Vintage dress, rings vintage and Cobracult, vintage turquoise necklace, the 2 Bandits Wrangler neck cuff,

This is the place.
You know how I said I stood under a stand of gum trees while two baby hawks fought over prey right over my head? These are the trees.

This is my front yard, growing up, where we saw a big carpet python, where we rode steady horses through long grass, where I collected gum leaves and insects, where we let off a bag of fireworks we found in the shed, where we hauled logs and tidied up when my sister got married.

I started the year sitting on my parents' verandah: listening to the summer rainstorms, working on drawings, occasionally playing Shovels&Rope out of my laptop. But mostly I just observed the daily schedules of the local birdsongs, grabbing my camera, racing across the lawn and jumping the fence whenever I heard the baby hawks in the trees. (I never got a good shot of them... but my mum and her friends did). 

So here it is: where I grew up, wearing my father's hat, blossoms from the swamp gum my mother nutured, wearing a dress, bandana and necklace from the markets and op-shops I haunted for all my teenage years. But also rings from one of my long-time favourite silversmiths across the Pacific Ocean – Cobracult. 

Truly some of my favourite things. 

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. 

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 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.