground with their dad — so I took the reins, allowing the kite to swoop and loop, watching it try to arc gracefully through the ground and falling short. Each crash my cue to wind the string up, haul it back in, but before I could pack it down completely the wind would grab it again and off it went, off I went letting out its lead with a click click click of the wrist. Our dance of pull and release. Every time: a crash, a gather, a gust, a yield.

At one point the wind blew hair across my face and when I cleared my view I thought the kite was a heart. Not the squashy bulging forms my daughter has learnt to draw on birthday cards, but a proper anatomically correct blood pumping organ. My own old blood pumper flying as free as one can when they’re tethered to the ground by the comforting weight of family, the constant calling of Mummy Mummy Mummy.

Or was it my own child pulling the cord to come, come but asking me to stay? Let out more string, it seemed to say, long enough to let me dance in the high air you’ll never reach but don’t let me go. Either way the kite remained at the mercy of my flicking wrist and the wind itself, until it was us — my kite-heart-child and I — co-conspirators putting the wind to task, daring it, forcing it to keep us aloft. The thunderstorm not yet visible on the horizon. The magic still to come.

The small one loves ducks so much we set off early and head to the creek

but we’ve never been to this creek before.
Rain wasn’t forecast and I tell that to the sky as it darkens and clouds and of course
pours all over us.

I keep checking the forecast and the sky and not quite understanding 
why the information doesn’t match
I’m cold and wet, but Finch loves the rain

I ask if he still wants to go see ducks
and of course he does, why wouldn’t he. We hide under trees wherever we can and he’s safe in the pram and mostly sheltered, but his little hands are freezing.

We see two ducks from under our tree by the side of the creek and I pull him from his pram and lift him to see and make sure the whole business was worth it
of course it was.

It’s always worth it when Finch has something new to talk about.
The rain gets worse before it eases, just like everything and I tell myself this
is an adventure, if you like rainbows you gotta put up with a bit of rain, but of course there are no rainbows

Just the rain followed by no more rain.

We head to a cafe and I get tea and he gets a marshmallow
and we share fruit toast and he smiles and laughs at everyone and I hold his cold hands
one by one in mine until they’ve thawed a bit and when it’s time to go he wants to go to a playground, so we do.

And how lovely to be so small but so in control of the day, the one day a fortnight we have together so of course I say yes to everything.

Like when we get home and he asks for pizza so I make him a little pizza for lunch
and he pulls the topping off slice after slice so he’s really just eating cheese and again
it’s all worth it.

Except at nap time he cries about having to get into his bed, even though he rolls around happily in there and then falls asleep for an hour and a half and it’s enough time for me
to sit in the sun because the sun’s really and truly out now 

and the washing probably will dry after all even though it got rained all over while we were out and I have enough time to do a bit of marking and check my emails and then write all this down. 

And maybe I don’t need a rainbow to reassure me every time, reassure me everything’s going to be fine
because of course, of course, of course it will be.

Summer rain

Our two week holiday ends with rain. Lotus calls it ‘mist rain’ the stubborn drizzly stuff that won’t be moving on until it has emptied the clouds entirely. No wind to push it along, or sun to sizzle it away. It’s been doing this for two days now and it makes me want to go to bed early. So I do. 

But rain highlights some of my best moments in the last two weeks: Jumping into the pool the night before Christmas once the kids are in bed, a gentle thunderstorm rolling past. A sprinkling of rain and a boom or two nearby. The sun goes down as I float lazily and a few bats flap overhead. I wonder if the thunder messes with their echolocation, confuses their navigation. For me it does the opposite and I feel grounded by this very Melbourne phenomenon of a summer thunderstorm. 

It rains all Christmas Day too, but on Boxing Day I strap Finch to the back of the bike and ride ride ride through park after park in the sunshine while he squeals and shouts. I turn briefly to see him pointing at it all, his whole body alert with amazement at trees and people and dogs and cars and just the details of the world really. It makes me laugh out loud. We’re chased back by a proper storm though – thick dark clouds wading through the sky, pushing their way towards home where the washing has already dried in the hot wind of morning. I pedal as fast as I can and I’m the one whooping now, laughing as the big ploppy drops start to fall and loudly reassuring the little guy that we’ll make in time, it’s my mission to get us back inside in time and I do. Buckets upon buckets of rain plummet down and we watch from the safety of the front porch.

There are warm days and cool days and days where nothing much happens, but we’re happy together and what at first felt like a daunting prospect: daycare closed and having to manage the big feelings and big energy of an almost four year old and a just turned one year old, turns to feelings of precious one on one time, making adventures of going to the supermarket together, building duplo towers and going to our favourite playgrounds.

In the last few days we have family visit, bundle ourselves into cars and drive to the museum where Finch again points at all of it with curiosity and astonishment, confusion and concern. There are dinosaur bones and bugs and giant crystals found within unassuming rocks. Lotus is fascinated by it all and I wonder if I’ve ever seen her so excited, engaged with everything, asking questions, pushing all the buttons. She’s wearing her gumboots so on the way to dinner, with our colourful umbrellas above, she finds the best puddles and stomps stomps stomps. Gutters run like rivers and her small hand is warm as she tugs me to the next big splash.

Today the sun is out. We’re up early and ready to go quicker than we ever have been. All of us on the bikes, but the ride to daycare is less than five minutes. Lotus is in the four year old kinder room now, meeting up with her friends and making new ones. Finch spends one hour getting used to the nursery where he will be three days a week. 

Last night in bed the drizzling rain reminded me of home, of other homes I’ve had where it rains depressingly often. The thought of these wonderful little people – loud and brave, curious and intense – going out into the world had me in mist tears, tears that won’t be moving on until they’ve emptied me out. But right now the sun is shining and we have stories to tell our friends.

Anxiety poem

We count out the things taken from us
handed back nestled in conditions 
permissions and we’re so grateful,
so grateful for the simple gift
of driving to the supermarket 
sitting up in the trolley like an adventure
choosing snacks for our drive back home
we’re so grateful, so lucky
to be able to drive to the supermarket together.

We walk around the block, hoping to bump into someone
never dobbing in the neighbours, we’re happy to see them
happy to stand in the street and talk to
their aunty, their mother, their entire family
the pavement becomes our meeting place
kids sharing toys, drawing worms and flowers
drawing hearts and rhinos and we’re so lucky
so grateful for the company, so lucky to have each other.

Our radius expands and we could go to the city
but our circle is set, not ready to be stretched and besides
we’re so lucky, so grateful. It’s a numbers game as always
one shot, two shots, dates and percentages 
kilometres from home, hours of exercise 
how many friends can you fit on a picnic rug?
how many friends do you still have and we’ll get there
we say, we’re counting on it, counting and counting
conversations edited to how are you getting on
we’ll get there. We’re lucky, we’re counting, we’re lucky.

Any other year of my life, I say, any other year and this 
would be unbearable. We can’t know what it’s like 
for everyone else, but we know we’re lucky, grateful
counting our lucky stars, counting our blessings
counting and counting and counting.

“No mud, no Lotus”

Everything comes together in November. The sun comes out and the house stays warm through the night. Cases in Victoria descend to zero and remain there for days and then weeks. Trump loses. There are no euphemisms for this and no hyperbole too great. It feels like the embarrassed silence after months of heated shouting, like waking up from a terrible night’s sleep, grateful it’s morning. We become giddy with these glimmers of okayness. I feel like crying when we meet up with friends at the beach after hundreds of days of isolation and when we first go to a cafe for lunch, we make friends with every wide-eyed person there. We book a holiday out of town – a rebooking of a twice cancelled trip from July. Everything went pear-shaped around July.

In the beginning, I felt a strange camaraderie with the world. We made jokes about running out of toilet paper and people across continents would laugh. The mention of isolation boredom and work pyjamas had wide reaching ripples of knowing nods. Suddenly everyone in the world had something in common. Then jokes gave way to fear and anger and things got worse, of course, before they got any better. Or they briefly appeared to be better before they got much worse. 

Relief that 2020 is coming to an end is understandable, the need to draw a line under it – through it even – as we collectively agree it was nothing like we’d planned, but I feel a pang every time someone says what a terrible year it has been, even though I know it has been devastating for so many. In our family alone we lost a dear parent and attended the funeral by zoom, we had illness, we had disappointment and we mourned the absence of friends and family as we tried to show our new baby the joys of the world we brought her into. But 2020 is special to me. When I mention this to a friend in the park, gesturing grandly towards my baby, she says “No mud, no Lotus, right?” and I google the phrase later at home.

This was the year that started with Lotus’ birth, my mum here for ten days prior and ten days after and my brother making a hasty appearance just in time to meet her minutes after she emerged. It’s the year my dad delayed his flight to Nepal so he could meet his new grandchild and the year so many other beautiful babies – Lotus’ friends – were born into villageless isolation. 

It’s the year Lotus learnt to crawl. First her own invention, a kind of dry-land butterfly stroke – flopping and dragging her body around the house we moved into in August, then figuring out the more energy efficient version on hands and knees, squeals of delight as she became mobile. It’s the year she learnt to clap her hands, eliciting praise and excitement from her parents, looking at us in turn as she does it, knowing we’ll be delighted. The year she learnt to sleep the entire night, settle herself back again on waking or stand in her cot to call out she’s ready to get up. 2020 will always be the year Lotus started pointing at things she liked, things she wanted, things she recognised and things we asked her to. Every day she shows us the patterns of light on the walls from windows covered with trees or lace curtains. Her full cheeks rise into the biggest smile when she finds even the faintest impression of shadow and bright. There are rainbows in our living room in the afternoon and she will find them before anyone else can. In the mornings, she pulls books off her shelf and hands them to me one by one to read to her as she turns the pages, points at the illustrations and sometimes says “baby!” if there’s a baby on the page. It’s the year she made friends with babies. This year is the year Lotus first called me “Mumum” and her dad “Papa”, the year she started singing along as I play guitar and nodding her head to her favourite songs.

2020 was terrible, but I won’t cross it off. It’s the year we realised how lucky we are, never again taking simple things like going out for breakfast or having visitors for granted. We hunkered down through winter, solving sleep issues with only as many tears as it took to scramble from our bed to hers. We never had to figure out the logistics of how to get baby, pram, nappy bag to this thing or that thing. There were no things to try and get to. 

Soon, and I’m sure of this, we will be able to see our families again. My mum will come from New Zealand the moment she’s allowed, my dad will have to find his way back from Nepal and our newish little family will have planes to catch to see Lotus’ uncles, aunts, cousins and grandmas. We have lost people and there will be time again to grieve and process this. Somewhere in the midst of this chaotic year I turned 40, quietly and with a carefully planned glass of champagne. Everything falls slowly into place in November and this blurry and intense, forgettable year is the most memorable of my life.

Learning to be gentle

I keep my judgements to myself, mostly

a cat claw stuck in the baby’s sleeve

causes more tears

 

than her top teeth pushing through gums

those stubborn numbers

finally in sharp descent.

 

Clusters form from a reckless traveller

while we focus on enjoying bath time

and every playground we can walk to.

 

I turn the pram around so she faces

the world head on.

I must be feeling optimistic.

 

Not knowing about thresholds

the step into the sunroom becomes

a literal tipping point

 

each morning, firm pats on a patient cat

until the patience of the cat snaps too.

2018 Literary Highlights

‘Tis the season for highlights and reflections! In a busy year of school camps, public speaking competitions, parent interviews, marking, reporting writing and teaching, I managed to squeeze a few literary moments into my calendar. Here are some that stood out, including events, books and my own small endeavours.

Top 5 Events

ticket-1701201_960_720.jpg

1. Tim Winton on Toxic Masculinity

Promoting his latest book, The Shepherd’s Hut, Tim Winton spoke with his usual mix of humility, intelligence, heart and humour. I always enjoy hearing him speak and this topic felt especially relevant. Here’s my good friend Alex Bisley interviewing Tim for Macleans.

2. Neko Case at Melbourne Writers Festival

I enjoyed many events at MWF and finding them in strange and unfamiliar corners of the city was fun too. I heard Neko Case first as part of a panel on the texts that influenced panel members’ feminism, then saw her again solo at ACMI. I’ve been a fan of her music for a long time and always love hearing artists talk about their craft. Neko’s latest album is Hell-On.

3. First Chapters Series at Brunswick Bound

I feel so lucky to have this amazing bookstore just around the corner (and down the road a bit) from my house. In this series, the store celebrates the work of local authors on the first Friday of each month, by inviting them to read a chapter from their work and engage in a Q&A afterwards. Highly recommended, and more information here.

4. Launch of Close to Home by Alice Pung

Another wonderful event from Brunswick Bound. Alice’s new collection of essays was launched by amazing Helen Garner and is such an insightful and engaging collection. I enjoyed chatting to Alice afterwards and she assured me her young adult novel, Laurinda is NOT based on the school I teach at, despite the suspiciously similar names. If you don’t know Alice’s work, definitely check it out!

5. Melbourne Writers’ Group Anthology Launch

The Melbourne Writers’ Group know how to throw a party! I was so proud of my friends who worked so hard to launch this book as writers and editors, readers, speakers and book sellers. This is their third anthology and they keep getting better. Find out more about the Melbourne Writers’ Group and come along to the weekly social nights and writing times here!

Top 5 Books

images

1. Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong

This is such a beautifully crafted collection, where poems shift form and are experienced through all senses. I was totally captivated by it. You can read ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ here.

2. The Shepherd’s Hut, Tim Winton

I never miss a chance to remind you all how much I love Tim Winton’s writing. In fact I’ve already mentioned this book here.

3. There but for the, Ali Smith

I’ve read so many good books this year, but this one stands out as it stuck with me: the quirky conversations and lack of resolution. Ali Smith might not be for everyone, but I think she’s a master of dialogue, voice, structure. I trust her completely and enjoy being taken for the ride. Here she is talking about the power of the novel.

4. Solar Bones, Mike McCormack

This was a startling book. Written in one gasping breath without a single full-stop, I suspect I read it with my mouth open. The style might seem gimmicky, but it’s completely in fitting with the theme and plot and works surprisingly well. Stream of consciousness is not technically correct for this book … anyway, it won Mike McCormack the International Dublin Literary Award.

5. Take Three Girls, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood, Simmone Howell

A shout out to the many young adult novels I read this year. This one stood out as it had three strong and distinct female characters who work together to fight the system. Very cleverly and convincingly created by three awesome Australian writers.

Top 5 Writer Moments

45677027_10161257343535232_4835220159738150912_n-1.jpg

1. Photos of the Sky launch week

Obviously launching my third poetry book and spending a week reading it to small crowds of people was the highlight of my own writerly year. I was thrilled that Tim Jones was able to launch the book, and greatly enjoyed reading at Unity Books with Nicola Easthope and again at Volume in Nelson. There’s even a lovely review of Photos of the sky by Sarah Lin Wilson here.

2. Girls on Key Open Mic

When Nicola Easthope and I knew we were going to be reading together in Wellington, we made sure to meet in Melbourne first! Luckily, Nicola was on her way to the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, so we had the chance to catch up, meet with the lovely Jennifer Compton and read poetry together at an open mic night. Girls on Key is a monthly event hosted by Open Studio.

3. Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand

I was unable to attend any of the launches for this, but I loved being included in the anthology. There’s a new poem from Photos of the Sky in there and an old one from Wit of the Staircase. The anthology is edited by Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan and James Norcliffe.

4. BBC Culture: The 100 stories that shaped the world

There’s something pleasing about adding my top 5 into my top 5 and something even more satisfying about being quoted in the BBC. I admit there are many names on this list, but being asked to contribute was a nice writerly moment for me.

5. Teaching and Writing balance

I still haven’t nailed it 100%, but this has been an excellent year for me in terms of balancing my teaching and writing life. I am so lucky to work at a school that supports me with a day off each week, constant queries about how the writing’s going (!), acknowledgement of my achievements and actual promo from the marketing team. Watch this space for more news from my school, but in the meantime here’s a small fun, thoughtful, creative corner of the school I’ve enjoyed helping create.