
Byron
I’m sitting in the shack in Broken Head again. The walls have been painted a crisp white and different rope formations hang on the walls. It’s warm. My back is burnt. My friends have gone back to Sydney in Connie the van. Again I didn’t go with them. We drove up Thursday in the hail. Not just any hail but the kind of hail that left us aquaplaning across the highway, white sheets in our eyes, pulling into the Maccas carpark in a random town and waiting in the congestion fueled

Money, Never enough of it
Last year, when we were driving through Namibia in a Hyundai i10, taking the back roads against all advice, cranking Biggie Smalls and staring at the endless tundra of nothing, I thought heaps and heaps and heaps about money. How it seemed to be leaking out of my bank account. Slowly my good times were vanishing as the funds sank lower and lower. We took a wrong turn and ended up in the township. Driving around, people standing in front of their tiny houses, wondering what in

On Feminism
In parts of North Africa, mostly on the Mediterranean side, is a tribe called the Bedouin people. You may have heard of them, or at least their tents. They are a traditionally nomadic people, with exceptions provided by governments in the region for tax paying and border crossing due to their cultural structure revolving heavily around non-stationary existence. The way their social systems work is very complex, with vertical, horizontal, diagonal and non-linear hierarchies, i

Paradigm
Apparently, some dude with a pony tail and a really intimidating knowledge of everything told me, scientists are now thinking that we’re not made out of matter. Well, matter as we traditionally thought. That ‘matter’ is actually made out vibrating thingys. That we’re actually walking vibrations. Vibrators. You know when someone is speaking and you know exactly what they’re about to say? Like, you hear the future? Well, this has nothing to do with that. I just find it freaky.

Time Warp
I found myself in Byron again on the weekend. I went for three days and stayed for a week. My feet lagged slightly behind my body, heavy with the build up of dirt and water on my badly designed shoes, eyes peeled in the darkness, a twitch of panic in my stomach, searching for the back of a head I had just lost sight of in the 40 000 thick crowd carrying me. Splendour in the Grass was ridiculous. In the end I didn’t even care about the grindy echoes of Tame Impala or too much

Wednesday
There’s a dark patch in my soul. A spot reserved only for the call to run. Sometimes I hate it. That little spot. Lingering there, making me dissatisfied. Displaced. A constant reminder that in the end, I am completely and entirely alone. A dark temptation to isolate myself, cut the people that ask questions from my conscience. Lock the doors of my bedroom and lose myself in the chaos of my own mind. To forget the now, to forget the then and bury myself in the semantic realit

Tofo Chicks let loose in Indo
I touched down in Bali at one in the morning. A small guy, probably called Made, flagged me down and drove me into the wet streets of Denpasar and eventually a dark complex somewhere vaguely near Dreamlands. I was greeted in the driveway by Renet, Plettenberg bay native and stewardess of international waters and Melanie, Spanish surfer babe and longtime resident of Tofo, Mozambique. I didn’t really want to be in Indo. To be frank. There were a gazzilion other destinations wit

Laters Indo
I finished my two weeks in Indonesia in a fish market sitting at a crooked wooden table. A table covered in a vast selection of seafood – oceanic delicacies that would break the bank back home. The husky sounds of a tanned South African guy’s voice fades in and out of the conversations, the other Saffas at the table tapping and singing intermittently. I had that overwhelming sense of belonging again. Familiar, remnant of the time I spent in Mozambique. I didn’t care if I miss

Lest We Forget the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels
Today marks a hundred years since the youthfully optimistic Australian and New Zealand soldiers sailed to their own versions of hell in World War One. Today we honor the service people that fought, died and returned home in each war since. Today, we get up before the sun and listen to the same bugle we have listened to on the 25th of April every year for as long as we can remember. Recite the same poem. Lest We forget. However, as the people of West Papua, our pacific neighbo

Indonesia
That weighted scent of incense as you step of the plane, Hot and heavy on your skin. Voices either side, ‘taxi’ ‘taxi’ Unmistakeable. Addictive. Welcome to Bali. I’m flying on Saturday. I got flights so cheap that I couldn’t say no. I’ll be meeting some friends from Africa that I cannot wait to see. They’re already there, frothing out, going to parties on the cliffs of Uluwatu. It took only three months for my feet to get so itchy I had to get back into the chaos of third wor