HOWL

I want to fill books with good drawings and turn the Stones up real loud and get drunk on my back verandah and light a fire and howl at the moon and not be afraid of anything. But most of all, I want to remember to do the things that make me feel like doing those kind of things. 

LOVABLE: MARCH THINGS

A bit late with this one, but some of my favourite things from the past month ...

Lerderderg camping, wandering, night sky watching; Humble’s warm breath on my feet on cold mornings; meeting my lover at the skatepark at dusk; this paisley-and-velvet number; catching up with travelling musician friends like Timberwolf and Morgan Joanel; Mexican and movie nights with an old friend – talking energy and light and life paths with a new one; putting together one of my favourite installments for the Volcom blog; planting winter vegetables and propagating my mum’s indestructible succulent strain; Idylwild’s ‘Wild Horses’ thermal; (slowly) learning Cripple Creek and Foggy Mountain Breakdown on my banjo; clean sheets on winter nights; the artwork of Edith Rewa; and my new Moth Vine Moon print.

LOVEABLE: FEBRUARY THINGS

Things I loved in the past far-too-short month:

Melbourne finally having a few summer days Δ playing banjo, still, maybe forever Δ Dexter reruns Δ Lester Bangs and Ken Kesey biographies Δ camping under the stars in the Murray River borderlands Δ this Watershot housing for taking photos of Humble trying to swim Δ daylight savings evening swims Δ these Souvenir Sabbath jewels Δ quitting commission work to focus on personal projects Δ hungover foodtruck dinners in the park with friends and dogs Δ throwing our first house party in the new place Δ wild rice and mushroom soup Δ collecting wild everlastings and cockatoo feathers Δ Loving Hut vegan food Δ Pretty in Pink/any John Hughes films Δ drinking games around the campfire Δ Jeffrey Eugenides Δ finally purchasing this Flynn Skye Eterie maxi Δ and the work of Australia artist Rachel Newling -- I'm a sucker for a beautifully drawn osprey Δ

SUMMER MISCHIEF

Volcom 'Granada' bikini; Reef sun products; necklaces: Ishka, Spellbox, Quick Brown Fox, vintage; rings: Rejoice the Hands, Coyote Negro, Millie Savage Silver, Lo and Chlo Jewelry, vintage; Keith Haring book.

My sister and I used to skip classes during the summer months – this was once I was a bit older and we got along OK, and she had her P-plater licence and would sometimes drive my dad’s truck to school.

She would drive us out to the nearest beach town; just not the one with the bay, not the one with the easy, gentle white sand dunes. We’d go to the one where you had to clamber down the rocks and it wasn’t so good for swimming, where people parked their cars on the headland, and where you couldn’t see who was on the beach from the carpark.

I don’t know about my sister, but I was always nervous on the drive out there. We lived in a tiny valley, and it was just as likely we’d run into someone who knew our parents and would dob us in. But once we were down the rocks we were safe and hidden. Never mind that our dad’s truck – parked alone in the headland carpark – was instantly recognisable to anyone who knew him. It was, and still is, I suppose, the kind of town where you know everyone else’s number plates.

But that was our summer mischief. We’d spend the afternoon swimming and lying in the sun, talking and occasionally flicking through study notes so we didn’t feel so bad about skipping classes. Because that’s the kind of badasses we were – lucky ones, beachside skipping school with study-guilt. 

A DAY TO REMEMBER

Today in Melbourne it is kinda cold and drizzly, and I'm sticking to my challenge of not drinking for the month of January. So today I'm finding myself even more out of step with our national holiday than usual. 

For those of you not attuned to Antipodean goings-on, today is Australia Day. This is an occasion usually marked with standard ocker practices like drinking beer, hitting the beach, frying in the sun, being enthusiastic about cricket/tennis/whatever, and barbecuing some stuff while listening to the wireless (radio, that is). 

It's also slightly troublesome because it celebrates the day white people landed on the continent, which, for our country's Indigenous people, doesn't mark the happy anniversary of our country's foundation, but is actually the starting point of decades of genocide, racism, dislocation, and attacks on their ancient and enduring civilisation. 

As a beneficiary of our country's sad history -- i.e., if not for white settlement in Australia, I'd probably be anywhere in Scotland, Ireland or Germany -- I'm in two minds about this day. I'd like to celebrate this incredible land that we are so, so lucky to live on, but perhaps not today. Not if demonstrating our love for this country comes at the expense of respect for the traditional inhabitants, who themselves understand and love her much more than we ever could, and who today have every right to mourn.  

So, today I'm going to stay inside and draw some more, I'll think about all the things I love -- from gum blossoms to weird birds, wide skies to wild oceans, horse dust to Akubras, VB tins to seventies-era Holdens -- and remember at just what cost I get to love those things. 

WANDERING: FARM HUES

Above photos from the farm; wearing Volcom 'Malawi' swimmers, inherited Akubra hat.

On the last two times I've visited my parents' farm, I've found something that I didn't even believe existed there. First, it was the turtles in the river; which, in my 18 years haunting those riverbanks, I never saw. 

More recently, it was a tree-dweller I'd never even looked for. 

So, yesterday we were driving up the side of a mountain in my dad's 4WD. We headed through state forest and into National Parks' land, ricocheting along a washed-out fire trail, past grass trees and native orchids and towering eucalypts that made me feel vertiginous and insignificant and tied to the spiritus mundi all at once. 

I was staring out the opposite backseat window -- looking through the canopy onto the mountains below -- and thinking about how heights make me nervous and acknowledging that I'm an unequivocal valley/coastline dweller, when I spotted someone staring right back at me. 

A koala -- probably 200 metres away -- was sitting up on a branch of a giant, exposed gum, watching our white truck labouring up the mountainside track. And at first, I genuinely thought it was staring at me, personally. 

I yelled for dad to stop the truck, jumped out and ran to the edge of the track to watch the koala more closely. In all our time living with a back fence of bushland, we'd never seen a koala in our area or any neighbouring farms, so were considerably stoked and impressed as he clambered into a more leafy part of the tree and disappeared from view again. 

And while it might seem like just another weird and unexpected animal sighting, for me it underlined the thing I love most about the natural world: that every secret revealed, and every gift received is all blind luck. To me, seeing wild animals in their environment, or finding feathers or skulls or snakeskins, has always felt like finding something so rare and precious and privileged ... and I'm infinitely grateful that I was taught to feel that way about it. 

SKETCHBOOK: LOST IN PARADISE

What else do you do when you're lost in paradise?

Sit around looking at verdant expanses: watching for rain, for kingfishers, for visitors coming up the otherwise empty road. Spend time talking with old friends about love and expectations and how to identify birds, listen to playlists from when you were in high school, breathe the scent of the horses your neighbours rode over for drinks. Draw, pick hydrangeas, don't walk anywhere without first looking for snakes. Dive into the river -- just once -- without checking for submerged logs. Stand in the kitchen and think about how perfect are the wildflower weeds, the Warhol print, the ginger plants in the blown-glass vase, the pomegranates and the mangoes, the bottle emblazoned with the name of my dad's hometown.

   And I guess that's kinda it.