13. Home Over Road

3rd April

The start of a new diary is like the start of a new book, with all its internal pressure and emphasis on that magical first line. I don’t have that magical first line. And there hasn’t been much magic since waking the first morning in my Mango caravan seeing an email with the final Broomerang electricity bill of $444.88. Inspired by my overthinking to the first sentence (which unleashes a whole new diary at the same time I’m simplifying old diaries to my computer), I shan’t overthink The Gemstones of Broomerang. Most was written for me; it’s my job to decode it and have it presented in a way that anyone can pick it up and read it in a few days.
The mango caravan is nice, with its outdoor kitchen, green surroundings, dogs and different style community—people in their separate dwellings, with interconnected paths—but I admit I’m lonely. Already. Because I like creating with other people creating in the vicinity. Creativity, that’s the core ingredient, which people tie into. People who silently tap away at their own form of creative release.
So this nice mango caravan is fine, for now, and I welcome moving onward with some key, home notes in mind:

• Toilet nearby bed/desk (I pee a lot)

• A desk with beautiful views/at least east to move my head to such views

• People who I can poke my head out when bored

• Good kitchen facilities that aren’t shared with heaps of people

• A clean and tidy dwelling

—

Writers translate experiences, emotions, complexes, dreams, pain…into words for others to understand.

—

“In my youth I fought for equality. I wanted to participate in the men’s game. But in my mature years I’ve come to realise that the game is a folly; it is destroying the planet and the moral fibre of humanity. Feminism is not about replicating the disaster. It’s about mending it…” Isabel Allende

—

“In the twenty-fire century women will change the nature of power instead of power changing the nature of women.” Bella Abzug

4th April

(Back with a vengeance to the page). It’s an out-of-sorts sort of day. I read the Bone People in the king bed of my mango caravan. Outside there’s nearly a cool tinge to the air. The dingos nearly bowl me over and I hate the way they jump up on me and scratch my legs.
When the dingoes leave, I re-emerge from the dark caravan to the beautiful, nearly-cool morning. I drink my coffee at the table of my outdoor kitchen, the table sprayed with jewellery. I play around with beads to the song of children and birds, flies and mosquitoes replacing the frogs and geckos of the night.
Sitting on the toilet, looking to the shower with old terracotta-coloured tiles stained in Broome water, the beehive, frogs and cockroaches don’t bother me. I know it’s temporary. I know I want a nice bathroom with a view from the toilet, bottle-green tiles, ivy and natural light.
I’m annoyed.
By having to go to work…tomorrow.
And how I miss the house!
Then there’s the dingoes jumping on me, which I’d prefer to be people sipping their morning coffee, too.
So I know.
That this is not my place. With the screaming kids. But it’s part of the stepping stone there.

—

“We want a world of beauty, not only that which the senses appreciates, but also the beauty perceived by an open heart and a clear mind. We want a pristine planet protected from all forms of aggression. We want a balanced and sustainable civilisation based on mutual respect, and respect for other species and for nature. We want an inclusive and egalitarian free of gender, race, class & age discrimination, & any other classification that separates us. We want the kind of world where peace, empathy, decency, truth, & compassion prevail. Above all, we want a joyful world. That is what we, the good witches, want. It’s not a fantasy, it’s a project. Together we can achieve it.” Isabel Allende, The Soul of a Woman

6th April

I like sitting outside in the mornings with my computer screens amongst mango trees. I like the sounds of trees. I like gentle fabrics on my skin—those made in love and good conscious. I don’t like cockroaches in my safe place. Last night I went out of my way to connect with people; the star-enveloped night of Cable Beach revealing an energy for the unknown ahead.

8th April

These pages are so soft! If only we could handwrite forever, alas my growing obsession/frustration with stuff! This morning I woke later than usual. After looking at my phone at 2:44, I tossed and turned in pain from food + wine at the Aarli, something (beyond my place at work) not agreeing with me.
Work functions bring forced conversations that highlight my contrasting views on consumerism and normalcy. Lindsay (director) is a system-smart and successful business man, but he’s only ever spoken to me about the weather. Meanwhile he asks Susie many questions, and talks of cling-wrapped, forgotten food in the fridge that leaves me staring into space, wondering on my place. I give myself until the end of the year/early next year there. As long as I have Kellie as my mentor. And can be ruthless in learning jewellery.
I go to the toilet.
Back in the caravan, the roaming cockroaches and the swarm of black bugs on the cobwebbed roof irritate me. I have visions of the artist I’ve finally coming to embrace after spending years removed from family (who, whenever I think of how little they know me, brings a fire burning through my mind), exploring. Now, this artist, this writer, this whatever you chose to call her because maybe she’s a photographer too (which I say because Roser had recently been imploring I have special photography skills) needs savings—a start for a home.
I move my ruby earring to a more comfortable place and fall back to sleep. I dream: there’s a girl I don’t know, she comes from money, she likes dressing up, and she doesn’t talk much. I go into my space, like a tree house, and she’s looking at herself in the mirror. I lie down, she lies with me and comes to me. She gently touches me and it’s arousing but instead of returning the favour, I fall asleep. At the dark of night I ride my bike to the bar/pub (Matso’s style) and it’s only when I’m walking in do I realise I’m totally naked. There are men watching and jeering. Using my mask (which suddenly grows giant) I cover my front and wonder how I’d managed to not feel the wind over my naked body on the ride. The same girl appears. She’s a calm presence. I tell her how horrified I am by the public embarrassment and how I feel to be in such a strange, removed mood. She nods in agreement, telling how she’d noticed I’d fallen asleep earlier. She isn’t annoyed by this. She is comforting. She is like me (although I think slightly Asian in appearance).
On waking, I recall my thoughts before this dream, how I have a strong nurturing side and part of letting someone in is to not be afraid to show it and share it.

10th April

These days are peaceful in my outdoor kitchen (besides the kids, they’re not peaceful) but I’m lost. Knees creaking lots after gorgeous walk to sand dune over beach. Growing horrendously frustrated with so much time spent at work. The house still being missed. This temporary space still appreciated (although I’m glad it’s temporary due to the cockroaches and misalignment of neighbour’s purpose).
Turns out to be one of those days. I organised Gemstones timeline (having a bit of a moment with feeling the whole thing lacks purpose/meaning), Pippa graced me with her presence to craft alongside me, I read, and I thought to why I’m breaking out again—the sugar? Nuts? Boring! It’s been years of this.
I ride my scooter and decide upon even greater clarity. I need to edge away from this work I love to hate. To make my living (because yes, Sarah, you need to “make a living”) in a way of passion and purpose. Today, I think I will leave Broome as a permanent base end of November.

—

Remember my word for twenty-two? Love Love Love.
$300,000. The quicker I save this the freer I’ll be.
Life as art. Art is my life. I’m publishing a book! It helps fund me to write more books.
All my jewellery uses recycled materials.
My photos are photojournalism of a natural life.
Mama.
Having worked out what I’m ‘doing with my life,’ the next stage is doing it. And writing about it. In nature.

12th April

The cockroaches are no longer crawling over my bed, through my clothes, nor in the sink and shower. Without the cockroaches I enjoy the sleeps on the king mattress, climbing onto it early in the night to read, waking early. This morning, a mist hung through the mango trees and for a second I considered putting something warmer on. For the first time since being here I can hear the ocean.
This week, I begin four days. Today, it’s a day off.
At the mango caravan I go from loving it to loneliness. I struggle to do things like stretch (and yet I scroll), while admitting I need people. There is too much in my head, which is clouded by consumerism, making lists of temporary items I want. I’m unsure what’s ahead and what I specifically want right now (besides people in common areas). There are frustrations to the amount of time work robs of me. And there are anxieties on money, with how little I earn considering how much I work, and therefor how little I can save by the time I want to move to Denmark later this year.
It will never be about making as much money as possible, but enough to support myself and my family.
I run out of gas again. I’m annoyed by myself and the amount of waste I create. How flat and lost I feel. In my restless state, I’ve been thinking of escaping to India. To anywhere. Can I make it through this season?
I ride my scooter down the road to get reception for bookclub. I lean forward to rest on the handlebars of the scooter, the moon sitting behind me. Love Stories is the book, and our conversation about the focus of the world is a positive conversation. I even throw in femininity without Emma retaliating. But I’m reminded of how little my family know me. Should I be honoured or offended when the change they speak of is what I live? And guess what, family, I write. Yet when I say how beautiful writing is often simple writing, Mum tells me, ‘Yes but they’re still writers.’
Gosh.
My whole life unknowingly fighting against the creativity being sucked out me. My family group me in the same way they group themselves.
Gosh, family, gosh.
Fly, Sarah, fly. Because you’re an explorer and family is a notion
Keep being you, Sarah.
You have the power. Use it.
For my peace and happiness I must sell myself rather than this jewellery. I must sacrifice, take a risk. I must push myself for publication. With this, I must always remember that I write for the greater good, not for marketing and sales.

14th April ‘22

Last night we sat near the Surf Club stairs on Cable. The light was orange, Jessicar and Melissa each with their own joints, DJ Alex and me taking intermittent tokes. Alex talks of the music over the coming Easter weekend. The music is coming but the people aren’t. People are going to Europe, India, the East, and the season ahead will be quieter. With a quieter season balancing last year’s hectic and magical moments, the contrast complements my personal dreams.
These mornings, lone and a smidge sweaty with the bits and pieces and mangoes before me, there are bursts of inspiration and scattered energy on where to focus. Starting tasks, switching tasks, beautiful projects, possibilities galore. Honing in as the years passed, I see manifestations through repetition. That deeper change that takes time.
Now work will steal my time, fill my bank. At least there’s Kellie and the jewellers. Isma. At least there’re pearls to play with and skills to learn and refine. There’s steps in the direction I wish to head.
This Easter weekend I leave writing behind as I embark on the market application and jewellery pieces—first pieces (nearly) sold to Tara.
I want the end of heat, and it’s coming. Good things lie ahead.

15th Aprill ‘22

Crunchy knees, tight calves, a hot cross bun, extraordinarily strong coffee, jewellery making, no electricity, lack of energy to stretch. There’d been a surprise storm in the night. I was woken to thunder and flashing about 11:30 (thinking it was closer to morning, I had been disappointed by the time—still somewhat afraid of nights). I took my monitor from outside and turned off electricity. When the rain started, it came for hours and hours to the beat of thunder—elongated and reliable—and lightning disco flashing.
The morning is cosy with the wet green, surrounded by families. Yet I feel stress, it’s coming through my face and it’s mumbling as I ride my scooter. Thinking that I’m maybe not as happy as I thought myself to be, I return to the dream to travel, to escape. Or to teleport to an afternoon light in my tiny home/cabin, my base.
In my base, my dream space, there are people within arm’s reach, working towards change for a better world too. We can retreat when we want and emerge when we want. How sweet Good Fridays would be in a community space like Broomerang.

Easter Sunday

It’s Sunday and I need to ramble. Sentences in sharp breaths, fleeting thoughts. It’s full moon and my mind is full. Body unbalanced, my vada out of whack. Don’t even have energy for planning. Crunching bones and strained muscles. Acne on my jaw, tight and fresh. A hungry body, a utilisation of Sarah time. I read romance novels, the classic type, and a simple line as ‘when you meet the one you just know’ makes me emotional. It’s like when I eat too much processed food and gluten, I just know it ain’t right for me.

—

Heal myself, Heal my world

18th April

Diaries that end up a ploy for greater self, which would be the part of a movie where there’s a breakthrough with progressive, instrumental music and there’ll forever be a before and after.
I’d lain under the mango tree and felt. Energy is not flowing through my body. It is trapped. The pain in my guts, pleading for attention through my face, is linked to the food that it’s forced fed. A holistic approach, led by myself (and haphazardly inspired by that guy from Melbourne who knows Connor and his comment about instead talking to a therapist when I mentioned things of my sister, because I hate such comment and such attitude).
For this next chapter unfolding, I need others too. So I’m going for a float with me gals, to start a new flow of energy. It’s a day of a snake, and a day of butterflies.

The Tuesday after Easter—a young woman punished

I wake back inside the caravan—the midges had been rampant in the camper. It is in such moments I take to the blank page to work through what is wrong.
Yesterday, weed had me lying flat under the mango tree, drowsy in the camper, staring, hoping and wishing that tomorrow is that new day. I gorge on food that further hurts the angry pimples on my jawline, near my chin. They are pimples I have placed there through diet and obsession. I send mental energy to my jawline, near my chin.
All that card waving for foods that punish me.
This morning, I stretch under the mango tree, and I’ll go for a midday high tide swim from the Cable Beach Club, where I’ll spend my time in all things jewellery, reminding myself to this end goal. Still, the stress of work contributes to my face. My resistance to work palpable.
Sunburnt from the coconut wells float (all those tourists). Hair finally washed, left to dry at its will. Bathers under work clothes. Legs lean. Thoughts scattered, impulses to quit it all. And run. But to run, I take my dreams with me. To run takes up even more time. Self-pep talk continues. Should I quit instead of the $17,700 car?
Further reduce my hours?
$17,700 too much for a car?
How long will it last?
What about work, how can I escape sooner?
Escape from the working norm.
Escape to a cabin in the forest.
Escape again, seriously?
How frustrating I would be as a character in a book!
Hurry, write Gemstones before it escapes.
Stop thinking about food.
Stop wasting time organising and reorganising.
Send love to your face, and warm, soft meals that nourish your gut.
Smile to the eye, to those who move you and those who understand.
Be brave.
Fail, if needed, knowing you’ve put in the hard work, knowing you’ve enough skill to work hard and one day there’ll come reward.
You’re on the brink.
Keep working and concentrating and so do with urgency.
For the world is falling and all this love you have bottled up, waiting, needs to spill out.
What’s the solution?
To be set free!
To wake up and not have to transform to an ingenuine version of myself. To wake up and be myself. To dress as Sarah.
Sell Sarah.
Be Sarah.
Why fear love, Sarah?
The fear of rejection, of failure?
After years of thinking and refining, I have the tools needed to make my art work.
But I’m here, subjected to the trashy music at Cable Beach Club, when I could write books and movies and shows, and I can tell stories of the world over.

20th April

Full moon morning mood summarised simply: no gas left at my mango home, connection doesn’t fit, too much stuff for scooter, take Lachie’s car, Good Cartel $6 coffee in shit cup. Roadworks. Slow drivers. An inflamed face with equally inflamed pimples from gluten and sugar. A lost girl driving around town, coming to Town Beach to set up the computer with wifi. Last night I felt good with scotch, talking with Roser, riding through pockets of cold air coming back from Cable reception. I’d written—a bit on Lonely design, bit on Gemstones—and I’d read and I’d felt better, being reminded of my purpose right now.
Still the bad mood persists because I have to go into work. And I don’t want to go to work. Should I quit? Give notice? Maybe my sour mood’s reflective of unhappiness alone at Mango. But. What’s next? How much further can I float? How much angrier can I make my face for it to plead make this time different.

21st April

What was unique about that year in Broome that warrants a book? How the borders were closed, the rich and white males continued to rule, the news was in turmoil, crime novels sold best, and we were power in building community, connection and creativity?
I sleep on the king mattress in the caravan, waking often to heave my body from side to side. When I wake sore and stiff to my too-loud alarm (I did turn down the volume and still it was loud) in my dreams, I had secretly decided to go to South America. This was after we’d been kicked from the house but slowly Liv took over, with her, Pippa and Beth ruling from the top floor. I had been blinded to this. I had been put in my place. And so my power was kept secret—my power of escape without genuine fear to the great leap the escape required.
In real life, I’m sure at some point in my life I’ll spend a few years between Central and South America. I would do this with children. At an age they take to language and culture with natural grace.
It’s after 5:30 when I sit under the mango tree and do a minor stretch to rid the creases of my body (I know it’s much more than disturbed sleep, it’s also blocked energy to release). My mind is clouded with tasks. I’m not happy. There, I said it, it’s simple. Then again, I’m menstrual. And it’s been a full moon. And work’s not resonating with me. And I’m ungrounded in the caravan—where’s the comfort space to sit? Where’s my personal desk? Where’s the people. Though there is Ruby, Sheba and a resident wasp that has its nest behind my sink.
I get through work, where Kellie refers to me as a conversationalist, which returns me to Saturday at the markets, as the Kimberley Brew man got tongue twisted on conservationist, Pippa said ‘yes she’s a conversationalist’ in her admiringly direct way.
If I’m a conversationalist, and I was in conversation with myself, I’d ask, What’s a conversationalist?
I simplify. I don’t need to run to find myself, I tell myself. I have the story. And the sequel to the story. I have jewellery. Four cameras. Now I need a space to settle me—someone there who complements lone productivity and meaningful exchanges with company/food/music.
Then, after this year, I work for myself. I have the tools, I have the vision.
Or should I quit it all? Go to South America? Or will this pass, and I’ll find a space that grounds me and instead write a book that’ll delete my hesitation in calling myself a writer?
Another storm’s blowing through, the late season winds and lightning seeing me climb into my mango caravan bed to read another book. For what else is there to do?
Sleep scares me.
Will take some time to reclaim the energy lost from food and mental fog.
Being on the first day of my period, I know I’ll wake sometime in the night needing to go to the toilet.
As my life story will unfold, I’ll unpick my mind and motivations through words.

23rd April

Gemstones will of course take longer than I predict. This is okay. The coming season will be in the planning. For the writing, I’ll need my own space. Right now, thoughts from my past years are solidifying, days with my sisterhood, small community at the markets, high tide swim, weaving. This temporary home full of baby frogs and skinks.

25th April

It’d been another restless night of sleep; tossing and turning, the fridge beeping, a branch falling on the roof, thinking on my state and hopes, Sheba and Ruby whining at the door at 6am, going to the toilet, again and again. It is the fifth day of my period and it’s heavier than it’s been this cycle.
Out of bed, I skip my stretch under the mango tree and sit in my camper, looking to the mango trees. I like it here in the camper. It is more comfortable place to work from. And I’m growing happier (despite restless nights) with these cooler mornings. Still, I’m looking forward to moving on, to being in that incredible space at Wil’s, with my purpose and so many ideas waiting for their place and courage to come to fruition. Although last night at Vedam’s going away, Wil didn’t even acknowledge me, and I didn’t acknowledge him either, making me realise how I prefer small social settings, and how I’ve preferred small social settings for a long time—even the parties of Melbourne made me nervous.

—

Ikigai. Brings meaning to life. Everyone has an ikigai. What’s yours? My ikigai was already there, something I’ve been exploring since I finished uni. I’ve known my three elements for about two years now. Writing, photography, jewellery. Now I refine, putting to action all that I’ve learnt, studied, known. Part of the refining process is becoming clearer on my thoughts. I’m an artist in my thoughts. It’s my thoughts that are most creative. Somewhere within me I know more than this life. And in the moments of frustration, like being shamed by family, I must trust.

 —

According to Stoics, the objective of the virtuous person is to reach a state of tranquillity (apatheia): the absence of negative feelings such as anxiety, fear, shame, vanity and anger, and the presence of positive feelings such as happiness, love, serenity and gratitude. To keep their minds virtuous, Stoics practice (something like) negative visualisation: imagining the worst thing that could happen to be prepared if certain privileges and pleasures were taken. To practice negative visualization, you reflect on negative events but without worrying about them.
*Interesting concept seeing I have thought about when I daydream, or how I daydream, these thoughts never come to fruition. In a sense, I can’t crack the workings of the secret. It’ll take time, of course, to shift all the longings that race through me alone in my bed, but already the thought of analysing the negative gives me power. Positive thinking opens you to possibilities, thinking on end result, using negative visualisation to get there?

 —

Piece (brainstorms): a collection of already made pieces, from the world over, pulled apart, to reimagine our drive. Instead of buying anew, buy used, and reimagine the world. It is a collection of ideas and ancient customs, creating new ideas and concepts that incorporates a globalised understanding that every piece is important.

 —

“Artists know how important it is to protect their space, control their environment, and be free of distraction if they want to flow with their ikigai.”

26th April

After drying my face in my towel hanging in the caravan, five cockroaches come out and I officially moved into my camper. It’s refreshing to be back sleeping amongst the elements with the open canvas, stars and no cockroaches. I wake and get out of bed easily, it’s jumper cold and going to get a jumper from the caravan, a frog watches on—a big frog, not one of the baby frogs that swarms the place. Now, I write…day six of period and it’s still full power. The last full moon, the Easter full moon, was a wild one, being out of sorts with my living arrangement and the powerful women around (mostly Tara and Pippa). A dingo whines at my door.

 27th April

It’s the seventh day of my period. It wakes me in the night and there’s more blood again in the morning. Snug in the bed of my camper, the sun is rising and I google why your period could be longer and heavier than normal. There’s lots of possible reasons. Hormone imbalance. Shedding something ready to start something anew, I also think. The mornings, now cool, are bringing me comfort—the sounds of the night, the sounds of the Indian ocean, the sight of the stars. Marianne, my bush holiday home, my jewellery and thinking space. Another strong woman friendship in Tara. She is a sincere soul, a great cook, wide-eyed excitement, her assured walk and her similar dress sense, another soul sister of us thirties-women creating our own timeline, and who, like me, has struggled with skin troubles. We both acknowledge we’re sensitive to foods. I’m getting really good at slapping mosquitoes.

28th April

Thursday of bopping through a much more upbeat week. It’s silent in the nights. Too many cockroaches remain in the caravan and so I remain in my homely camper. The eighth day of my period and it seems to pitter out. Beyond a hormone imbalance, I can’t find a plausible explanation on the internet and so I consider this heavy bleed to be a marker of my state, a marker of this time. The release and the letting go. The dingoes whine. I go to pay my rent. ‘They’ve been fine,’ I reply to Jussi of the dingoes, ‘besides waking me with their whining a few mornings.’
‘That’s so weird, there’ve never done that to anyone else before.’
Cut to me in the nights before their whining, sitting alone in front of my caravan with the guitar, making up silly (and a little bit brilliant) songs that include their names. That’s the secret with dogs, sing them silly songs with their names and they’ll love you forever.

29th April

Awake at 4am to the still-night air through my camper. I feel calm, relieved. Last night Tara had whipped up another incredible dish (God she’s just the best cook) of potatoes, rice and fish something (a body part – cheeks?), which we ate it on Wil’s verandah.
Wil told a shortened version of money arguments with his sister and when he spoke of her being a lawyer and the lines of his family, I was laughing inside to our similarities (although I can’t think of one living relative like me, compared with Wil’s one eccentric uncle). When Wil told a story of his great eccentric uncle of his who had been on Gallipoli and jumped ship to come to Australia instead of Wales, with rumours he ended up in Brisbane, I shared my thoughts aloud: ‘HEY, my great-grandfather was on Gallipoli…and he lived in Brisbane.’
Tara and I eat plant based cookie dough for dessert and Wil helps Tara secure all necessities for her drive South. I am feeling less nervous about moving to Wil’s. Less like I will impose and bother him and more like I could be comfortable in using this space as I feel from deep within, as me
At daybreak I’m doing my yoga stretch under the mango trees to the sound of mosquitoes. At the end of the yoga practice under the mango trees, hands in prayer and sitting cross legged, my vagina had one more release after the long, back-to-front period. It bubbled, beyond my control. That has never happened before.
I take my strong black coffee into the camper and write (despite wanting to bead jewellery) to the sound of a washed out ocean, mentally planning to cut down my stuff, eliminating the meaningless, the pollution, the noise.
A full work day where there aren’t enough hours in the day and suddenly I feel like I’ve been there forever. I’m in a good mood and so everyone else is in a good mood too.
I’m late to get home, too late for sunset and so Beth and I postpone until tomorrow, and I get to packing. Walking from the bins and back through Becca’s space, having contemplated going to the fridge, I’m peeling a label off a box when I hear a slight movement. At the right moment I look to a big brown (in colour) snake, equally as frightened as me, its head raised, working out what’s going on. I freeze, I backtrack, the snake and I going our separate ways.

30th April

Another terrible, terrible night’s sleep. Little ants in my bed, an awake mind and feeling it should be morning but it’s 10:30 and I’m sweating, I’m peeing next to the camper, I’m under the stars. The mango people leave for the markets at quarter to four. I wake again one minute before my 4:44 alarm and forty-five minutes later I’m up and washing my sheets, clapping mosquitoes and deciding I’m eager for this move in hope for better night sleeps.
I go to Wil’s prepared for my awkwardness and his moods, which I’ve heard about. I go to Wil’s in search for calm time for writing.
Calm!
Yesterday at work Susie had said I’m a calming presence (despite my manic jumping between tasks) and I’d replied to her, ‘Hey, calm! I’d been writing about calm this morning.’
Now, patting the dingoes, who give me graceful downward dogs, I’ll do my last yoga under the mango trees.

1st May ‘22

I’m at Wil’s, doing my morning stretch when my phone chimes. Bert the ram died overnight. He’d been sick and had walked with Mum up the paddock. Tears uncomfortably swell. Bert and I had a special relationship, he’d run around the paddock to the sound of my voice, or wait by the apple tree for me to feed him. I’d trained him to handfeed. RIP Bert.
It’s a sombre start to the day but boy am I glad to be here. I feel calm. A lot calmer. Still I’m a shadow of myself in conversation, quiet and polite with Wil, as is he with me. I’ll embrace getting to know Wil, because already I feel sad by the thought to leave this space. I don’t want to leave this space. But there should be enough time to feel into the comfort, shed my shyness, and just be. That’s all I have to do here; just be. Fuck though, so many mosquitoes around me.
I swim at high tide: do you think that when we die we go to another life and that life is in the past and we really could rewrite history?
Back in the hacienda, I watch an animation shared on Facebook of Moby’s Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad and it reminds me of why my hearts feels so bad. When we collapse, people will need me for support, for their pillar of strength, and I will be there…knowing.
Wine’d. A hot shower in Wil’s shower. Noise of news coverage from Wil’s phone. I hear grown men bickering like high school girls. ‘Well that sounds bleak,’ I begin.
Wil likes to stay informed.
While I like people to like to stay informed, I’m up to pussy’s bow with fixation on all the bad. Being constantly exposed to the negative makes no difference when I know we have so much bad to fight against. And real change is deep change, and deep change doesn’t happen overnight.

 —

“There are moments in life, so monumental and still, that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or the interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.” Sarah Winman, Still Life

2nd May ‘22

The premise of Gemstones feels so obvious. Which is exactly my point. Many artists, musicians have come before me in this space. Xavier Rudd. Missy Higgins. Tanya. John Butler. They are in the air. And this air is full of inspiration. I want to take a week off work and just hang here. Work here. Gemstones is the change I wish to see.

3rd May ‘22

There are so many mosquitoes around me. There’s a skink in the sink and I unthinkably pour the hot water from the pot of my boiling egg and it convulse in its pain. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell the skink. I’m sorry to you too, Sarah. Something eaten yesterday is irritating your skin today. Bit of cheese, the crackers, perhaps? The wine, a beer, the mince? Too many to tell. This morning I feel a tad stress and so over Lonely. So over it! Tempting to give it all up…focus on Gemstones…a lot of turmoil tonight. A lot of miner hatred. I utter nothingness around Wil. Not being my generous self, I punish myself with food.

5/5/22

Wine has me saying: this story was given to me, I must write it.
With writing, I can add magical elements that seem rational.
A highschool friend launches fashion website. That was almost me, but it was never meant to be.
The sane people are the ones who know they’re crazy.
I don’t trust people who call me babe while barely knowing me.
Remember time, Sarah. Time. And who you are with time.
Body young, skin soft, only mine for the taking.
It’s time to share.
To attract, amongst other things, a solid computer/graphic designer for my website. And books.
Holy shit I’ve just had a profound realisation. That dog I always thought to have a distinctive bark is actually a barking owl.
Out of bed at 3:45am this morning. Energy lingers from the top of the property, the main house, and I’ll decide what energy I’ll inhale here.
Would I prefer no friends or mediocre friends?

 —

Writing causes thinking, thinking creates an image and you get these images, and you get these images growing, you’re building a vision in your mind…it’s the visionaries that change the world

6/5/22

Mosquitoes, frogs and me. I send the final word doc for Lonely to the printer. After all these years of writing and the daydreams I had of its potential, I’m happy to have let go of my pride enough to self-publish. And move on. Still, I fear losing those who have come to know me without knowing this story. I can only hope they don’t look at me differently.
My mind wanders back to daydreams of disappearing, running away, hiding, whatever way you want to put it. Packing it all up. Leaving. Then these moments are washed with memories of the ultimate dream: that simple life in a home, with nature and a garden and creative space and lover. Through these internal processes I understand how this dream will require vulnerability on my part. Taking the risk of putting myself out there and even if it brings the possibility of a disappointed heart, it will be temporary.
I (dream) to love again.
Amongst my latest sea of jawline pimples, I look to my higher cheeks and think ‘at least I don’t have any big ones visible there.’ Now, the next day, my cheek is sore with one appearing there.
I cry. I cry and I cry. My whole heart out.
Sitting under this wooden light, clapping mosquitoes in the night, a guitar sounding from the house verandah, love songs to babe, everyone partnered, friends with other friends, a bottle of wine for me, an organic block of chocolate, drunk and drowning, tears flowing like the wine, frogs over my shoulder watching me pee, heartbreak, heartbreak, to daydreams quashed and hopeful love lost. When I go to the house for water, I’m asked what I’m doing. ‘Writing,’ I say.
‘How retro,’ Wil says.
I’m not retro. I am caught in my mind, telling people they’re not alone and yet I’m terrifyingly alone.
I decide: I will go. I will go from this life. To a world without phone and knowing, without expectations and everyone with that doe eyed gaze into eyes that aren’t mine. The sooner I can do this next story the sooner I can be at peace. In my flight across the seas, I can only hope that I’m given solace in death. In the interim, as I write and digest this chocolate and wine, I will dance, with the likes of Kamali, Marc and Roser, and I will love those who I don’t even love. A year. I have a year. And then I’m gone.

—

Abstract Morality – Jack Kerouac

7/5

Saturday, sober. Still emotional. With large part due to skin rash. My car’s coming and all my money’s gone. With the printing of 150 copies of Lonely, I’ll officially have no money.
A hard weekend, increasingly desperate for the arrival of my sort of people into town. I had been toying with the notion of asking Wil about his spare room but with the girlfriend here, no thank you. Maybe I’ll end up living bush after all.
With a year to go until I might die (or disappear), I have much to do. I will dance. I will keep killing mosquitoes.

Sunday 8th

What do I want?
The spirit of the house on a Sunday is back in my life.
I don’t know love.
The exploration of love.
If the future is bleak, and you look back, think: what did I do? The least you can do is open your mind.
Not about cutting all sweet food, but processed foods.
Stability, I crave, in order to achieve. Not forever stability, but stability for now.
My tiny house will be easy to clean.
Despite work being 24-hours away, I regret this.
Now, why do I consider myself a writer when my screen is so messy with sloppy sentences and ideas lost in sloppy sentences. It’s because of my ideas that I consider myself a writer. But to be a writer I have to work hard. Very very hard. Because my brain is overloaded. With ideas to be released.

9th

Cosy in bed until 7:30am. Now at the hacienda table and warm wind blows in. I can only hope it’s blowing in change. Arlo licks my leg, I ask him if he’s come for the mice.
This warm breeze, something familiar coming. Energy scattered. I’m jumping around, can’t concentrate, can’t decide. Overloaded. At least yesterday I had no sugar. One day down.
Okay. Pack away the jewellery making (after making two necklaces) and focus on my writing, organising of markets, and printing. Writing is part of me. It’s necessary to my ‘mental health.’ Or mental stability. As one who thinks so deeply on structures and systems, this is what’s needed.

10th May

8:22am and still so cold. Pants + socks + jumper + headband. That changing wind blew in something more last night, Wil and I leaning back on his wide verandah couch watching Australian Story after spending the time he was cooking the pesto pasta and we were eating the pesto pasta, talking about rock n roll. Brian Jones, mainly. When I sleep, I sleep deeply, back in my bamboo sheets. And I’m excited to wake naturally early and make headway on Gemstones. I’d had a quiet, antisocial few days off work. I adore how Wil is about, always being creative in his own world. I giggle a lot out of nerves.

  —

Gone mad! The house is meant to be behind me (but instead it’s across the road) and I’m home on lunch and I hear a beeping. Back from work, the beeping continues. I go inside. But I’m distracted. I follow the beeping, over the road, through the gate, peer through the windows of the house.

  —

The stories we tell ourselves: I’m beautiful I’m beautiful I’m beautiful I’m beautiful. I know my skin is still soft and my tummy flat. I know my gaze of natural contemplation can be most serene. I’m beautiful, in my own way, and it’s nice to share beauty.

  —

After this year of healing, of no intimacy in traditional form, I’m shedding my boundaries. To release this idea of commitment and forever.

  —

A lady at work wants the $12,200 pearls for her rose gold earrings. She calls her husband, who agrees. Her excitement radiates from her to me. She’ll be happy when she wears the earrings. ‘I’ll a little odd,’ she tells me, once her daughter has left.
‘Me too,’ I whisper back. ‘That’s why I have rings on my wedding finger but marriage is not even on my mind.’
The lady had thought me married. But the ring was on my right hand because my dermatitis has flared back up again.

 —

Always seeking seeking, scheming scheming, trying to get to that place in my mind. At work, when there’s chocolate and cookies in the fridge, I gorge. The days are long. Too long. And being in that building all day, no air from an open window, no trees no breeze, I become manically bored by 3pm. Sugar has become the sweetest part. This isn’t healthy. If I stay in Broome past October I can’t do these log days. The first day off (currently Saturdays) I need to recover and shift between.

13th May 2022

Bumps on face. Mouth ulcered from sugar. Unsure how to combat these long days at work. Not wanting to work long days; how much more can I ask for? Priority on markets this weekend. To sell myself. I’ll live from my car if I have to. To get through the season. Here at Wil’s is so great. When we talk we talk easily. On a range of topics, in a range of tones. But the time is limited and I’m unsettled in knowing it’s limited.
At work I eat more processed sugars with a sore mouth. Maybe I’m just that time in evolution with the repercussions of processed foods? And the binging. And the antibiotics.
I collect Bill from his house by the port. He’d called us to collect him, which is a major step in his (hopeful) acceptance that he can’t drive.
Bill and I go to Allure via Paspaley Plaza, and while he goes into the chemist I go to Best & Less (at the direction of a customer who’d come in wearing a hat I liked).
Best & Less is a supersize store without windows, the lighting is grey, terrible music plays, music without meaning, music created for status and money, and racks overflow with pieces of what will soon, once they pass through the resisters, be considered junk. I pay for my $7 hat and the lady comments that she’s never seen my Bank Australia card before. ‘It’s a bank that doesn’t support fossil fuels,’ I tell the lady.

14th

Early stages of Gemstones writing and I’ve realised the importance of Sasha character. I will give so much of myself in this work. This book will be published. It will see me travel. This realisation lies with my thinking on intimacy. I’m on the verge of major work. Last night, drinking wine with Pippa, I had said how clear the world’s current madness is to me internally and yet I struggle to find words to describe it. So I’ll go searching.

 —

“If you’re not willing to downgrade your lifestyle for a year to have a lifestyle you want forever, you care too much what other people think.” Jim Carey

Mid-May

It’s 35 degrees so I’ll write from the fan next to the bed. It’s another weekend aimlessly wandering. Aimlessly searching for rhythm. Rhythm doesn’t come in the afternoons, I know that. And before powering through my story, I must take time to establish rhythm. It’s all in the rhythm.

The Sunday

Hate Divers. Music’s fine but the people, the scene, no thanks. I couldn’t even dance, distracted by a heavy mind.

—

I wake in the middle of the night, wine’d, realising I must be due for my period. When I fall back asleep I dream of sweet gestures but I can’t finish the dream because I really need to pee, which is when I find my period.

—

I tell myself I should love work because everyone’s lovely, but I don’t love work. These long days. Not enough breaks.

—

I’ll give myself a gentle day, a break from ‘writing’ to better refine my approach. I’ll swim in the sea, read, garden, cook dinner for old housemates. Keep things simple.

—

A girl I know of through friend’s Instagram and Facebook is having a book published. It’s that Melbourne scene.

—

I don’t binge eat when around others. I didn’t do it at Broomerang. Now, alone, my happiness is questioned in the way I go to the supermarket and spend so much money on stuff from packets. The stuff in packets doesn’t last long.

—

What is it that drives my thirst to disappear? Where does this inner turmoil come from? To disappear would make no difference to anyone (maybe Pippa) and so I’ll physically lighten my load to mentally lighten my load. Again, this thought: if I were to disappear, as dreamed, then there’s nothing to lose.

Full Moon

Only did an hour writing today, and that’s okay. I’ve changed my tact again. I can’t begin writing Gemstones because what I’ve written is terrible. So terrible. Instead, I need to enjoy myself. I need to feed energy into detailed planning.
After all these years, all this agony, my moods, my lack of energy, my skin, that pain, I go to see Jen the naturopath. Today I weigh 57.6 kilograms and I don’t have enough muscle. There are several things to work on with improving my skin, adding to positive moods, returning energy. I need protein. I need more meat. No grains and sugars. No to anything from packets, really. Dairy also a no because of hormones and imbalances. I need healthy fats. Like nuts, seeds and avocados. I can eat one avocado a day. While fruits are to be limited besides berries. Can add some paleo granola. Carbs from veg, lots of veg. Six weeks hardcore, which takes me to my birthday.
Sunday eve: awry, red wine and Belgian ice cream with Wil, Beth and out there conversations. Wil’s funny. He’s as whacky as me. Fast becoming a friend who feeds my soul. I’m higher than the clouds, waking to the fucking buzz of all the mosquitoes in my room.  I don’t want to go to work.

18/05

Wil’s girlfriend came by last night. I hid in the hacienda and ate the rest of the ice cream. I read, watched. I will rise. Get off this sugar, have fun in my writing. I drink bone broth tea. Still trying to piece together a version of happiness. It involves people. But not mosquitoes. Sick of these mosquitoes. Alcohol making my emotional. It’s been doing that thing where I start crying and my heart’s stinging. So I write. And I get an email, approved for the markets. I don’t reply. I’m enigmatic, I’m withdrawn, I’m hard to crack. But if you get in, I’ll show you a whole new world. With alcohol I’m reminded of the need to write. To write and leave. In one year.

19th

In the bathroom mirror at work there are marks on my face and bags under my eyes. Having transferred money for the Lonely’s printing, I’m back to nothing. On the other side of the bathroom door, the tide is high—to the carpark—and I enter the code and walk through the main door thinking, Man I feel so sad. I’m so unhappy. I’m missing Broomerang. I’m frustrated to my loneliness. I round the corner and Isma tells me I look sad and heavy. ‘I’m unhappy,’ I tell her. Because life is better shared. So I’ll go to the bookshop to cheer myself up, dreaming that one day they’ll stock my books.
With a glass of champagne and the Eurythmics playing as we packed up the jewellery, my mood has lifted and so has everyone else’s. I walk the familiar route home through the courthouse. To music! To beautiful people! To secret midnight pashes!

20/05

These Friday night blues have become so real. Up on the verandah, Wil and I are both with our computers and there are conversations on Kimberley rock art, which are some of the oldest traces of people, before the last ice age. Wil’s a storytelling extraordinaire.
It’s my last weekend alone in the hacienda. On the hunt for energy, on the hunt for friends, I stay in bed, watching some beautiful girl in Portugal create a dream garden. The girl comments on enjoying the process, on not giving yourself a time limit. She’s right, and remembering this (probably by repeating it a million times) could change a lot for me. Right now, I don’t need to delve straight into the writing of Gemstones. To enjoy the process I insert a different energy into it. A sunshine energy. Because it’s important to first prioritise happiness when I’m feeling so unhappy. When it’s time for it to come together, there’ll be wonderful people and there’ll be something special.

Saturday 21st

At the market I see Wil and Arlo. Wil is so tired, awake twice in the night, Arlo barking, the neighbours again with someone in their yard.
For voting I’m sent on a wild goose chase between centres trying to understand where I belong. I return to the interstate voting despite my WA license. I see S.B. S.B doesn’t see me. There is no line. I’m standing before a table, waiting, and I see S.B’s goddaughter. It takes her longer to see me. When she does, she asks, ‘Know where you know me from?’
‘Of course, the house. You’re living there at the moment?’
‘Unfortunately.’
They had an intruder again last night. The goddaughter, sleeping in the treetop room, had heard the gate. She looked out to someone in the yard. I didn’t get the full story but the goddaughter was shaken, and she wanted to chat.
I walk back through the markets, my mind whirling, planning what’s next. Plus, the rash is back. It’s dense along my jawline, with blemishes and uneven skin sprinkled up my cheeks. I think about how I feel my stress affecting this. Trivial stress in a sense, like I always want to cling on to the melancholic contemplation that comes with searching. It is time to truly shift habits.
I’m on my scooter, I’m at the op shop. The lady won’t accept my 50c for a Tim Winton book—the only cash I have—but I see Carles instead. He’s been feeling flat too, with a lot of internal stress, a lot of thoughts. ‘I’m taking this weekend to find some happiness,’ I tell him. ‘You aren’t alone.’
At Bunnings, I buy seedlings. There’s a newly burnt out car out the front.
A big gust of warm wind comes through the hacienda. What’s next? I’m eager to have something published so I have less to prove to people. Then, happiness, giving me strength for the new book, which will come from a happy place.
You can physically see the wallowing of my shortcomings on my face. But Earth needs me. It needs the strength I can harness when weakness becomes a blanket.
Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

22nd

It’s a healing weekend. I’ve been seeing how my mind starts to wander, and I have been strong in pulling it back, remembering that I am atoms, I am stars, a mere drop in time. While Wil is close to losing his mind from the possibility of someone coming in and taking his wallet, I’m with the butterflies, and we’re laughing.
Letter to Earth is a book that is changing me. This struggle with work is the struggle of the industry I’m partaking. We don’t need to keep buying anew, we don’t need all this elaborate jewellery. I shouldn’t feel guilty about my displacement amongst women with whom I deeply care for. My displacement is with cause, I remind myself, in an afternoon of cooking instead of working, of indulging in thoughtful sweet treats as I dream of my garden and modest home.
In my modest home, I once again decide, it’s not just about the flora and fauna, but people too. Yes, in my modest home amongst a natural environment, there’ll be people about. There’ll be community. There’ll be others out there with the same thoughts. Others not in competition, instead creating a global community. When I come into money, or money comes to me, I also decide, it’s going right to the space that will one day save my family.

I’m angst
I’m beauty
I’m the sane
Of the crazy

I’m joy
I’m pleading
I’m hope
Lost in a political maze

I’m woman with man
I’m strong
When I cry
Don’t apologise

Cause I’m contradictions
Frictions
Floating
Free

I’m a product
Caged
Cause I’m you
Like me

Professional
Emotional
Tired of the race

Help me
Help yourself
And we can be…

23/05

I am…furious!!! FURIOUS! All this difficult writing I did yesterday is gone and it’s all this stuff with my fucking computer and fucking internet. All this messing about has ruined my early morn coffee vibe. Thankfully this is all small scale stuff. Thankfully it is a misty morning and the mist sounds like rain on the tin roof of the hacienda. I’d had a good night’s sleep, witnessing a growing strength in the new dominant voice of my mind. Then, mosquitoes. Now, fuck this. Fuck the mosquitoes. Fuck putting chemicals on my face in the name of ‘beauty.’

—

On the phone Mum comments about the latest photos of Charlie on Tinybeans (an app). No, I haven’t checked Tinybeans. I don’t check Tinybeans. They send too many emails. And I’m classic Sarah, going on to say about the phones being shoved in baby’s faces. After the phone call I identify that through my own search and my own awakening, I don’t need to bring others down. Belittling other’s choices is something I’ve learnt and now it’s something to unlearn, as I accept the notion of personal journeys, and leading by example.

—

I learn my first (full) song on guitar in this hacienda. Musicians before me have left spirit to capture. Although I’m not a musician, I am a thinker and creator. Creator of thought. Not easily pigeonholed. For days now it’s only really been Wil I’ve spoken to. Going inward feels good. I’m nearly ready. Just not sure what I’m ready for.

—

Working these hours in such a system structure. There is power in resisting this. In having the time to create food for our minds, body, spirit and the planet. Because food also brings people together.

—

Of course sugar is going to kill more of us than covid ever will but in an age of the internet these statistics don’t give us the immediate result that feeds the news stories.

—

I’ve spent, what, probably weeks, maybe even months of my life organising and planning ideas I never return to. A decade’s worth. Over-complicating things.

—

Her gift is a mind wanting to be different. All that is meant to come for me will come. During this, vulnerability is an obligation.

—

My throat is bubbling, it’s blocked. I smile.

23/05

I’m feeling creative, putting words of women onto my photos. Rachel calls, heaving and silent. ‘Omg what’s up, Rach?’
‘My daddy died.’
I go see her. She tells me to tell my Dad I love him. I’ve never told my Dad I love him, Rach.

26th May

This mad world. I am one of the awakening. I can see the future. I know the absurdity. This mad world. Blinded by economic growth that ruins the planet. The politicians in their self-righteous attire. Make them stop. How we’re ‘up from last year’ showing greatness as making lots of money. I must talk of this expensive growth. I must be brave, I must break free. I will feel every part of the journey that’s ahead.
At work, I strive to fit in. To remain there for the money although it’s clear in my mind’s eye that my time at Allure is limited. Kellie’s off sick with covid (and Mum, Andy and my new ute are nearly here). Reading Letters to Earth on my break in the kitchen, I’m dazed. Isma is hating on Alex’s competitiveness. It’s annoying, it’s true, but ‘I don’t care,’ I tell Isma. ‘This is all so meaningless.’  
At sunset, right after the Earth has spun away from the sun, the water out to the flaming horizon is purple and yellow silk. I swim. The taste of the salt, the feeling of my face as I dive through the waves. I’m alive. Alone but I’m not Lonely, finding myself: writer, jewellery and photographer who sees a sick world and feels the beauty of a sick world. In this sick world, I know the imperative of women’s strength and soul to take us beyond survival. To take us to a new world. My art shares the interpretation for this new world. And I’ll continue to sacrifice money and societal/parental admiration in priority of physical and mental health. The world needs healthy humans. Because we’ve spread our sickness to the planet.
I’ve visions of an alternate future. I’ve always been the visionary. That’s my gift. Now, this visionary isn’t feeling too great. Covid?

27th May

In the hacienda, my jewels are laid neat and I love them. My book is next to me, unbound. Scatterings of a new story (to be published) before me. On my computer screen is a photo of Roser before the lattices of Broomerang, words written over the photo. I learn Moon River on guitar. This is my happy place. But my throat tickles, my head is heavy like my brain rattles in my head. Wil’s in his workshop, telling me of his sleepless night and ‘altercation’ with a guy asking for a cigarette. I take myself to work. ‘Go away,’ they tell me. I go away. I test negative but feel positive I have something. I feel worse, I retreat to the hacienda, I’ll rest this out. It’ll pass, I’ll be fine. I’ll reflect and project.  

28 May, Covid

I tested positive ten minutes after Mum, Andy and the ute arrived. There’s too much going through my head, including covid, which penetrates deep into my chest like I’ve smoked a million cigarettes (maybe it’s from the million cigarettes). But there’s a bigger C than covid at play. It ties in with community and creativity.
It’s climate.
It’s 5am, Wil’s spare room, tears in my eyes, aching for someone to hug me, I watch a National Geographic doco on Atlantis. Then, Before the Floods with Leonardo Di Caprio. Climate change. Fossil fuels. Our consumption. The expectations to our presumption we deserve this way of life. The urgency in this while consumerism is rife. Capitalism: grow grow grow. Like I hear at work.
Work.
Capitalism has to collapse. It will take the greedy men with it.
Feminism will rise, with its healing power, conversations, and shift of priorities.
My role in this? As an artist and writer? Subtly inspire change. This is through my next book, The Gemstones of Broomerang. Gemstones like a utopian future? Because my role is to shift the norm, to question our consumption and how we take this for granted.
Change.
For change we need a sense of community, the embracement of creativity. We need to keep laughing because laughter is important. So, my trajectory for beyond covid: first, a hug. Then, Gemstones will be tapped away at, taking inspiration from the season ahead. The writing style, the depth of characters, this will come later. It’ll come on the other side of Melbourne for Lucy’s October wedding, when the heat encroaches and the mangoes are ready to eat. There, I’ll turn away from the fulfilling season, taking love with me, carving this story into something more than a book. This time, there won’t be the time to produce it like I had with Lonely.
I have courage in me, I do, to see in the eyes of someone as wild as me, and to smile to those eyes and invite them in.
Wow, head like lead, a day in bed…

31st

Freezing Broome day. Like a true winter day. My hands and feet are ice and I’m all rugged up, glad to not be going to work. It’s hard to write nicely with such cold hands. It’s been quite a time. I felt annoyance by the notion of having to entertain R & A in this time. In the future, I’ll have space to put guests away from my own space.

—

The timing of Liz’s email reply to having read Hello I am Lonely gives me the encouragement that I really could have the potential to write again. This time, I’ll do it properly. I am still working on my Gemstones mission statement, and will note notes from my notes for now:

·       Empower the people

·       Community

·       Creativity

·       Climate change

·       Anti-consumerism

·       A new way of being, a new way of believing

·       Lifestyle and consumption are at the forefront of climate fight

·       With love to all the people whose lifestyles I’m questioning

·       Us women, we’re Mother Nature

·       I’ll be taking the science simplify it, conveying it with humour

·       To give love and not be afraid that it’s not given in return.

Covid day four, early Monday morn

It sucks. Life sucks right now. Lying awake in the middle of the night, hours after waking, I’m crying and I’m crying. My back is so sore from this bed and my jaw is in so much pain from grinding and straining, even while awake. It’s should be great that my Mum’s here looking after me when I have covid, but it’s not. It’s the worst. They’re people in my space and she’s scrolling her fucking phone each time I’m down in the hacienda. I swear next time she scrolls it I’ll throw it in the pond. Maybe, I guess, this all comes back to the fraught relationship I have with my Mum, having previously thought that it is a relationship to be healed in order for me to love freely, unquestionably, without fearing the ramifications—like being rejected or unwanted like I was in my teenage years—when showing my love. I would like to explain this to myself, explain this to Mum, that despite her unwarranted concerns when I left on my 2019 road trip towards Broome, I did it anyway. I listened to Sarah, who didn’t know what she was searching for but went with a calling. That calling to bring her closer to the internal peace she craved, finding nature and freedom and creatives who welcomed her with open arms. Now, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Because now I’ve accepted and understood my Sarahpowers. Because I’m a creative, Mum. I have friends who are like family and know my writing, photography and jewellery. They know me not as a spiteful person but as a deep and insightful thinker. This is who I am, Mum. When I wake in the night and I can’t sleep I watch spirituality and society and sociology. I’m searching for explanations that support my unease to this time and place. I will navigate the months ahead with as much happiness and positive spirit as possible. There will be total new work for Gemstones, later, for it’s not yet heading in the right direction.

 —

Longer Term Visions

o   Tiny/small home in forest surrounded by family and community

o   Grow veg to be self-sufficient, and cook delicious food that nourishes me. Cook for community too

o   Writing/photography + jewellery. With writing I am close with my editor and there is illustration collaboration. Jewellery is more commission pieces without need for a constant online presence

o   Book published, show created

o   No debt, travel with purpose

o   Photos that showcase and complement my journey but at not for selling something

o   International and slow travel with family for likes of books & sourcing stories & jewellery (the sourcing of jewellery is also the sourcing of stories)

o   Have agent! Close collaboration.

1st June ‘22

Arlo and Sarah on the outdoor couch. Feeling like I’ve a head cold. The rain has passed, that cosy winter feeling evaporated. Spring is here, clarity clawing, people arriving. It’s imperative to prioritise happiness and joy. Before writing begins later this year, I’m calling on the most wholesome people to share my sphere. What I desire, repeated:

o   Gradually, respectfully & mindfully shift away from full-time work

o   Don’t be afraid of reputation in thoughtful deeds

o   I will have a dinner Sunday to show love to people I love

o   I can give space to bring people together

o   I’m not a lost traveller anymore.

2/6

Tuna with Wil last night. I drink a beer as he tells Batavia stories. I wake with a sore stomach. My world spinning.
Finding true happiness in the moment is through inner peace. Through the acceptance of myself. Maybe I can’t yet play guitar so well, but I can unleash my heart and in my heart is poetic views analysing society and its structures. I close my eyes and I enter my mind. In my mind I dance because finally I’m free, I’m crazy me.
We hear screaming.
Is that a woman, I wonder.
I creep towards the gate.
A man is shouting and he’s furious and threatening. A woman has been hit while on the ground.
Wil takes Arlo. I grab my phone and follow.
I crouch with the woman and the man stands beside her. Everything goes up and down but the man won’t go the opposite direction. ‘Just leave it, Sarah, come here, just leave it,’ Wil says, Arlo now calm beside him.
‘He won’t leave her alone, I won’t leave her.’
Wil finishes the call to the police. I don’t care what Wil says, this lady is being abused and I won’t turn my back and walk away. Eventually the man comes running back and doesn’t see the lady. I see her through to being placed in the back of the police car. She’s familiar with getting in the back.
Back in the safety of Wil’s beautiful sanctuary, he says, ‘On a positive note, you probably gave them covid.’
I hope I didn’t.
‘I really just want them dead, I’m so over this,’ Wil goes on.
Wil probably needs to move from Broome if that’s his attitude. I don’t mind what he thinks of the situation/me, I’m not going to join the chorus of turning my back when a women’s being beaten in the street. The lady had been thankful, she’d hugged me (not that it’s about that).

3rd June

The final Friday night, the ute drives a dream, and taking Sunny for a scoot I’m born again. The fragrant air is floral and sweet. Air of the tropics. The light like springtime in my childhood. Riding, smiling and smelling better than normal. Seeing backpackers carrying fire sticks and kerosene. I’m so excited to be free!
Tonight, although I remain low, I’m now permanently in the main house of Wil’s, craving sugar because I’m hormonal and being ravaged by sandflies. I eat homemade chocolate to combat the cravings. Wil’s taken Arlo for a walk, and must be having dinner with the girlfriend. The whole house is open. I wished to be saved from my lone scotch at home. Squeezing my eyes closed tight, I’m smiling. My confidence and my nurturing is attractive.
You’re beautiful when you smile!
Close your eyes and imagine that you’re playing guitar and you can!
I don’t write essays, I write journals!
Communism to consumerism!
Last day of official quarantine!
This season I will let go of visions and endeavour for presence!
This morning in my dream there had been the collapse of a building in which I narrowly escaped!
Still living paycheque to paycheque for a while now!

4/6

A murder of crows behind the hacienda. They come with the season. Terrorising us like tourists.
I go to the market and I’m so happy to see Marc at his leather store. There’s much to catch up on—he’s bought the house/land next to Kamali’s.
I walk into town for more op-shop jewellery to recreate. Back at the markets I sit on the grass and watch Wil play music. When I see the girlfriend with her eternal pout and light tread, I leave with funny feelings (what is it about her that gives me bad vibes?) and go back to Marc despite my waning energy.
I wander back up the street, bopping along, my future not holding much excitement, thinking of leaving work at the end of the year. What will come in between, we’ll see.
Moving my belongings from the hacienda to the house—still I have a lot of…stuff, I feel how much time I spend floating. How I want to lay down my roots with certainty.
In these movements, on this lone day, I decide when I write Gemstones I want to be firmly in place so my attention and thoughts aren’t distracted to planning. When I write Gemstones, I will be in a home, with creative and grounding company.

5th June

Aren’t Sundays just marvellous? On waking in the house, I go to the hacienda to enjoy the space before Tara’s back tomorrow. With my strong black percolator coffee, I sit at the outdoor table. Bird calls are loud, it’s cooler again. My right hand is red, cracked and painful from cleaning (still super sensitive since using cement mix at Kevin’s). ‘You just need to be an author,’ Wil said last night when I described to him my stinging hands.
With my strong black coffee, I tie up an unfinished document for Gemstones—to be put aside until later this year/early next year, when I’ll have the space and dedication to commit to it—and start to feel sick with the taste of cheap white wine and the supermarket-bought oyster sauce Wil used in last night’s stir fry. Then there’s the cookie-dough balls, plant based but from a packet. I’m seeing how it all contains preservatives. To control my diet is to control my moods.
An email sounds. It’s Liz in reply, talking of finding an agent and that she hopes I will pursue this writing. ‘I do think you have a gift and I hope you develop it,’ she writes. I nearly cry to this. It’s everything to me right now.
When I do yoga, my ‘boobs’ are mozzie bites so pointy and small. I am insecure about them. But at least I have a good arse.
This season, I’ll write every day to get better and better.

6th June

Cool Monday morning. Right hand stinging, covered in dermatitis. Slept peacefully after possible humbug lurking around my car at bedtime. ‘I just think they’re cunts,’ Wil had said of ‘them’ as he hobbled around from dropping cement mixer on his foot. I won’t stay in Broome long enough to become like that, I decide. It’s the forest and the fresh vegetables I dream, anyway.
This morning I feel lost. Between the hacienda and the house, without spaces set up I write for the sake of writing. All the plants in and around the hacienda are thriving. They, like my hair, grow at this time of year. Marc, Pippa, Beth and Melissa had come for dinner last night. I made pumpkin soup and salad. It’s good to be bringing people together again.

7/6

White wine inflames my face and I wake with a sore throat. With all this protein, my body is changing. More filled out.

—

Full afternoon with Tara’s return and Melissa and her salad. We sit under the white and pink flowers next to the hacienda and I hear of southern adventures. I show them my book.

—

Comfortable in Wil’s house I can only hope that I don’t intrude or bother him. Because I want to stay. I don’t want to be moving again.

8June The Covid Shift

Morning with Arlo curled up beside me, tongue poking out, crows calling to us. There’s been a new setting to my dreams these past few nights. A nature setting, a lighter setting, a church element, almost.
On the first day back at work in Chinatown, I spend time with rich customers and they’re all lovely.
The afternoon sends me hyper, which has become common at work. I’m not short of energy and I don’t tell myself I’m short on energy. I tell myself I’m going to recover from covid fine, that I’ll be fine. Because the brain fog of covid isn’t total chaos—my writing and editing have been feeling sharper, I can do it with more clarity.
When the jets flew over I was on the toilet. I raced outside to the third one right overhead with an ear-cracking sound and black smoke trailing. I crane my head to Kenny up on the deck. ‘What are they?’ I ask.
‘Airforce.’
‘Defence…the Chinese…huh.’
When I walk to the bank on my lunch break, the Max Ritcher Broomerang song sounds through my ears and I have that sense of looking at the world removed. Watching myself. Our mediocrity. The misconception of time—how long a minute, a year, can feel and how small that is in hindsight.
At night I drink wine and eat sugar despite new pimples. Wil drops cans out the window although I’ve already moved the recycling bin to the street for recycling collection. Arlo licks clean the cooking dishes and they’ll be left in that position for the next few days.

10/06

From messages with home-friends, to the most enjoyable work dinner yet with rich foods and wine, I wake with an urge to write, but with not enough time before work to allow myself to ease into it. My skin’s a mess and I think of an important element to my existence: the time to laugh, to be active, to swim in the ocean, to be in nature, less in my head and more in my body.

 —

If you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

11

It’s an overcast Saturday with those cooler-wintery vibes. Wil eats porridge, says it’s freezing, and I make a raw slice, placing emphasis on my sore face where monstrous and painful pimples cloud my jawline and cheeks. I make a secret vow to put a proper stop to processed foods. To all processed food. This will mean I will have to create more of my own (because I’ve fallen off the bandwagon recently, with wine + cookies + ice cream).
Yesterday at work was a sad day. Already feeling the stress of Alex’s highly strung nature, I answer the phone before 9am. ‘Sarah, it’s Bill Reed.’
‘Hi Bill, how are you?’
‘Not so good. I put my phone, wallet and keys next to my bed to sleep, and this morning I woke up and…’
‘Oh Bill no…’
‘And…they’re gone, along with both cars.’
How sorry I am, I tell him. It’s a horrid feeling to someone being in your safety space while you’re sleeping.
‘Forty years I’ve been in this house, forty years, and never have I needed to lock it.’
Bill waits on the police. He calls again, gives me the report number.
At the modern and clean Broome police station, I wait in the empty foyer unsure what to do. After two minutes a lady appears. She’s abrupt when I begin to explain my case, until I gave the name ‘Bill Reed.’
‘He’s like a town icon,’ the stressed officer says.
‘And he’s stuck at home alone waiting.’
She hands me to an incompetent, too-cool younger male cop. I give him more accurate co-ordinations to find Bill’s house.
Bill’s house is truly magnificent and so much like Grandpa’s. Bill comes around from his desk with his walker, his shirt is undone at the bottom.
On the verandah, Bill sits low in the grand old chair, telling me the house was built in the 1920s. Bill tilts his head back and I put the eye drops in.
‘Forty years and never have I…’ Bill catches he breath, water trinkles down his left cheek from the eye drops.
I breathe in his sadness. I go to the front to make sure the police can find the house. I lead them to Bill, and return to work.
Later, Bill phones me again. I change his passwords and secret questions and get into his iCloud after an hour. I click around until I’m in the section showing me his phone’s locations. Stracke Cove, which is off Tang Street, near the cemetery. I call the police and tell the young male officer sounds overwhelmed. ‘We’re had about 500 jobs today, I have a million tabs here, I need your case number,’ he tells me.
The police won’t go to get Bill’s phone. It’s at the point of being beyond the police.
Do we put too much trust in police?

12/06

Sirens wake me. Multiple sirens racing through town. I stay awake, watching darkness shift to golden out the side of the house that Wil has recently transformed. It’s a cold morning and I’m excited for the tasks before me, seeing beyond the slight-headache of morning, which has happened since covid. Yesterday, after several failed attempts of weeks past, I found my groove for Isma-inspired necklaces.

—

Andy Warhol. Liv’s summary that he was the first to sell himself.

—

Point of difference at markets? Myself.

13June

Another Monday free of work’s obligations.
Marc and I walked along the long track of Buckley’s, through enclosures of spindly trees and fields of reeds that glow golden with the low sun. For 18 years Marc hasn’t lived in a house. He’s happiest between his van and bush camp, he says.
When I dive under the waves I bend my body back and feel the stretch pull through me. It’s my new favourite thing.
Back at camp, we eat dahl for dinner. I love Marc’s dahl—I remember returning to a pot of it sitting on the stove of Kamali’s house truck, after we’d trekked to a deserted beach one cold day in Denmark February, when I first befriended Marc and Kamali.
Sleeping my first night in the new swag, the near full moon drowns the stars.
On waking it’s super fresh. I finish my bookclub book in the swag. When I emerge I’m determined to make a fire. It takes some time to catch the flame, but I get there in the end.
I take the morning slow, concentrating on my fire, deciding I won’t do the Eucalypt dying workshop because I want to focus on the hobbies for my personal growth, and my period is a day late, which is odd—usually regular to my 26 days or there abouts.
My coffee gurgles. It’s still cold. Marc’s doing qigong somewhere and there’s wind through the trees. Through the night I’d listened to the ocean.

14/06

An old man, a noble character, grieves for stolen items. He calls me: ‘Sarah it’s Bill Reed, sorry to disturb you on your day off…’ I go to the house at Stracke Cove, ask for his phone back. The guy peering through the ajar door assesses me, he knows where the phone is because he says ‘sorry’ after saying ‘I can’t help you.’
Books arrive. I sell my first ever book to Silay, sitting at Wil’s kitchen bench. Thirty bucks, you beauty.
My skin dries out.
Feet harder from the bush.
My muscles are sore and I wait on my period, now overdue. I wait and I wait. When I go to Google, other people have searched for the same effects of their period after having covid.
I race. Around the house, waiting on Bruce, David and Elsa.
My nose is dry.
Another part of Liz’s email was her thinking that Lonely is publishable.
How I detest this publishing world! The snobbery in only accepting submissions from publishing events or people they know. I will not go through such avenue. It’s so…Melbourne.
After work, my head is sore.
I think I have to go to bed.

15/06

Hooray hooray my period is here!!!

16/06

I stretch my legs after work (where I ate cake) and chat to Elsa as I head to the markets. The staircase is still an hour away but the markets are busy. I walk to the standalone market sellers, with their singular tables table, no umbrellas and professional displays. I’m overwhelmed just looking at them. I don’t belong here. I don’t fit in. I’m stealing ideas and products and I’m a fraud.
On the walk home I listen to Gemstones music and go through the motions: what am I doing. Why am I doing the markets. I just need to call myself a writer or jeweller or photographer and I am one, right? Why am I so intimidated.
The full moon is lit golden, hanging above a tree of army green. I’m out at the table, Arlo grumbling next to me as he tries to get comfortable. Arlo’s the cutest in the morning, a sleeper-in-er-er like his dad. I make a wish to the full moon to combat my insecurities and find a place within the markets, taking attention in my stride.
I’m in my underwear, alternating between cooking curry and cleaning Wil’s fridge to make room for me. My butt is bigger with more protein, and so is my cellulite. I know processed foods weighs me down. My body needs more exercise than 8.5 hours in a retail shop. What I do during those tiring hours is eat cookies. One day I won’t think of cookies because I’ll have the world to worry about instead.
Nervous to the time that is coming, I understand that I mustn’t turn back, that I must persevere. Accept it all. I eat tofu with me curry because I like it.

17/06

Jumper and tracksuit morning. It’s colder than last year because last year I didn’t wear a tracksuit. Anyway. Sitting outside, Arlo barking, letting the neighbourhood know his place, a helicopter and birds filling the air, I email Liz, pay public liability and draft emails to the markets. This season is so different. There are less people, which in essence complements me well, giving me space to focus, especially with my strong drive to persevere until the year is out and, with hope, I have an even stronger self of self—no need to be combative, argumentative and prove myself to others.

 —

Tara. Gorgeous Tara, with her hair henna’d, her basil orgasms, confident strides, her g-string bikini, her henna’d hair, her opinions on health, her skin like mine, floating. Gorgeous Tara, on her own journey, so sure in herself but unsure to where she stands, obsessive on vaccines, giving me advice that makes me arrogant because I don’t want this advice. Instead I’m fearful to her because she talks of ‘them,’ believing something bigger is at play with the vaccines. What is it that bothers me here? Hrm. The extremism? The ridicule? The lack of ability to view yourself objectively? I’m just not convinced what you’re saying is the true embodiment of your soul, gorgeous girl. Sure, we’ve lost natural medicines, but don’t undervalue modern medicines either. Instead we add it to the cauldron, we stir it up, leave the conspiracy theories behind.

The Bigger Picture

Dreams for a future, not necessarily immediate but dreams that will come in good time: necklaces created by stories the world over, sourced in my travels, slow travel, travel of discovery, caught on film. I enjoy my own space, I need this time, and I need the love and the intimacy in the moments that surround my space. I need support and reassurance and laughter. I need to live amongst the forests of the Southwest and so I put this to the universe as I move on, gently tapping away at things that’ll lead me there. I don’t need lots of people. I need good people. I need time, nature, time in nature. At my base I’m no longer lost, I am home, and I am sharing my fortunes with the world. We are creating new cycles, new systems, we are not conspiracy theorists but collaborators.

Sunday

I return from camping early to remove my period cup and to drink coffee with Arlo grumbling behind me and jewellery pieces before me—I had returned from camping with jewellery pieces in mind. Lately, I’m happiest making necklaces (and sitting by a fire).
Knowing the constant chase for something and endless socialising were worlds that didn’t suit my long term, I’m going inward to come outward, to find my persona, to work my magic, and maybe, just maybe, to have some of this work, ideas and dreams pay off.
My mind shifts to ideas for the end of year until I bring myself back to a deep beckoning that I need to be alone. For now. Because I like life how it is. Even if I’ve again been dreaming of travel. Of Europe! India! Costa Rica! Travel with purpose. Like a book, jewellery, photojournalism. Travel when I’m no longer searching, when I’m with total acceptance of self, what this self’s purpose is, and how my soul works with others. Yet there is still sacrifice to get there. To temporarily disappear even further. To eliminate the toxins that cloud my judgment.
I sit and do jewellery for hours. Straight. Accepting it’s time to stop when I knock my elbow on a bowl of beads that sends them flying all over the deck. It’s time to do some yoga and/or a swim.

20th June

I was due to be born on June 20th. I’m definitely not a Gemini. The identity I give myself is shifting. In my visions of myself I glow a new light, I’m riding my bike, I’m swimming, with confidence and courage, how happy I’m becoming in my own company. Standing strong in solitude with myself. Today I have a sore stomach from two beers, drags of a joint, the inhalation of a whole block of 78% chocolate as a result.

—

Am I ready to leave Broome? No. Not when I can be grounded in a home. Plus I like drinking smoothies, wearing little clothing, being under the stars, just cool enough for fire, stretching my body through the ocean waves. Living at Wil’s, whose an immensely creative and immensely talented homebody, feels right for right now. Time will see them get to know me. This includes Tara, who I’ve come to approach with trepidation as I find myself justifying myself to her, although I don’t need to be doing this, I already know this is why I write. I’m sure us sisters will work out fine once she understands my arguments are not malicious but more to challenge what she’s committing herself to through outlandish theories.

Tuesday:

Susie’s observations on my wanting a ‘nice’ man. I like my time, I use my time, do you really want that? No, I want someone to sit with me in silence, working on individual creations, the force of us together another creation in itself.

—

I get drunk, go to Matso’s, come home, become a space cadet…how much further can I run than Broome? Where to from here?

22nd June

In Wil’s spare room (my room) I turn from side to side, hugging the pillow, praying it to be morning, slight noises and distant shouting pricking my ears. I wake forlorn, having slept little through the night. With no money but a few hundred dollars, I’m left at the start. I just want to write. Speak from my heart. But how?
Last night riding to Matso’s on the shortest day of the year, the left of the sky was night and the right of the sky glowed orange. With a star right in the middle of the orange turning to mauve turning to night, I squealed to Tara that it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.
At Matso’s half a bottle of prosecco had me reliably opinionated and oddly staring to the young crowd all dressed up and getting drunk. It’s not the same. Jam nights remind me of N, but I might not ever see N again, and I want to go home, so I do.
At home, Wil’s worried about Tara riding home alone and I’m irrational because I want someone to worry about me, I want someone to tell me I look pretty like he’d told Tara earlier in the night.
Before Matso’s, I had been so happy. Feeling so good. Remaining in my space, using my time around work to work on things to free me up from work long term.
Now, coming in from work, Arlo greets me at the bottom of the stairs and gives me the biggest and longest love bite he’s ever given me. Wil’s on the verandah and I can tell he’s talking to his girlfriend because he sounds depressed and desperate. I water the garden and read on the couch. Wil leaves for dinner with the girlfriend, and I’m ready for sleep.
Ideas shift.
This book can’t wait too long. I want to publish late next year. I’ve been trying to predict the future, but it’s fruitless.
Ideas shift.
I won’t meet you drunk at Matso’s. I’ll meet you when I’m happy. And remember, my new book isn’t at Matso’s either.
Ideas shift.
As my birthday nears, I’ll look on the bright side of life.
The silent revolution starts within.

23rd June

Another early morning (I must be unsettled?) and I like that I can get out of bed and do my natural thing because Wil’s at the girlfriends. I put on something warm, prop myself on two pillows, wait for the sky outside the side window where a rumbling air conditioner hums through my sleep to fade from burnt orange to early morning. I read Isobel Beech’s new novel easily because it’s easy writing. We have common friends in Melbourne. I see the joy she emits in recounting her time in Italy. I like what she addresses with social media. There is a lot of recounting. ‘Then we…’ And through this recounting there is something missing. What, though? The acceptance of the circumstances that are causing our grief. The work, the drinking.
Yesterday at work I felt so flat. Looking back to last year, I see how such days were threaded through this time, too. But there’s Bill and our blossoming friendship. Bill with his depleted face as he sat on the grand chair of his verandah, me delivering his mail. ‘This reminds me so much of my Grandpa’s house,’ I smile to Bill, noting death creeping into his eyes through the white light, the distant gaze, so tired and frail. I sort his new phone and offer him a trade off in lieu of a ‘thank you.’ Bill Reed is the fourth person to buy my book.

24th

I will go to work early so I can learn more on techniques and findings and when I’m running free and writing, I will have the ability to make and sell beautiful necklaces. The coming markets, which frighten me so much, is motivation. Work days are long. But by the afternoons, when I’m in a whacko mood, I love where I am. Having fun and being loved for being silly.

Morning of my first markets

Ahhhhh. Changing outfits a million times. Still undecided. Still uncomfortable. And not looking forward to it at all! Really. Just breath. Decide on denim shorts, boob tube, the hat I bought in Chiang Mai, one of my necklaces. I just want to write. Must do this to write.

26June

There were times I told myself to breathe, battling my way through the trepidation. Friends visit, families and recent faces come to say hi. I sell a book to a stranger and I’m over the moon with joy. It feels to be the greatest milestone of my life so far. Sitting behind my table, I note ideas for improvement: to fix the display, to look more professional, to tap into my knowledge and skills, to not be afraid to stand out.
After the markets, back at home up the road, Marianne’s happily in her new place under the mango tree like she’s always meant to be there, and exhaustion trickles in.
Late afternoon and I’m walking the dirt road from Buckley’s to the beach. I’m running and I’m dancing and I’m all alone and smiling.
In the ocean I’m diving and swimming and stretching and laughing.
I take my time on the journey home, the afterglow of sunset turning my world golden. I test my new phone camera and express my awe aloud to capturing the tunnel through the trees in vivid dusk hues.
Around the campfire I sit with Marc and Kaz, two old hippies who tell stories of connections shared, people we know, addictions we’ve had. ‘I’ll stay until the sand is too hot to walk with barefeet,’ Kaz says from across the fire, embers floating, his hair on end with a fire-hardened face, speaking of the way he moves with Broome.
The swag-sleep is a windy one.
I stretch amongst the trees and drive to town early, listening to Tiny Dancer and beaming with contentment to my present.
At my massage, I realise it’s the first time I’ve been touched in a year and a half, I realise I need to be touched. When the massage therapist asked if I was an author, I said ‘yes’ with a gulp.

28th

The visitors have begun, Dave Mann the first. We sit by the fire and retreat early to bed, as usual.
In my lunchbreak, I swim. The water is clear and still. Tourists like seagulls. Born again, back to work.
For this birthday I’ll remember it as the birthday in which I swam every day of the week.
Across the road the house lies empty. For me, it looks sad, void of life in a time it should be teeming with it.
I’m sitting at the boulevard with Bruce and naturally he’s asking me about a boyfriend, telling (or reminding me) he’ll be the worst man at my wedding.
Gentle harmonies of home. Shit work days, the general public average and annoying.
I go walking on my break and browse the bookshop, re-dream of my name as an author.

29.

Bill’s not so good, looking more deadly, too tired to come out to greet people. Stubborn. I drive him home, heading in the directions I know he likes to drive, but following his directions nonetheless. He’s read a third of my book.
That afternoon, at Kellie’s direction I take a bottle of Moët from the work fridge because Kellie didn’t say which bottle specifically.
Tara’s on the daybed and Wil passes through from the shower. ‘Guests are arriving imminently,’ he tells us.
Danielle and Virginia both shake my hand. They both have short curly hair and a wildness I can relate.
Out the front is a car yard. Dave Mann arrives and Wil directs us all where to park.
We’re sitting in the lounge area, Wil cooking the blue bone soup, when Charlie and Brenna walk in. Around the table a mob of talented people; musicians, conductors, blacksmiths, an illustrator. And an author (who self-published a book just in time so she feels to be less of a fraud).
Virgina works out that she lived in Broomerang in the late nineties, after it was a boys home. There was nothing around the house and they pulled barb wire from the rooms. The front door was the original entrance and her room was the one to the left, the pool room. From the pool room, there was another door that went to the side verandah, now the ensuite. For her, too, it was a space of spirit and creatives. The versions before us. Upstairs was a no-go zone, and it had an eeriness to it.

30th

There’s a kitchen full of incredible minds who I’m finding, as I come into my own, less intimidating. Thankfully there’s a shift this dry season and my job isn’t socialising.
At work my morning is made when Christine Stokes (wife of Kerry Stokes, who owns channel seven) comes in, and Chelsea approaches me about designs. It’s me Bill Reed calls on for errands.

1st July 2022

My thirty-fourth birthday. It doesn’t have the same ring as thirty-three but I like the year and my place. With constant and quality people around me I haven’t felt emotional. And I’m not phased by the day for the first time in my life. I used to measure birthdays in quantities, in the messages and the actions. Now it’s in the quality. And today I’m going to measure it within myself.

2nd July ‘22

For my birthday I ate carrot cake, had a shot of whiskey from John, got a bonus from Bill, lay on the beach all salty from the ocean and returning phone calls, drank Moët and red wine and whiskey, and ate too much brownie. Around Wil’s table we sat, a dinner of bits and pieces thrown together. I was spinning when I went for bed.
Now, afternoon on Cable Beach, swims that make me go brrrrr, sensations that make me bend over to see the Indian Ocean upside down in heightened colour, glancing around to see Marc doing qigong in perfect alignment to where I lie, I’m experiencing rebirth through placing emphasis on love. Coming soon there’ll be actions attuned with my soul. I’ll ride home, read my book through the night.
At Wil’s we have become a massive sharehouse. A time surrounded by talented Australians, the educated hippies who’ve already been through that personal discovery thing.

3th July

Another writing from underneath the sun at Cable Beach. Riding my bike, clamouring over sand dunes, conversations with Tanya, selling three books plus one book exchange with Kerry-Anne at the markets, I am happy. Ideas continuing to come. Music tonight.

Hungover Monday

Woke hungover and with sharp visions to my future family. Last night, Marc had looked at me differently. He’s reading my book. After the concert, all the musicians, including Stephen Pigram, jammed to early morning. Now, Wil’s museum house, a piece of art in its own right, is a people museum, with brilliant people sleeping around the house—Brenna, Charlie, Tanya, Dave, Virginia, Dannielle, Spender.

6/7

It’s unusually cold. Wil and I complain about the cold most. Because it’s just so cold, we say, with mornings like ice and me rugged up thick, my skin dry and itchy underneath—my body a continued contradiction grappling with the pace of evolution. The last few nights we’ve sat together in the lounge, someone cooking dinner to share. Dave, Wil and Tanya play music. There’s guitars, ukeleles and mandolins. I see myself playing guitar, not to join in but to meditate.
Writing on my lunchbreak, Bill shuffles with his walker around the office. Bill keeps drilling pearls when he shouldn’t be drilling pearls.
My first strand I created sells for over $4000. It was a strand that used different shapes and colours of pearls. It was a risk. Now it’s sold, I want to keep creating jewellery.
Out the back of work, by Dampier Creek where luggers once gathered, I stand in the sunshine to thaw out. Closing my eyes, I’m moved to another time and place—in the outback with the song of birds and nothing else. I’m healthy, I’m loved, my food obsession, my aloneness, forgotten.
Back in Wil’s lounge, surrounded by art and old bottles and polished floorboards and cd’s and records and guitars, Tanya and I chat on routine and writing. I note that she too has endured years of hard work, dedication and commitment to come to where she is now, making a name for herself in music. I explain to her my morning ritual, my Sarah time.
Tomorrow, I’ll go into work early to play with pearls. I’ve already mentioned to Kellie that I’ll be gone for the wet but I’ll return, with the opportunity to grow my jewellery skills too great.

8/7/22

Thomas Gallagher’s 32nd birthday. I write from bed because it’s still bone-deep cold. It’s been maybe a week of this and already I miss the warmth—waking and writing outside. Instead Arlo is wound up in my brown blanket and my fur hat sits atop my head. Cellulite clouds my butt and thighs and I ponder it being the added fats and protein, last week’s sugar, or a lack of exercise. I keep wanting to exercise but work leaves me so utterly exhausted.
The work days are busy and with lack of staff, I often struggle for a break. Then when I do manage a break, it’s difficult to take one outside the building. Yet a whole day in the middle of the building is too long. Four days a week too much. Amongst the chaos, Bill orders me around during the busy times. I want to tell him that I’m a human being without the capacity for more amongst this chaos, but I don’t. Because he’s old and frail and is becoming older and frailer by the day, with his short shuffling, his aura with a yellow tinge, and his confusion.
Bill directs me to choose studs—smaller studs to the strand is and ancient understanding—and I subtly tell him to hush, ‘Let’s see what she’s naturally drawn to, Bill,’ because don’t tell a woman how to dress, Bill. Alas I relent, reminding myself of placement and respect. ‘It’s $2200, Bill, what price should I give?’ I next wonder.
‘$4800,’ Bill tells me, a few times.
I look to a great man aging. I hear the pearl drill rattling away as the busy day carries on, the drilling ringing through my ears giving me an actual headache. There’ll be so many ruined pearls and Bill’s strands no longer make sense. I vow to never end up old, stubborn and in denial like this. Instead I’ll rest in my garden. I’ll smoke pot. I’ll play guitar. I’ll write end of life stories, sharing the deepest of my secrets I could never write before. They’ll be best sellers after I die in Costa Rica.
Trudging home from work, sights set on a whiskey, a playful Wil and a wholesome Tanya Ransom, I think of all the books I’ve read, how there is no questioning (in the mainstream, at least) of why. Why all this. Why the drive to make a name of ourselves, prove ourselves. Gemstones is about finding the creative revolution with a different purpose. It is not art for art’s sake. It is part of the return to nature. Or is it? I can’t yet articulate what I actually want to say here!
My dreams have been so vivid lately. I’ve entered the next stage…within.
I edge forward, honouring my greater vision.

9/7

I grab Saturday arvo to myself in my camper to make necklaces and refine ideas: quality over quantity. Finally. The week has been full. The love and the hate of work, the Ying and the yang. The afternoon sun beams in and my pits sweat. I’d been another cold morning taking until midday to properly warm up as I supported Tanya with the garage sale. Many people who came to the garage sale commented on the house and Wil’s workshop.
Itching for the ocean, the joy of the refreshment, the burst of salt, my legs are tired as I pedal to Cable, leaving the camper in the afternoon sun. It’ll be another Saturday night in focus, a time when I’ve little interest in my phone.

10/07

Saturday morning and I wake with one sock on and I moan, ‘I don’t want to do the markets.’ Because I don’t want to do the markets when it’s cold, difficult to find my groove in selling myself, and the necklaces lying on the table are a mess.
Today, I hope for some good conversations and one sale. Whatever happens, I will get through it. I will refine my branding and website, and keep working towards a solid, sincere and unique presence at the markets that can allow for me to work less of the long and tiring hours at Allure.
There are bags under my eyes.
I sell seven books. Seven! Even if my book is from the past and has a weak ending, it will always be my first book, and selling them to strangers brings pangs of guilt, excitement and inspiration to persevere in selling more books (to make money that supports my next book).
In the afternoon at Cable, I swim. It’s refreshing. I flop on my towel and let the sun soak in.

11/7/22

A rambling Monday. From across the road my once landlords are here helping Wil cut back the front mango tree. Tanya and I do admin at the outdoor table. Wil is in a glum mood and it’s easy to see it’s because of his weird girlfriend. It’s cold in the shade.
In my room, gathering myself to venture into Chinatown, a conversation wafts in from the front mango tree. ‘They live here now?’
‘Well there was about ten of them?’ I hear the lady say with a tone of superiority.
‘Nah he just got the good one,’ I hear her landlord husband reply from up the mango tree.
Wil stays quiet, in his dark-inspired girlfriend mood.

 —

“Thomas wished he had been able to do with as a writer, find a tone or context that was beyond himself, that was rooted in what shone and glittered and could be seen, but that hovered above the world of fact, entering into a place where spirit and substance could merge and drift apart and merge again.” The Magician, Colm Tóibín

13July22

My period hits the morning of the full moon. The biggest and brightest of the year. I toss and turn in my lumpy bed with pains. The birds start chirping, there haven’t been many sirens recently. I’m wondering if my previous, late period was covid related, or being pulled to the bright moon. Everything explains yesterday’s emotions.

—

Notes from the drafts section in my email:
A rhythm returns; a good mood in the morning as I potter and could easily continue to potter for hours to come—there’s something about work days that gets me out of bed with a different approach. But the mood tilts as soon as I press the button and walk through the door, being spoken to about work instantly. Kmart tilts my mood further.
Walking the fluorescent aisles, I search for lights. A trolley with new (neverending) stock is parked and a customer standing at the top of the towel sections says to the worker at the trolley, ‘Is that really the price?
I keep my hands in my pockets and turn my head.
The customer is indicating to a display of stark white towels with the price advertised as $2.50.
‘Yeah,’ the worker responds like she’s proud.
I scowl. How can so many of us be so blind? And then complain? People are losing out. People start buying these cheap towels because they’re so cheap and then they end up with a bunch of towels they don’t need because they’re so cheap. So, to store those cheap towels they need to build storage. And we all end up with large homes void of warmth and love and nature and all the things truly integral for a healthy life.
I huff and puff my way to the selfie mirrors, which are in abundance of variety on the shelves. I choose the bamboo one—I can’t believe I’m doing this.
A stylish girl is pulling a trolley as I near the register. She’s wearing matching shorts and tops, something I considered for a while there. The stylish girl stops by a bright pink jumpsuit and I twist my head back to see her pouting into the mirror, holding up the bright pink jumpsuit in consideration.
The whole Earth! Who is going to complain when it all comes crashing down? Not me, not when you see it coming.
The music in the Cable Beach Club foyer is some commercial mix filled with crap and created for money. It irks me even more. I’m not in the mood for business people today. Not in the mood at all.

The Next Morning

So full with pains, dry lips, nervousness to tomorrow’s night markets. But there is last night’s moon walk along Cable with Marc, 4WDs sporadically flying past our gentle conversations after Marc’s read my book and still wants to be my friend. What a relief!

—

Okay gotta organise tomorrow night, which I wish I could instead spend with earphones, dazed, watching myself from the future. So remember, Sarah. Remember the bigger picture. Now hold your breath, and jump. For to do all this, to go through all this, I need the money to support myself. To write about a girl working in jewellery.

—

On my business cards I put author – photographer – jeweller. I feel a fraud but deep down I know I’m not. Deep down I believe in myself, as Kellie pointed out.

Saturday

Height of high season happiness:

Over the road (at Broomerang), pizza oven cranking, the hilarity of Wil shouting the question across the table, ‘How does it feel to be home, Sarah?’ only to look down and get a fright seeing S sitting there.

Selling necklaces and books as the full moon rose and Steven Pigram played.

Coming home from work on a Friday to a creative household, fixing jewellery in the camper, hearing Wil and Tanya practice, going on to watch them play at Divers and being totally in love with the talent and storytelling held within them both.

Having realisation, having giggles and conversations on writing a book. I’m having singalongs to The Eagles Hotel California playing, and I’m having visitors to my market stalls, shared dinners, more giggles.

There is something within me. I know something. And writing helps me work out what that something is. To keep my diaries like research. To go back and see all the connections.

23/7

Inspiration doesn’t strike for diary writing. The warming days blend, in pleasure and in work. The nights are cold, with Tanya, Wil, and Tara if she’s not working or having Tara time. Liz emails from America. I decide to do another query for Lonely. I want to do it quickly, I want to finish it properly. Because the excitement I have for this new story is like the title is flashing in colours of the rainbow.

24/4 Barn Hill Station, out where the rocks grew

And so we laugh—ha ha ha—oh how we laugh—ha ha ha—because the more your stare at the absurdity, the more you can acknowledge it and the more humorous it becomes. Here at Barn Hill, away from the grey nomads, is solitude giving me words and space.
Realisations.
People who have bought my book have never mentioned it to me again, which makes me imagine a negative experience. Tara told me she’d started it but a week later she said nothing more. Then Pia followed me on Instagram and sent a message as she was half way through, but there’s been silence otherwise. While Wil got a copy in exchange for his CDs and he’ll probably never read it (thankfully, because if he does I might have to find a new home). I imagine Wil and Tara, giving each other lingering eyes and laughing at me: how could you have been so stupid? They go off together, I’m left alone again. Because that’s how my stories go. Until I’m barefoot, switched off, strumming guitar, looking back to the eight years it took me to get here.
Meanwhile, Silay’s a vision. In her van, up on the sunset rocks, with her joints and her instruments and her enthusiasm. Silay talks to me about Hello I am Lonely. She loved it.

Sunday

I’m beneath the rocks at Barn Hill with reflections.
Wil lies on the daybed with his head in a Ned Kelly book. He tells me to drive safe and says goodbye like I can’t leave fast enough. Tanya stands with her hands in her back pocket of her jeans, her stomach sticking outward in the stance of a skinny person. She is thanking me for helping her out during her time in Broome with the three c’s—car, camper and cameras.
‘C,’ I repeat back to her. ‘I find all sorts of words with this; connection, community, creativity, courage…’ not to mention the middle initial of my pen name.
I’ll miss Tanya. It feels like I’ve known her much longer than I have.
Back in the present, I crouch at camp, comfortably cooking curry. Grey nomads with massive caravans surround me, and I ignore their curious glare. I can cook now. I can walk around comfortable in my own skin. The ultimate fibre cleanse having shifted my sense of self. I’m clearer, lighter, freer.
Back underneath the rocks, we light the fire and get into moods alongside the last, sharp light of day. The light is the colour of the rocks. We cook chicken and lamb underneath the Milky Way. Silay sings and plays guitar and I lie flat.
The walk back up the beach, in the dark, is long. I walk with my newfound confidence. A confidence I’m preparing to have shattered.

Monday

I spend my morning crouching at camp, Silay and I making our own-styled necklaces. We sing songs aloud and laugh even louder. This self-assuredness, this understanding of self, follows me. All the way to the unknown, lying in wait, back in town.

26/7

The mornings are becoming warmer. No longer do I need the drama of a wool jumper and fur hat. There are less complaints from Wil about how freezing it is, too. I write to wake myself up. Because I sit in my camper and I’m groggy with a weed hangover—bad habits returned quickly, it taking Wil mere minutes to tell me where Tanya hid the weed—looking out to a motorbike, a scooter, push bike, troopy and blacksmithing workshop. Do I really want to spend time on a query for Lonely? I stare back through the netted windows of the camper. There is magic woven through this world. To see it, you must believe it. I want to start on The Gemstones of Broomerang.

27th July

Elsa is with me at the markets as I sell five books and one necklace. The nights are still cold, time continues to fly.
Back at home, after a glass of red, Elsa retreats to bed in the camper and I sit outside with Wil, talking about finding an illustration-collaboration for his dream tattoo.
It’s now the next day and I’m at work, experimenting with a new necklace until I get tired and eat chocolate too easily. Through the venetians of the kitchen, I watch Bill in his office drinking the black coffee I made him. Today, he’s cracking jokes and his tired eyes are sparkling. Still, sometimes it looks like he’s been crying. Like he’s been carrying the weight of the world.
Despite me not showering for work today—I didn’t even change my underwear and had to wear used socks, my washing piling up—work is great on account of being assigned pearl selection missions. I’ll stick this out to grow my skills, to keep joking with the jewellers, to make necklaces that are worthwhile in this world. Because happiness comes when looking at the necklaces I’m creating. And good things take time. And it would be reckless to leave now. Then there’s home. There’s Wil. With his emotions and his motions and who I don’t want to annoy with my presence.
After eating a quarter of a cookie, and I crave more.

30July

I get a three-thousand dollar pay rise at work. It’s the time of year where I’m to embrace the extra people and spirit around town. Elsa’s been staying the camper, though I told her I would like it back by Monday. Because I don’t have enough hours to spare right now. I am, however, happy. This printing of my book, this shift to understanding myself as an author, these work opportunities, the way I’m so wild and Sarah at work. Here at home is special too. Although I feel I’ve barely seen Wil, when I do see him, there are complications and annoyances towards me. I want to make it right. I don’t want to live like this. I’ll move if I have to. I’ll accept that. But I don’t want to move.

31st July

I make a coffee and hop back into a cosy bed. The cold carrying on, consumed by a headache, I consider skipping the markets. But I’ve paid my $26.50 and I want to sell three books.
Yesterday at the races, up amongst the mega-wealthy on the sponsors deck, Elsa and I had worn matching dresses (that displayed our underarm hair), boots and necklaces (mine real pearls and Elsa’s fake). Elsa kept her sunglasses on the whole time, and I kept my bucket hat on the whole time. We snuck food to eat and watched a clear divide between genders.
In the night I had incredible girls around me— Elsa, Pippa, Tara, Aoife, Silay—all laughing at Bust Out. Back at home I had a conversation with Wil. One of those conversations where our voices are more quiet and serious and comforting. It was a nice way to end a long day.

1st August

In my camper. Shaky hand, shaky body. When I woke in the night, I smoked another joint. My mind then so cloudy when I got out of bed at 8am. The girls are still around. In vans, the camper, trickling into the house for coffee, exuding radiance and glee. There’s a big breakfast featuring garden greens. When Wil wakes I feel guilt in seeing his annoyance to people in the kitchen. He improves after coffee but still it’s enough time to realise my discomfort in having to juggle such moods with my natural calling to host people. Meanwhile, Wil and Tara hug in the middle of everyone as I lean against the window, in the sun, head in my computer, pretending it doesn’t shift something inside of, cementing my thought to move from here. Man today I feel so weak. Today I need a cry. Today I need to ride to the beach and be in the salty water and embrace the gentle sun. I need to scream. I need to shout. I need to be present. I need to embody confidence. I need to allow attractions.

2nd August

Last night a small group of the barbeque sat around the outdoor table (Wil in his room) having some pretty conversations on the world and creativity. I talk about hand clapping games played in primary school. ‘But wait, no one here’s from Australia,’ I note, looking around to Italy, China, Germany, France/Philippines and Ireland.

—

Two weeks. It’s been two whole weeks that I’ve been smoking. These past few days I’ve also been eating bread and now I’m feeling incredibly lethargic, exhausted and distant, lying on the daybed. Wil works on the boat. Tara struts through all flirty. I see something in the sky today. Something that reminds me of the importance of time.

3/8

A morning back in the camper. I edit my Broomerang diary and see visions of the story that will secure my freedom. In Gemstones, magic will be shown, not told. In Gemstones, I will give all my heart and soul. However, the immediate future is still about work and savings. And home needs to be sorted for there is confusion with Wil. The complexities about my place here.

4th Aug

‘Expect the unexpected,’ Greg said. I can’t imagine what could surprise me. There’s a cloud over me this week. There’s possibilities and there’s urgency. At 5am I sit with a candle in my camper.

6/8

Ladies Night with Silay and Jay playing their music was a roaring success, Allure’s showroom full of people in positive atmosphere. I didn’t take a break throughout the day, and remained energised. We were in the kitchen when Silay tells me of the connection and chemistry she’s establishing with Jay. But she’s on a year of celibacy, a year of healing, ‘so he just ate my pussy for a really long time,’ she says. This same night, Tara has a successful date. Whereas I’m drunk and stoned when I fall to sleep in sadness.
The sadness is still with me when I wake on the Saturday morning. Pain follows. There are things I need to deal with. Like how everyone close to me is falling in love as I go deeper into my acceptance of guys seeming to love the likes of Silay and Tara instead of me.
At the markets I realise I’m too tired and premenstrual to be amongst so many people. Because there are so many people I know, barefooted and happy, greeting with hugs. I walk away from Tara and Wil’s banter and say goodbye to Arlo instead.
Walking home, Tara tells me how Wil told her she could come for a cuddle. It’s all so weird to me. Living with them, seeing Wil jealous by Tara’s dates as I stand invisible on the sideline as the comedic ghost.
I’m leaning on the window sill as Silay tells me about how she manifested the Jay connection. I nearly cry again. It’s happiness for what this gorgeous girl is experiencing, it is desperation to fit in with my friends.
I want to know what love feels like.
Maybe if I hurry up and finish my things then I can leave Earth earlier than predicted.
I need to go bush. See what the sky tells me.

—

“The secret to change is to focus all your energy not to fight the old, but on building the new.”

7/8/22

Seeing good things in the numbers of today’s date, I again feel like there’s something in the air. Waking in my camper in the middle of the night, after smoking my last joint, I need water and I need to pee. My mind is cloudy.

—

At the Thursday markets Franz had told me and Tara how he’d had an out-of-body experience. I don’t know why he directed most his words to me. He tells me that he hadn’t wanted to come back.

—

I dream to work hard and travel. To Central and South America, to Europe for a book tour.

8/8

Marc’s camp, a Monday. The click-click of Marc’s sewing machine from within his caravan. Marc and I talking about our dad’s, of always wanting to be different from a young age. ‘Probably how we both end up here,’ Marc notes.
In the bush, amongst spirally trees, I’m regaining clarity. In the bush, I’m reminded of beauty and priorities, and how surreal it is to feel alive. I haven’t wanted to be alive, recently. I’ve grappled with a deep deep sadness. A refusal. An acceptance of being overlooked. Of always being the one unloved. Even writing these sentences has my nose running with the onset of tears. I take my oracle cards and shuffle. Two cards fall: Blue Angel, The Universe.
I talk to archangel Michael of the sky. ‘Michael,’ I call to Michael, ‘give me courage and guidance as I heal myself in love…because, Michael, I don’t know how to give and receive love. I don’t know how to identify it, to invite it in…I was never loved for being myself, Michael, so no wonder I’ve always tried to be someone else, growing defences and excuses to protect my irreversible place on planet as other people were always loved around me. And now I feel to be myself but I’m without knowing if this self could be loved.’ Stretching, I collapse down with deep breaths of nausea.
Something’s being released.
At the direction of the cards I sit with legs crossed, topless and dirty in the bush. I imagine my Mum before me, connected by a blue cord. I cut the cord and the notion I can’t be loved as myself. I’m released. I glance around. I dance. I dance and I dance, being the strong feminine, allowing my sexuality to shine. I squat in the bush. I have my period.
My feet are the colour of Pindan as I walk across the empty lagoon to the ocean. Loving this salty feeling, I remember that I am capable of love. I’ll let my heart break before I go home in town. Because I don’t want to move house. I want to create. I want to know I’m part of beauty.
By the time I’m home in town I’m distant and cold because I’m hurt for reasons I can’t understand. My feelings make no difference because Arlo and Wil talk to me like normal. Then Wil and me are with binoculars, staring down S.B. ‘What she’s doing…why’re those people there…couples…taking it in turns to be taken inside.’ In Wil’s workshop, we giggle. I tell Wil we’ve gone mad. I have another look through the binoculars. The couple who exited the house look happy.
‘How’s the hat?’ Bruce asks through the phone, him at One Arm and me on Wil’s daybed.
‘Very good,’ I tell him. ‘When I put it on I start talking like Bruce Wiggan…we should hang out together sometime…both wearing our hats.’ I picture Bruce and me sitting there, talking shit like it’s serious shit, both in our hats.
When I hang up the phone, I stay on the daybed with my new approach to act on my thoughts. It’s time for the dreaded Facebook and Instagram posts of Hello I am Lonely. I produce a vague, detached message. Within an hour I have at least twenty people wanting a book, and I’m excited. I’m shifting, I’m changing my tune, I’m rewriting habits.

9/8/22

On Tuesday morning I take my coffee to the camper and listen to Spring1 by Max Ritcher. It’s the song I’ve listened to a billion times. It takes me back to Broomerang, with dragonflies, and geckos, and moths, and orange and black butterflies. I’m beginning the reset. I imagine my true self.
I package up the first four sales of my book, going to homes in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales. I’m glad to be doing this. I’m sad there continues to be no enthusiasm from my family.
In the hacienda Tara and I share womanly chats. She reminds me of all the love I have from people in my life, that I’m surrounded by beautiful characters. ‘Unconditional love,’ she describes.

10th August

I left Wil in the kitchen on his phone, chatting to his latest girl. I can’t stand it when people are always on their phones. And Wil is the worst.
On my bed I read a surf book set in Bali, but I’m not tired.
I go to Matso’s, storming out on Wil telling me I’m not safe at night.
At Matso’s Silay’s up on stage with her guitar, wearing her new op shop clothes. I see Jay. I don’t understand much of what he says but I feel his excitement. Silay and I sway with the music and it reminds me of last year, of Silay’s final night at Matso’s when we were perched on the rock, swaying.
Back at home I don’t talk to Wil, who’s still on his phone and who never accepted my Facebook friend request.
In bed, I’m happy.
In the morning, I’m happier. Sharing kitchen conversations about manifesting our love and the qualities to attract, Silay and I agree the behaviour of Sammy, who believes himself to be so attuned with women, is ugly.
Silay leaves, Tara arrives, Wil’s still in bed and Arlo’s being grumpy like his Dad. ‘You feel light this morning,’ Tara tells me.
And I do. Because I’m talking to Michael and grasping the sort of love to manifest.

11/8/22

The morning of the colonoscopy, the laxatives have me bleeding. I’m bleeding all sorts of blood. The day is overcast and windy and already I want to be hugged. Lucy and Mia don’t respond or react to the Facebook and Instagram posts of my book.

12th

From my camper, I write. It’s a supermoon, and it’s windy. Wil takes his coffee across to his workshop. It’s the first time in my life I’ve allowed myself to bleed without something stuck up me or something hanging in my pants. The bleed is a heavier one, with blood thick on the toilet paper on the fourth day. Now on the fifth day I rain blood. Like my body is still going through a cleansing. A transformation. A preparation. It’s empowering. ‘Connecting with your womb,’ as Tara, the body-centric woman in my life, notes.

13/8

I’m awake early because Wil’s going fishing. I read The Buddha of Suburbia in bed. Silay messages, she’s started plant-dying early.
In the living room, surrounded by Broome’s history, bottles and divers helmets and parts of lugers from the creek, I stretch. My body is sore. Today, I feel I need to move about. I need to swim in the ocean. I need to be in the bush. First, though, I’ll go to my camper to do some work.
I roll with the Saturday out to Buckley’s, barefoot in the bush doing natural dying with Silay. I was totally in the moment, and in that moment I’m happy, laughing, being silly with wild women.

Sunday Morning

I’ve come to my camper to write. To do something. To escape from my escape. It’s early. Earlier than I would have thought with the late night. John, Marc, Cookie had been there for barramundi. Silay and Aoife appeared later. Even with guests, Wil was on his phone again.
Wil had been so rude to me before bed. I’d been trying to pronounce a word on the wine that Cookie bought, when Wil had said, ‘I’m already bored of this conversation I’m ging to bed bye.’ And he left, going to his room to spend the night on his phone talking to the lady from the choir.
Seated on the step of my camper, the waning supermoon, sitting above Wil’s workshop, has a ring around it. I see how I’m being pulled into Wil’s orbit, how I need to stop, because there’s a complete disinterest in me, so why am I being so obedient?
Needing direction, I pull a card: should I stay or should I go? Eternity falls out, asking me to focus on the spiritual side of life, to stop seeking answers for everything, to detach from the restrictions of my mind. ‘The eternal nature of life is beyond human understanding…rejoice in that feeling of timelessness that swells in your heart when surrounded by natures’ beauty.’
Hey Michael, I think I have complexes around being secondary. I want to be at least one person’s primary.

15 August

Morning camper, moon bright in the sky. The final day to utilise before five day work week returns. Early night form a gorgeous day. A day that reminds me of last year’s golden moments. Silay and Aoife had been there for morning coffee. At the markets there was Niang, Silay and me in our naturally dyed clothes, which has fast become the uniform for this year. Back at home I had put on gospel music to Wil’s annoyance. I went for a high tide swim. Silay made lunch utilising what we had. Tara came back from the markets. A crafternoon in the hacienda—pottery and painting and cup making and jewellery. Pippa was there in our woman kingdom. Later, sitting on the door of my camper, I had thought about the intimacy of sex that I once loved. The intimacy of discussions, heart to heart, naked. That’s right, sex as more than the physical act. Where did I lose this?

16/08

5:55am in the camper. Niang Niang does a Facebook post that I should be happy about but instead I’m annoyed. It’s my book, not mine and Giulia’s. Her illustrations are a good part, but a small part. The post takes away from my hard work.
Silay comes to the camper wearing more naturally dyed clothes. We drink a coffee, surrounded by jewellery, notes, plants and a candle burning.
Yesterday at Matso’s, Bruce and I wearing matching hats, Bruce fell down the stairs and as I helped him up from the bushes he’s declaring ‘sit sit,’ like shit shit, ‘we have to go sit down now and I can’t walk again.’
Under the mango trees we sat with David and Jason, who’s blind, seeing only out of the edges of his eyes. Jason stays mostly in One Arm, he tells me, staying away from the trouble of town. Because ‘boys here they steal stuff.’
‘Mm, the cars. Why do they do that?’ I ask.
‘They got no one to care for them. Like their parents, they don’t care what they do.’

17/8

An early, foggy morning that rains mist. My belly’s full and rounded from too many nuts and not enough vegetables. In the camper, I start preparations for Monday’s book launch. I want to do it well. I want to practice. I want to share. I want to be the person I dream. Over the road at Broomerang, a rental car is parked out the front. S.B doesn’t recognise me on the street. But one day she will. One day this outdated approach will be brought to life.

18/08/2022

It’s another misty morning. The sound of condensation dripping from the roof is like being in the mountains. Last night, driving home from Buckey’s the mist was thick, my high beams making it feel like I was driving through a heaven of ocean spray. I smiled, making noises of amusement with energy high from the bush dinner. What a joyful, soulful night it had been. Tables pushed together into a line, holding dishes brought by different children of the world, a fire burning, more food cooking, camping chairs dotted around the parameter facing the bush stage: a rug on the dirt, fairylights through the trees, and a conjugation of instruments and angelic voices. There was a keyboard, an electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, a didgeridoo. I ate from a camping chair, Niang bringing a girl to me who wanted to buy my book (later, when I sell the girl a book, her friends skims it and wants to buy one too, telling me of her own loneliness experienced in her travels). When more magic appears on stage I whisper to homegirls Tara, Melissa and Pippa how on Earth do such transcendental talent continue to fall from the sky. 
At the night markets I feel tired and beyond myself, foolish to be there selling a book I wrote. Jay, DJ Alex, Elisa and Ely play music on stage with Raquel dancing a queen’s dance. Instead of hanging at my store I run about, moving my hips, which click back and forth. I sell two books to people I know, one book to a stranger, and a necklace. The girls from last night find me for a signature and I hope I don’t disappoint their joy in meeting me and understanding I share confusion during travels.

19/08

It’s a dark day, which Kellie recognises in me. I want to run away to the Himalayas. I want to disappear. I’m ashamed of my book. I’m embarrassed and alone. Run away? No, write, Sarah. Write write write. Put the things into place to write write write.

20/08

In the middle of the night I woke to mosquitoes and a sore back, deciding not to do the markets tomorrow.

—

A slump. The day of Charlie’s first birthday and Lucy’s hens. Hey, I was in a slump this time last year too. Last year I’d had regrets with how I’d treated N. Of how I push people away.

—

Tired from the pull of wanting to be at work, knowing I should be elsewhere, ‘I need to write this book,’ I continue to whisper, listening to the same songs over and over. When will I grow tired of the songs? When I write the book?

—

Could this current, perpetual state of exhaustion be that in the nights I’m experiencing major dreams? I haven’t been remembering the dreams, they’re more a feeling; like it being nearly at the tip of my tongue but still buried so deep within me it’ll take time to retrieve them.

—

Growing older, maturing. Maturing is understanding the emotional rollercoaster I’m working with. Maturity is knowing the importance of getting into nature and into the ocean to shake my heaviness. Maturity is putting on music and dancing. Maturity is surrounding myself with the right people.

—

Jim Carey tells me to be clear with the universe. To be clear on the end goal and to walk through the doors when they present themselves. Okay, Jim Carey, I want a best friend in my partner, I want a cuddly baby, I want us in nature, I want us creating.

21/08

Nerves to the intimate book launch. I want to breathe. I want to sit before the people and show my vulnerability. I want to be honest. I want to be open. And as the centre of attention, I don’t want to shy away. I want to share as much of my soul as possible.

22/8

It’s today, the book launch. Reminding myself to expose myself in the name of others, I can’t wait to have it over, to make another closure of Hello I am Lonely.
Phew. Relief. It’s over.
Small and intimate. About ten of us, maybe, on the lawn at Cable Beach General Store. A gazebo, a sun growing hotter, a table with white table cloth holding Hello I am Lonely. ‘It’s a limited edition,’ I tell the small crowd. Because this isn’t a book launch, but a book closure.
Now, I’m going to focus on moving forward (because no man ever fell in love with me for writing this story, like maybe I’d sometimes dreamed of happening). Introducing The Gemstones of Broomerang…

23/8

It’s a morning off. I read my book in bed with a coffee. My vision, the light, is so clear; there are patterned shadows from the trees and my bags, scarves and hats move from the breeze through the open windows. The heat in the breeze reminds me of home on a hot, summer’s morning. New chapter.

24/8

Carefree mornings when I sleep until seven and then make a coffee to return to bed. The light in my room through these days is golden. Last night, Wil spoke with me about Bo more than anyone has shown interest before.

26/8

Today is Wil’s birthday, he’s 55. ‘Happy Birthday,’ I said to Wil in song, standing at the kitchen bench, wanting to hug him because I hug people I care about on their birthdays. But he kept his head down, walked out to Arlo and said, ‘Give me some love, Mr Black.’
I turned to the sink and blinked back tears. Making my smoothie, my head hangs too. I feel truly terrible that I can’t make Wil happy on his birthday. Bad that I can’t offer better company that he actually wants to be around because he wants to spend the day with someone like Tara and I feel so small.
Today isn’t about me, though, so I’ll do my best to hide my hurt, I’ll remember unconditional love and I’ll be there when needed although I hope (because we want the people we care about to experience happiness, particularly on their birthday) that Wil secures the good company he craves.
What’s wrong with me.

27/08

Work is carefree because I’m boss. A boy comes in. His look lingers and I inhale calm and curiosity. The next day (today) I choose to pack down the window display and I think I see him walk past. We smile to each other. I glide over the polished floors of work, packing down the jewellery, imagining what it would be like to have someone lovely love me. Throughout this day at work, I had also imagined San Miguel de Allende for my wet season retreat—carrying on my single life—and I’d questioned if I’ll really continue to publish my journal online, to sacrifice myself to better the world through increased understanding of connection and meaning beyond.
After work comes a Saturday afternoon. I swim in a calm and clear Indian Ocean. I love this lifestyle, I miss adventures. Having nearly finished making money off Lonely ($2400, which will all go towards branding and website), I continue to feel such relief and such guilt. Guilt because I’m selling a bad book. A bad book because people won’t understand it. Instead, I am judged. Judged because people continue to make comments that it’s ‘good’ while reading it, but never after reading it. I wonder why. ‘What have I done?’ I continue to whisper.
Yeah, I’ll take a break from the markets. Concentrate on inner work. Website dreams. Draw on the different skills to reach my dreams. Time off. To return to my body, stretch and through these times, I need to feel. Then, let the madness descend.

28/08

The sexy, streaming sunlight continues to shine through my bedroom in the mornings. I’m in mental planning mode. Where do I start? Tie up loose ends. Organise myself to have no other distractions but Gemstones…when it begins.

—

Gabrielle messages about the book. She finds it hard to comment but notes impression and emotion.

—

Too much buckwheat bread gives me indigestion.

29/08

Day off in my camper, working on website brief, trying to get serious about my capabilities, looking to the future, wanting to plant seeds for family.
Changing my aura, what I omit.
I’m lying on the couch reading an adult picture book when Wil becomes all sulky and asks, ‘Is Tara home tonight, will she be here for dinner?’
‘Haven’t seen her. Message her,’ I say in sharp tone. And lose the pathetic tone, dude. Because I feel inferior, again. Like I’m boring myself with my own company, which I consider from my room as Wil talks on the phone while cooking dinner. In the adult picture book I read, it talks about the poison of comparing yourself to others.

30/08

After the Shinju Art Awards, I wake through the night and taste wine. I feel wine. The preservative aftermath.
In the morning, orange morning light on my ivy, there’s cellulite and bad skin. I had felt so euphoric when I had begun drinking before the art show. I loved wine! I loved life! All the possibilities! Now I feel disgusting.
I’m so hungover. The day is hot. Burger, chips, chocolate, litres of water. Wil goes to Wales. I miss him already. Arlo misses him too. I know this because Arlo told me. But, I go on to wonder, will I actually miss him?
At Cable Beach Club, I’m not in the right mood for work. Whenever I have to talk to people, my purpose becomes clear: write write write.
Writing requires much discipline, failures and perseverance. Writing, like many arts, is a skill that can be required through learning formulas. Like learning how to operate camera settings seems, these days, to make you a photographer. With writing you can learn how to construct sentences well, but does that make you a writer? It’s in the thought, in the abstract, in the overwhelming impulse that you must record this.
I have the power.
Hey Universe, hey Michael, it might be confusing because what I say and act can be contradictory, but what I want is my family. My travelling family. Who travel with purpose. So, fresh September wind, what do you have for me?

1st September

At last night’s bush dinner, young and beautiful faces appeared. Familiar faces from last year. I noted admiration to Omar’s neat attire of jeans, belt, tucked in shirt and mass of curls. He was cooking Israeli food over the fire, then he was under the light of the table when I went searching for something sweet. ‘Hey Sarah, you don’t recognise me?’ he says.
It takes me time to say, ‘Omar?’
George, the old occupier of Buckley’s, randomly arrives. Pippa and I are the first to leave. We drive into a big, orange and smiling moon. We talk of the liberated women of Broome and how we’re in a fortunate, progressive bubble. How can the world not see what we see? The falseness, the priorities, the destruction. Although I’m still working out how to define what exactly we see. I see. What I understand. Which might take a whole book.

—

Dreams still shifting. Many moments of internal clarity that work at the pearl shop will soon take the backseat, letting my personal art and thoughts lead my way. It’ll be a hard one, though. I love my time at work when I’m hands on with pearls or chatting with the ladies. Then there’s Bill Reed AM who should really be called Bill Reads PM because he’s such an avid reader and because he’s coming into work less, and when he does it’s at lunchtime, spending the afternoon crookedly drilling pearls like a madman. My entire job will soon be going through Bill’s strands to remove all the dodgy and double-drilled pearls. But it’s nice having him there, the sound of the drill, his way of getting his hands onto precious, loose pearls like a naughty child. It must be difficult to accept deterioration.

—

I’m trying to wrap my head around the demands and stresses people place on themselves. Working, taking the dog to the beach, watering the garden, watering plants, cooking dinner, pool maintenance, cleaning the house and dishes and washing. And people do this with kids. Are they crazy! Wil’s been gone only two days and already I’m finding the expectations a lot. No wonder he has a reputation for grumpiness! Why do we need such big houses! I just don’t get it. In my dreams, my home is small but incredibly beautiful. There’ll be space, but it’ll be outside. My studio will be separate to the home.

—

Have I told you how often I still think of S.B? It’s not hard when I see Broomerang every day, void of daily life. What is happening with time is that with time I’m coming to question what S.B stands for. The way she doesn’t recognise me. Her total oblivion despite an educated intelligence. I’m not sure if she’ll live to see the consequences of her selfishness—the perpetuation of classism—but if she does, I’m sure she’ll be all smiles and falsities.

2nd Sep

Three days no alcohol. After running with Arlo at the beach, and running around with work, I was in bed before 8pm, body sinking to Earth, asleep before 9pm. I like these nights. I sleep straight through to six and on waking, the wooden kitchen sparkles, birds tweet and a soft wind creates a sensation of complacency. I turn on a sprinkler. I tend to the pool filter. Yesterday I had seen a vague headline of an article I then had to pay to read. But the blurb was enough. Second hand is consumerism, too.

—

It's now normal for the silence that comes after reading Hello I am Lonely. Jaspa, for example, had written to me while reading the book, saying she loved it. But the other night at the bush dinner it was like she was avoiding me. After she’d been on bush stage, I turned to her in the camping chair beside me and said, ‘Beautiful stuff, I really love your voice.’
‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘I really like your…sitting position.’
Wow!
Now I’m pre-menstrual—at thirty-four I realise how messy my brain is before my period—and frustrated in looking after the house, which is too much, Wil. Because instead of writing, I now have to tend to the pool and garden.

3/9

Yesterday, a tired sort of day. Doing topless yoga I was reminded of my pointy, ugly boobs and my insecurities around this.

—

No wonder the work struggle can be so amplified for me. In writing, I create worlds. To go between worlds is a great shock to my system.

4/9

Exhaustion has continued to envelope me these past few days despite the amount of sleep. Running with Arlo on the beach is more exercise than I’ve done in a while. But the extent of the dark cloud over me feels to be more. I’m carrying a weight. I’m going into work like I need to prove myself.

—

Paradigm: a typical pattern or example of something, a pattern or model
A paradigm shift is an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.

5/9

Groggy from smoking and from being Arlo’s number one friend, there’re potatoes and a documentary on fungi, which gave scientific explanations for my DMT experience. “As a species we’re experiencing a paradigm change. A change in how we view, what we call, reality. And that always evokes tensions and fears.” This happened to me! I’ll have to write a book to explain it. The book is called The Gemstones of Broomerang.

 —

Sirens explode all over town. Driving to the boulevard I let multiple marked and unmarked police cars race by. I’m curious, but more than anything I’m silently broken. Weed. I can smoke weed tonight. But if weed wasn’t in my mind I could make revel bars (using all natural ingredients), be full on fish, enjoy clean sheets, watch the mushroom doco, get lost in a book.
It's in the bin. The perfect mix of weed and tobacco.

6/9

Mornings in my camper. Arlo terrorising the hood.

—

We’re yet to expand ourselves to the next stage of evolution, but we’re getting there. Expand consciousness, expand with plants.

—

Raquel, my Portuguese hip shaking goddess friend, is the latest to gift me silence and distance after finishing Lonely.

—

Rewatching more of Fantastic Fungi I’m thinking of placing more importance of the Earth under my feet rather than the mystic sky. Like, the importance of feeling the Earth under my feet.

7/9

Arlo sleeps in my room. Earlier in the evening, at Cable Beach General Store, Jay, Kalle and the boy who wears a kilt played funky music and our moving tribe danced on the lawn as I comforted Arlo. With Wil away, I’m Arlo’s emotional support, and I had told Wil I would take good care of him and so I do.

8/9

Somewhat stuck in a state of confusion, and have been like this for weeks. My head is constantly clicking, trying to work out what to do. Going into work I’m so sure this is not where I’m meant to be…until I’m choosing pearls or talking with the jewellers or helping with designs. I remind myself of the skills I’m building. Still. What am I waiting for? If I had financial support to write, would I leave? I’d definitely cut down my days so I don’t have so many interactions with baby boomers and their expectations despite staff shortages.
Hey archangel Michael, what’s my immediate destiny?

10/9

Counting down to Melbourne. Feeling further detached from work. Desperate for a break. Having lost time for creativity. Ready to set something into motion. Waking at 5am for a little bit of creativity, but then there’s Arlo, who’s been sleeping in my room. I play guitar and wait for ideas to land.

14/09

So consumed and heavy with work that I haven’t written or been in my office-camper space. This morning, walking into the camper for fifteen minutes of writing before pre-work yoga, I nearly cry with relief. The heaviness that woke me in the middle of the night can be cleared by not working the rate I have been working.
In the height of work moments, as I help the new employees and hold the responsibility (with Kellie away) while earning less than Roser at her café job, a voice in my head screams I MUST QUIT. My body is telling me what to do. To work for myself. But my mind needs money. Amongst the chaos, my underarms are sweaty, my skin is dry, and Bill calls me into his office. The document he’s been slowly typing is on the screen of his computer. I make some edits in Word and add my name as a witness. I print three copies of his notes for his executor, sign them, and witness Bill’s signatures. I feel honoured to be there with him, inhaling his mischievous laugh and brilliant mind. Each moment Bill shuffles around the office I know are special.

15/09

More magic at another bush dinner. On arrival I get slightly bogged in the sand and leave my ute sitting in the middle of the carpark to head toward the chatter.
The stars are brilliant, the voluptuous moon yet to rise. Beautiful boys take to the bush stage as I greet people, beautiful people inside and out.
I sit and speak with Omar. He introduces me to girls, one who looks like me, and another who says I look familiar.
Melissa and I are wildly shaking our hips when Niang Niang stands on her tippy toes to reach the microphone. She hums a worldly song and asks the people to sing this world-wide song in their language. The stars glimmer. Cicadas bark. The drums and guitar are played. English, Italian, Chinese, German, Israeli, Dutch and Spanish come from the microphone.
Marc drives my ute out of the sand and I retreat home at a reasonable hour.
Arlo sleeps in my room and I’m fully awake by 3:30am.
Arlo and I are in the camper early, the moon hanging above Wil’s troopy. Wet season is coming. I want to write. I’ve still got a headache.
The headache grows. By the end of the day it’s a foreign feeling. I drink plenty of water but my mind ticks. It clicks. Click, fuck this. Click, I should quit. Click, I need money. Click, I’ll quit, I’ll really quit. Because I’m a part-time employee training new staff and acting as manager without being paid appropriately.
I need to write.
Sooner rather than later.
But how will I make this work? Risk it? Risk going back to broke and desperate. My body says do it, my mind says wisely. Is this the cause of my headache?
Arlo’s with Tara but I go for a swim after work anyway, washing away the longest day and washing away my headache. I want my thoughts to land. I want a plan of action. I don’t think I’ll last until January/February. I can’t travel until I release Gemstones from me.
This coming week feels like it’ll be the longest and shittest week ever. This is what happens when I stay in places too long, I get all passionate and opinionated and it’s best to remove myself because it’s not fair on others.
I need to risk it.

16/09

The nights are warmer now. I’m glad to be on fresh linen sheets. I read a chapter of a book. I fantasise about last weekend with L. I’m wide awake in the middle of the night, wishing it was morning. I’ve been grinding my jaw. There are messages from Wil, who delivered my book to Seaways Independent Bookstore in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. It makes me elated. Elated with a headache.
The sharp stabbing pain of my lower right side returns. I’m at the door of my camper, Arlo before me and Tara with sunshine on her face, hugged by her Hilux and veggie garden. ‘It’d be because of the stress,’ Tara says.
The sharp stabbing pain on my lower right side is severe. I refer to it as a diverticulosis flair up. A girl at work, who’s also a nurse, tells me diverticulosis triggers are different for different people. Within a single day sore pimples form on my left cheek.
At the beach, the sun hovering above the horizon burns my memory and life is the vividness of a high quality photograph. My shadow is long as I chase an ecstatic Arlo, wet and happy with a stick in his mouth, around the beach.
Back at home I receive an Instagram voice message from a traveller that read my book. She calls it interesting, notes that she’s tiring of people, too, and asks if my next book will be about a resolution to this problem.
Yeah, my next book is about people and community.