Listening

on the surprises that can pop up when you welcome someone to your campfire

Dear Musers

After the last time I wrote, I thought, I’ll write again soon, I’ll make this a weekly thing where I’ll pop my thoughts in a note to you. A week passed, then two, then more. Anyway, here I am again, finally.

This time I’m at the lovely place that we love to retreat to write. Unfortunately, there are only three of our group of seven, but it still holds all the magic. As I pull off the bitumen onto the dirt road, my heart and brain say, here you are, you know what to do here, it’s time to write.

The room I am faces a small kitchen garden where little wrens hop around. The sun is warm and it is a joy to be here, to have time in nature with my writing.

A couple of weeks before the referendum, when we all had hope in our hearts and on our sleeves, hubby and I went camping. Some friends were joining us but wouldn’t get there until the next day. We went to a place my mate had booked just out of Mathoura and as we pulled in, I braced myself for the hoards as it was a long weekend in Victoria and NSW. In the last message from my mate, she’d said, save us a spot. Instead, it was a beautifully quiet campsite full of superb fairy wrens and enormous sites.

As hubby began to make dinner (a one pot wonder on the fire) a ute pulled into our enormous site. The P-plater pulled up and he got out of the car and slipped his Akubra on and hitched up his jeans. I sized him up as about my youngest’s age and that he looked like someone who didn’t mind a bit of peace and quiet too.

‘G’day,’ he said, ‘I’ve booked site 6.’

I nodded and gestured to the enormous site and said that there was heaps of room. ‘Got your dinner sorted?’ I said.

He shook his head and I told him to join us when he’d set himself up. He wandered over and held out his hand to shake. As I took it, he said, ‘Great jumper.’

I grinned. I was wearing a ‘Yes’ hoodie. ‘It’s a yes from me,’ I said.

He smiled and told me that he was a Yorta Yorta man, that he was a ringer competing up at the Denni Ute Muster and that he couldn’t be bothered staying up there with all the drunken people.

As we sat around the fire that night, Jimmy told us stories that he’d learnt about this place. The story of the long neck turtle. About how his people were endangered, that they were dying out. He’d had to find out about his heritage by asking people as these stories had been kept tight over the generations.

He talked about his brother and the racism he’d received at uni, about his own racism he’d received at school. ‘I don’t even look Aboriginal,’ he said. He talked about his aspirations once he completes his conservation and land studies, about his grandparents, parents, about the hope he holds.

At the end of the night, I thanked him for his time, his stories. ‘It’s been a privilege to share a fire and hear your stories,’ I said.

He looked shocked. ‘No one said that to me before,’ he said.

I am sure many people will say it to him over his years ahead.

After we went to bed, I wondered if we would have been so lucky to have had him at our campfire that night if I hadn’t been wearing that hoodie. Did it provide him a safe space to talk, to let him know where my allegiance was?

Other things

• A great essay from Kate Mildenhall on writing the future (in which she cites Jane McGonigal’s “Imaginable” that is now on my list to read and the Pixar Pitch)

• I’ve been trying to manage my emails in the Apple ‘Mail’ app and it is frustrating me because I’m so used to the Google mail (Like the search function! It’s impossible!)

• Aligned to the previous other thing, my emails crept up to 500 again despite my commitment to unsubscribing to a billion things and to deal with it every day. I am determined to find a solution to this

• I’ve made it to the end of Part of of my next draft and it’s taking longer than I want, but I think it’s going to be worth it. My recent internet searches include things like ‘history of children’s clothing’ and ‘timeline of the Ruby Princess’, which gives you no indication of where it’s heading

• Word of the day on 19 October was Shower Orange. Technically two words of the day…

• I’m still trying to work out the best way to catalogue my short stories but have created a spreadsheet, so that’s a start

• My roses seem to have weathered the aphid storm and give me more joy than I expected

• My inaugural Retreat with Me is next weekend and I am so excited and am already working out dates for next year

• I’m not looking at my socials much at the moment and it makes me feel so much happier.

In some good news, I received a 2024 KSP Fellowship that will give me 2 weeks to spend at their writers centre. I am so looking forward to that!

Til next time

x Meg