I've finally updated my online shop with prints, which you can check out here.
I also bought a new urn plant, which, as you can see from the photos, I'm pretty happy about. The only thing to worry about now is how to keep it alive through the imminent Melbourne winter...
We got lost on the way out there, as usual. Got in a fight about how I can’t navigate with maps, and he doesn’t look for signs.
But we got there in the end, anyway. I knew we were on the right track when I saw the cutting horse stud – and I was jealous of the cowboy riding a chestnut horse alongside the road. We knew we were in the right place, for sure, when we got to the emus. We stopped the car in the middle of the dirt track and met them at the fence, where they stood twining their necks together, sliding their dinosaur feet in the dust, blinking their pale lids across overlarge, skittish eyes.
The river itself is a mix – someone’s always blasting eighties hair metal from one of the first campsites, and sometimes there’s ruckus at night. Sometimes there are lots of kids. Boats. Four-wheel drives. Dogs. People bringing their horses down to the sandy riverbank beach, to swim in the 40-degree heat.
But the campsite we chose was isolated and quiet, and apart from the ski boats roaring along the river, it mostly felt like we were alone. I watched the sulfur-crested cockatoos cross the river each morning, and collected their yellow-tinged white feathers along the banks. I watched the sun rise golden and set dusky pink. I got scared at night by koala sounds and wandering animals and our restless dog.
And I mostly liked the quiet, with the high stars behind the gum branches, the river still blindly flowing. I mostly liked having a little bit of time to tap into the real world.
Procrastination breeds weird creations. But I kinda dig it, in a raided-the-primary-school-crafts-cupboard way.
Volcom dress, Wandering Coyote boots, Vanessa Mooney necklace, all else vintage.
I'm trying to keep an eye out for that unseen everyday wonder. Trying to stay sharp to the notion of encountering something new, special, unexpected. To the idea that tiny natural miracles are taking place all the time: quietly, amazingly, and totally unperturbed by the lack of audience, in a kinda tree-falling-in-the-woods manner. But it's hard to keep a hold of these thoughts in the suburbs, in a place dominated by humans and all the things we make and consume, and are so deeply familiar with. While impressive in their own right, the things we make, control, consume have a distinct lack of mystery or wonder – because they're ours.
But I was overwhelmed by this kind of local magic when I visited the farm over summer. All the time, everywhere you look – if you look, quietly, long enough – there's something strange and beautiful to encounter. Baby hawks fought for prey right over my head. I stumbled over a clutch of unearthed water dragon eggs in the paddock bordered by the creek. Streaks of light skated across wide, silent, star-crowded skies. Flowers bloomed and died within hours. What was there one day, was never the same the next.
And all the time, all these things are working hard at whatever it is they're compelled to do. Quietly, wonderfully.
Here's to feeling good all the time.
I've written about Myola before, but on our most recent stay we saw another face of this perfectly sleepy beachside town... long, lazy, rainy afternoons full of naps and holiday reading, one stunningly bright day of stand-up paddle-boarding and kayaking along the river to the sea, chasing hordes of soldier crabs across the estuary flats, long hikes across headlands and rocks to find fishing spots, impromptu pub dinners across the river at Huskisson, crystal waters at Green Patch, geography lessons about exactly what state you're in around Jervis Bay (part of it's ACT, as it turns out...), tame wallabies, killer mosquitos, dead stingrays, early morning beach treks in light rain chasing black cockatoos, and watching through the kitchen window as huge roos hop down the middle of the empty street.
Just writing about it now has me ready to pack the car, shirk responsibility, and speed off up the Hume to a better horizon...
Anti-bad Vibes Shield towel by Volcom, glasses by Sportsgirl, tassel tank from Zara, jewellery by Rejoice the Hands and The 2 Bandits.
Wandering Coyote boots, Lo & Chlo shell boot ornament, Vanessa Mooney necklace, Spellbox ceramic hand necklace, De Bortoli La Bohème Pinot Noir Rosé, vintage dress and hat, Kikki K copper fairy lights, Spell & the Gypsy Collective rings, Rejoice the Hands turquoise ring, Coyote Negro La Ocular ring, vintage earrings, Three Arrows Leather pouch.
There’s nothing like late summer sparkles… Those kinda never-ending evenings and too-hot-for-anything days, the bright mornings and fierce middays, the distant glitters of campfire embers meeting Milky Way scatters, and salt water bursting into a million tiny cool starbursts.
Also, to come to grips with the end of another successful, lazy, indulgent, vagabond summer, I'm starting a new series of prints for my online store... And to help make room, I've set up a discount code (PRINTSALE) for 25% off.
It's now my favourite time of year... the December slide into debauchery, abandon, and eventual newness. I've been working on a few special and illustration projects and ideas lately -- ideas I'd been meaning to get to for a long time, and opportunities I'd been hoping for as well -- so I'm pretty happy with my recent pages.
I'm also very happy that my next update will probably come from the farm where I grew up, surrounded by open space, family, love, good times, and lots of beers!
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.
Here's the second-half instalment of last week's sketchbook post.
Lately I've been in a bit of a predicament. I have so many projects that I want to chase down and work on and start off, that I'm stupefied by the whole thing and don't know where to start.
So, for now, I'm trying to dive in anywhere, lest I waste any more time... which leads to a bit of chaos-brain, but I can live with that.
Over the past couple of months, I finished up a graphic design course, then went on a road trip from Melbourne to Ballina via Eden, Myola, Gerringong, the farm, and north-west NSW. I'm now back in Melbourne working as a freelance illustrator, which is new, unusual, and exciting.
And to be totally honest, the biggest challenge of freelancing -- so far -- is not getting too distracted by my dog all the time.
Anyway, over the past few months, I've been drawing like crazy, playing with weird, unfamiliar colour palettes and trying to expand and push my style. Here's the first of a two-part instalment of what I've been up to lately...
I want to fill books with good drawings and turn the Stones up real loud and drink 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.
Volcom Reflections crew and Petalhead skirt, Harley Davidson boots.
We didn't quite make it to the snow (and anyway, dogs aren't allowed …) but we did make it to some amazing alpine eucalyptus forests.
And I saw a lyrebird for the first time in my life.
But seriously, do any Australians know where you can take dogs to play in the snow in Victoria?
It's taken me almost a year to work through these photos and polaroids … This might be because Iceland was so incredible I couldn't narrow it down to a few snaps, or maybe because I'm a terrible procrastinator.
Either way, here they are -- a week wasn't nearly enough to explore this amazing, out-of-this-world country. I definitely hope to make it back for a better look.
