16. A Denmark Summer
14th October 2023
In the early hours the sky’s bursting with the dim and the bright. I stand alone with a shooting star and the southern cross sitting low on the horizon. Out over the shrub are the earliest living organisms of Earth. In a remote toilet between Broome and Denmark, my period arrives. It’s a new moon. Meaning it’s exactly one month since I left Kene Nete. Elliot and I are on the road by sunrise, driving through more extreme heat and whirly winds. Today we’ll make it to Perth if we’re meant to.
15th October 2023
Roadhouses are full of 90% meat options. Grey nomads with red faces and bottoms and stomachs as big as their caravans buy multiple pies. Driving through Perth’s concrete the sun sears my right arm gripping the steering wheel, Radio National crackling with journalists filling space. It’s the referendum for the indigenous voice to parliament. It’s the first time I’ve listened to news in a long time. It makes me feel strange.
I arrive to 7 Hope Street at 3:33pm. I eat dinner with Elsa & her climate physicist Dad. He describes the next ten to twenty years bringing major climate events such as mega deaths. When he tells me change is only possible at government level, I see the generational difference.
While Australia votes NO to the voice, I lose no hope. The burning knowing remains.
16th October 2023
Withstanding the heat of concrete there’s an ominous air, and I yearn for a family amongst trees all the more. Kath messages with more suspicious timing that alerts me to these eclipses bringing up themes from 2014-2016. I reflect on these years: Bo dying, post-traumatic stress, living with an attached spirit, writing my first book, moving to Broome, realising I loved writing and that I want to study writing, returning to Melbourne wanting to settle and find a partner. Themes that continue in twisted events.
23rd October 2023
These early days in Denmark are all clouds and rain, icy feet and hands, and dull bright light through eucalypts. I waver and I trust. I confuse—held by community while mourning something that is not yet loss. Because desperation doesn’t get me what I want, does it? And begging Mother Nature creates jaded energy. Nonetheless, I anticipate inevitable heartache.
