The street we stayed on in Myola kind of just dwindled out. It turned into a bushland track that wound through the banksia trees and dunes, onto a long, deserted stretch of white-sand beach looking across Jervis Bay. 

The track over to the beach was spattered with tiny roadside orchids – infinitely delicate types, unique to Australia and totally incongruous among the harsh, sun-bleached coastal scrub. Each so tiny, but so different – purple, yellow, lilac, green, yellow-and-orange. Parrots crawled and crowed over the heavy banksia flowers, which, when you think about it, are the ultimate botanical counterpoint to orchids. 

After another dreary Melbourne winter and an overcast weekend in Eden, Myola felt like the first place we touched spring. It was the first place we saw real sun, northern sun, since autumn. I felt silly, maybe even rude, lying on the grass in the backyard while everyone else played cards and talked and drank tea on the back verandah. But I had zero will to do anything else – this was the bone-thawing sun-warmth we wait for all winter (and most of spring, if I'm honest) in Melbourne. It turns out, this overwhelming compulsion to just sprawl on the ground in the sun continued throughout the entire trip – and my eyes watered the whole time because they never quite adjusted to the brightness. 

We slept a hugely deep sleep, in a little blue-and white room that looked like the attic of a farmhouse, but the French doors led out to a porch looking over some mangrove wetlands, not paddocks or cattle. It was the sleep of holidays, childhood homes, or recovering health. The sleep of two nights drinking late in Eden. The sleep of escaping the city. 

I scanned the holiday-house book shelf for seventies science fiction covers and other surprise gems. We ate roadside-stall eggs for breakfast, surprised again by the rich colour and flavour. I collected freesias, growing wild in the backyard, and pressed them in my sketchbook. We found Led Zeppelin glasses and a suede trench coat in the local op-shop. We listened to podcasts about the weirder side of Australian history (Rum, rebels and ratbags, for anyone interested). We just generally rolled into holiday mode and kept on rolling...

Clothes by Volcom, mermaid fin necklace by Lo and Chlo, rings by Rejoice the Hands, boots by Harley Davidson. 

I'm finally sorting through the photos from our last trip up the coast, at a time when another trip home is already drawing near. 

These little snippets and video are from Eden, our first stop up the road and one of my favourite places in New South Wales. It's quiet, isolated, calm ... a town in a world of it's own. It's fibro 50s beach houses with Hills Hoists in the backyards and whalebones in the front. It's the one pub on the hill and local folk lore. It's fishermen and divers and a community controlled by its sea.

We swim, dive, fish, and drive around, visit waterfalls and rocky coastal outcrops. I always collect some kind of treasure - sea urchins, kangaroo bones, abalone shells. I always drink and eat too much. Strange animals appear consistently: octopus, seals, penguins, dolphins, eagles, stingrays, black swans, whales. The chiming bell birds are a constant reminder of where you are, and where you are going. That's the sound of the southern roadside town - the sound of halfway home, whichever way we're headed. 

Here are the two new prints I've been working on over the past few weeks -- it was nice to put some solid time into personal projects... Images that had been in my mind for quite a while.

I've also listed a few original artworks and one painted denim jacket that I'll be very sad to see go...

Dusty available here. 

Wonders available here. 

The most lovable thing about October is daylight savings –- warmer weather, longer days, slow sunsets, beers in the backyard, and the general thawing out of everyone's sad winter attitudes. 

Other things to love about October in Melbourne? Soda water and Sailor Jerry, blueberries and watermelon, this avian turquoise piece, early morning jogs and early crashes into bed, sunbaking with Humble, huge new growth in my cacti collection, this Jay Howell anthology, dedicating time to some really detailed drawings, making pizza bases from scratch, daydreaming about the next road trip, admiring more beautiful rings, rad t-shirts, and beautiful dresses... anything made of velvet really. 

And in other news... I've released a few new print editions in my online store.  I've got a new blogpost up on the Volcom blog. And I've joined Redbubble, so my work is available (here) in all kinds of cool formats -- like phone covers and scarves and stickers.