Challenge, Learning, Life

A Self Betrayal

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My latest challenge has been to take on writing more prose – more interesting topics and to embrace the creativity within this space. It has been an interesting journey and one that I am enjoying as I take on some new online courses and I continue to work on my first book. The self-criticism and fear that comes from taking on such a task some days feels insurmountable. But with small musings each day, I manage to gain more confidence with it. So from here on in, this blog shall take a turn to the challenge of more artistic and creative forms of writing at times in the absence of extensive travel, some of which I do hope to resume soon. Here is the first musing of late, one that resonates with me after considering Nanette by Hannah Gadsby on the reflection of self-deprication and what it does to one’s self. Let me know in the comments what you think!

A Self Betrayal

I can’t wash the acid taste from my mouth. Those words I said about myself – and for what? To fit in? To make you feel more comfortable in my presence about your own self-worth?

The self-deprication of a moment now lives with the constant feeling of my own deprication of self for allowing such words to flow from my mouth so effortlessly.

Of tasting and embracing the salty disdain of my own betrayal.

Of turning my meaning of myself over to those who consider nothing more than their own humour and amusement.

The blood leaks so slowly they cannot see how much I have lost. Leaving a trail of the smallest droplets that follow me around like the weight of my own heart – chained to my feet and dragged along the ground until it stops. And there is then nothing left to extract from it.

My soul, my veins – they are empty.

The fault is mine.

I didn’t take the time to cradle that heart in my arms and elevate it from the ground to my chest, to hold tightly, where it could beat the way it was meant to.

I neglected to nurture and protect it.

I let others kick it along the ground and laugh, and not one to want to be left out, I joined in the game.

But this isn’t a game, my heart.

My life.

My slow-dripping internal death.

A languid haemmorhage with every acrid word I speak, and allow to be spoken of myself.

Adventure, Life, Road Trip, Travel

Back On The Road Again!

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Well, it’s been all of five years since I hit the road for a solo overseas trip and as I sit here on my couch with a packed backpack in front of me, it still hasn’t quite sunk in that this time tomorrow, I will be sitting on a beach in sunny New Caledonia. Hello country 71! (OK, so technically it isn’t a country, but my best mate and I had a discussion where we agreed that it indeed is one based on our criteria. We’ve gone rogue on the UN definition. A country for us involves needing a separate visa, being far away from the original territory and a general desire for independence…. maybe I will write more on this later?! But anyway, 71!!)

And in the grand tradition of me and booking flights, I did so about a week prior to departure. When I get bored, I will often sit at home on the couch scrolling through flights and dreaming of all the places I’d go and looking for cheap deals. This day I was feeling like I don’t know who I am anymore and feeling the repression of my personality from a job that drowns me and a poor choice in partner that made me feel like I needed to suppress what I should probably consider the better parts of me. The bits that are adventurous and curious. The bits that are crazy and say yes to everything and will always dive in and give something a go once. So in rebellion against this, I decided I was going hard and definitely not staying at home. Flight booked.

As always, I failed to do sufficient research and discovered after booking that New Caledonia’s beaches have been closed for the year due to an increasing number of shark attacks. A French work colleague of mine and I were discussing this. He tells me that one chased him as he ran back to the safety of the sand in thigh-high water. He said this shark was literally flinging itself at him like it was possessed. Oddly, he also told me the locals have great respect for sharks and believe the souls of their ancestors are embodied within the sharks. I was like “Of course! That is why it was flinging itself at you! You’re ‘French French’. They hate you guys! Hahahaha! That said, I’ll butcher their language enough they will probably want to make me shark food also.”

I also checked the weather to discover a full-day thunderstorm, followed by 2 more days of rain, which will kill some of the snorkelling visibility. So I’m now not sure what I’m going to do. But this also makes me excited. In the past when things like this happen, I’ve been forced to pivot in ways that have led me to some of the strangest adventures. Call it a gut feeling, but I’m feeling interesting times ahead. And maybe even the start of another half book (not that I’ve finished the others… hmmm…). So for now, I say peace out! I’ll update you on the other side!

Challenge, Learning, Life

I’m Never Fucking Leaving Myself

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This week has been a confronting one for me in so many different ways. When you think you’re good and you’ve done the self-work and let go of all the things you think you need to let go of to move forward, somebody will undoubtedly hold a mirror to you to show you that you’re not done yet. There is still a very long way to go in the whole learning process that they call life. And I’m starting to come to come to terms with the fact that the point in time I will be done with this learning is the point where I am dead. Burying your head in the sand causes as much pain as confronting the issues that hold us back and have us make atrocious choices for ourselves.

I think, the truth is, that there will always be pain. This is unavoidable. Our choices come in the ways that we choose to deal with it. We can choose to deal with it in a way where we completely abandon ourselves and let others make choices for us. Or we can embrace the mantra of one of my dear friends and shout from the skies “I am never fucking leaving myself” whilst we offer ourselves space and compassion to process.

For the first time in my life, this is the year I’m never fucking leaving myself. I’ve learned to assert boundaries. I’ve learned to express my needs and I’m now learning the hard lessons about where my needs come from in the face of having them not be met. I never before really thought about why these things were things that I needed until I had the rude realisation that my needs were rooted in a place of deep trauma. And instead of burying myself under piles of work, I chose to honour myself and I took some time out. I listened to what my body needed. I listened to what my brain needed and I sat and worked to process, self-soothe and heal. I gave my vulnerability to those I trust and allowed myself to be supported by incredible people.

The reality is, not everyone deserves our trust or our vulnerability. Some people will not step up for us in the ways that we need them to, even when we ask. Some may not realise at the time and we can communicate this and test. But if they disregard us again then it is not our responsibility to fight to change them or to fix it. That is their journey. We can only accept what is. We either get what we need or we don’t. We accept the situation for what it is, or we walk away.

Truth be told, there will always be a lesson to learn. There will always be work. There will always be sadness, pain, anger and all the emotions that come with being a human. The only thing I do know, as I sit here in the cold with my toes in the sand, is that I am a mountain. I am tall, proud and immovable in the fiercest of climates. The world can throw all of the shit at me and it’s going to hurt. But the one thing I’m never doing again is leaving myself. Ever. I’m never fucking leaving myself..

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When morons have renovated your house and you need to fix it

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So for anyone who missed it, I bought an apartment. And in buying an apartment I have had the realization that I have, in fact – despite my ferocious resolve to never do so – become OCD like my mother. Everywhere I look I am annoyed by the ridiculously careless and half-arsed efforts of the morons that quickly renovated this place for it’s sale. As someone who takes pride in the work that they do, the lack of respect and forethought into the work astounds me. Especially when it looks like they have put some silicon over here and then run out of the tube and couldn’t be fucked buying another one for six dollars so just left the job unfinished. Or couldn’t be bothered to seal the sink so that the water wouldn’t rot the kitchen bench…. or even grout the bathroom tiles. They just had a crack at filling up the gaps with some tile adhesive cement and when they ran out of that left some holes for water to get into around the place for decoration. It physically hurts my eyes and my soul every single time I look at a hole between the tiles and I flick back and forward between wanting to cry and smack the idiot with a fly swat.

While I knew some of this when I moved in, I discovered a whole lot more of it when I started living in the place. It is generally not until you start to occupy the space that many annoying things come to view. Today I hemmed my curtains to discover that the floor is uneven…. My friend is trying to convince me I did a shit job at hemming them and I am adamant that I measured that shit down to the millimeter. (I think she is taking the piss with me and trying to get a rise – oops, I took the bait!) The floor is definitely uneven…… Every time I look at the curtains now my OCD self is going to get annoyed. Maybe I should have hemmed them crooked…..

So anyway, my point… I am getting there! I started this blog as a challenge blog. Thomas Takes On. And what I was originally taking on was the challenges involved in travelling the world. Right now, nobody is travelling anywhere, especially us in Australia. So my latest challenge of renos is game on! I will become handyperson extraordinaire, D-I-Y guru of the highest order and all-round fucking fixer if it is the last thing I do. And most importantly, I WILL DO A GOOD JOB OF IT (unlike the people who had a crack at this the first time). How hard can it be?? (famous last words…..)

I am sure that there are going to be massive tears of frustration along the way and desperate phone calls to the brother and mother screaming “HELP!!” and a whole bunch crazy video watching online (I have already watched some Bunnings tutorials and Selley’s online silicone tutorials). But I am determined to do this! I have also sent my mother (in a not locked down state) to Bunnings to do recon and chat to the lads for me and get advice. Equipped with an order list of 30 items to be delivered to my house for the weekend, I am excited for the new adventure that lies ahead and the learning that is inevitably going to come with it. Bring on the new challenge!

We will start with sealing the kitchen sink. Then we will try and remove the excess tile cement from the walls and floor and scrape some of this out in preparation to grout. I will then also attack the mould growing in the window frames by striping and sanding them back, treating them to kill the mould and then repainting and resealing the windows. And then deal with the shit show of the grout on the bathroom floor. For now. Then I might attempt the shit show that is the hole in the wall the size of a dinner plate to allow the kitchen sink pipe in. If I look through the cupboard I can see the kids in the neighbourhood childcare centre running around over the road out of that hole, it is that big, I shit you not. Currently it is stopped up with a cardboard box and tape to stop the bugs getting in….. Anyway, a new phase in life. New learning. New challenges And I plan on doing it fucking fabulously!

*Cue “Independent Woman, Part 1” by Destiny’s Child as I dance around the house in a Superwoman outfit because that is how I plan to get this shit done – and with no audience or help, of course, because with current lockdown restrictions, nobody is allowed to come to my house (“What’s a help??)*

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When a dream comes true

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As with any big change that has happened before in my life, I sit here reflective. Where I have been, where I am going. How one door managed to close and another has opened. And like with every single massive thing that I have done in my life, it is a solo journey. After losing so many friends in my youth, time – and the lack of it – became undeniable. Somebody once told me “If you wait around for somebody else to be ready to do with you the things that you want to do, you will never end up doing them”. So I quit my job multiple times, travelled around the world, took all kinds of crazy risks and now here I am – buying a property.

I never thought in my wildest dreams that this would ever be possible. And yet in the midst of all the craziness in the world right now, I learned that the skills that served me travelling were also the skills that served me to do this. It all prepared me for it. In all honesty, I have dreamed of something that is my own for such a long time, I don’t even know how to process it. I remember sitting on buses in Europe and all the way through South America almost meditating on the idea that if I had my own place that I would have a garden with fragrant, fresh vegetables and decorate every room in a way that reflected each different continent. I would have an Asian-style bathroom. African drums and ornaments I accumulated in my black hardwood study. I would cook in a European-style kitchen. I bought fabrics from South America that were bright and vibrant that would fill my living room. It entertained me for hours and hours on end and I felt calm thinking about it. But I never dared tell anyone about it for fear of judgement, laughter. Criticism. Failure.

Well, 56 days ago I bought an apartment, and in 4 days I will get my keys. And I have spent the last 56 days dreaming and organising and planning everything in my own head, exactly how I did on the bus. But this time it is kind of stressful because it isn’t a dream anymore. It is real. And as much as it is scary, I can’t wait to sit alone in my space and to meditate with it and become one with it. For the first time in my life it is mine and not occupied by or belonging to someone else. I am so excited to calmly bond with my new space as I consider every object in my hand and choose where it is to live. For me it is a very romantic and intimate ritual and one I want to not madly rush through. One I want to savour. Because hopefully I will not have to do this again for a very long time. I want it all to be perfect. Exactly how I dreamed about it on the bus. And how I have dreamed about it for the last 56 days.

I don’t have a garden. But I have planned and researched what and how and where I am going to grow a bunch of vegetables throughout my kitchen and my house. I want a giant wall of greenery so that I can pick them as I want to cook with them. I have chosen some beautiful wood furniture that I can sit my drums and clave from Vanuatu on, my ukulele from Nicaragua, the games I played with Dale Danger in the Essaouiran restaurants of Morocco after buying them in the souks and to hang above it on the wall the scratch map that was gifted to me from my A-level students in England as a thank you for teaching them. I will have space to be able to put out every single object that I have accumulated that means something to me, reminds me of a place or a time in my life that was wonderful, without it being too cluttered or overwhelming with things that mean nothing, distracting me from the simplicity and joy of the space. Those functional things can be hidden behind closed doors so that I can look at all of the things that bring me happiness and memories.

I am really looking forward to being able to put proper holes in the wall to hang the artwork that I have collected from around the world. The Batik from Indonesia. The watercolours from south-east Asia. The spray can painting that my sister bought for me for my birthday off the strip in Vegas. I can’t wait to drape the yak wool blankets that I bought in Nepal from the shop owners that I had tea with every single day on the way from the hostel to Thamel and back. Or the Guatemalan blanket that Jess and I spend half an hour laughing with the woman in the market over because she couldn’t understand why we wanted a baby wrap blanket if we had no babies. The bed spread that I bought from the night market in Laos, or the one that my supervising teacher in the Cook Islands made as a gift to me in her women’s club to say thank you for the help and resources.

The truth is, many of the things that remind me of the amazing life I have led has been hidden under the bed for so long because these things felt too special to ruin in an environment that was impermanent and shared. Truth is, I can’t wait to be reacquainted with these things as I move them to their and my new home. I am excited to feel all of the emotions that come up with all these memories and to start something afresh whilst still being able to embrace the past that made me who I am today. And that got me to where I am right now – living my new dream.

Challenge, covid, Learning, Life

Shit i learned about people during covid lockdowns

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The Age of COVID has challenged everybody. Not a single person globally hasn’t been affected or challenged in some way. What fascinated me most was how people behaved in my country in the face of these challenges. They say that true character can be determined, not when everything is rosy, but when the chips are really down.

Some chose to respond in fear and behave in ways that exhibited greed. They raided supermarket shelves, complained about their rights disappearing and protested in the streets, refusing to wear masks that prevented the spread of Covid to others. Others chose to be grateful, despite the challenge, and demonstrated compassion towards others. Some suffered extraordinary losses and continued to persist without complaint. A large question that has resonated with me is why some people choose one behavioural path and why others choose the opposite. And the one thing that I think differentiates these people is gratitude.

Such a small thing, but something that within our society we are taught not to engage with. We always need to have more. More money, more up -to-date technology, more friends, more experiences. More, more, more. We are taught as consumers within this capitalist system in which we live that our self worth is tied up in how many things we have, how nice they are and how expensive they are. Our value as human beings is directly proportional to these things. That our value increases with the accumulation of money and things. All the while, the ideas of being grateful for the things we have fall by the wayside. They mean nothing in light of the next thing to accumulate.

Because of this way of life, we have become entitled. Entitled to good jobs that pay lots of money, jobs in general, pay rises and promotions, the best house to live in. Entitled to go outside and infect other people with diseases because how dare something impose on their human right to go outside of their house or breathe the air freely without a mask. To have free movement to go on a holiday. Our society has become about the individual and the individual’s ‘rights’ over the collective good of others. As a society, we are breeding selfishness. Narcissism. A lack of resilience to adversity, because we are told that we shouldn’t have to face any adversity at all in life. Happiness is absence of struggle. And everybody deserves happiness.

Then Covid comes about and teaches people the biggest lesson of all. That lesson, in short, is that life and the world don’t owe you shit. You make the best of the things that come your way and it might not necessarily be easy but life doesn’t owe you easy either. That happiness is not the absence of struggle, but the choice to be grateful for the things that you do have every single day. And to be honest, in the midst of Covid lockdowns, it wasn’t hard to find things to be grateful for. Grateful for my own health and the health and safety of my family. For the ability to go outside of my house for an hour a day for exercise or for food. For food in general. For having a safe roof over my head. For the internet and the ability to see and communicate with my friends and family. For the dance lessons online that I was still doing and the community of people I met doing them. For the extra time to deal with my past trauma and develop a greater level of emotional intelligence. For the time to investigate and try new things. For the time to do some extra reading. For the opportunity to be a support person for students and friends. For so, so many things.

Meanwhile in other parts of the world, people are dying in the streets because the hospitals are overflowing. Because their governments don’t give a shit about their people and those people need to leave the house to go and make money to feed their families because starvation is a more certain death than Covid. In some countries if they left their houses at all they would be arrested and thrown in jail as imposed by the military. There were people suffering much greater challenges than we here in Australia could even imagine, and yet we moan and complain and moan and complain about how hard we have it. Our privileged livelihoods that we have gotten so used to that we see it as our ‘rights’ and not what they actually are. Privileges.

As a country we have been born into so much privilege, we don’t even realise how much of it we have. Which is why gratitude and compassion have become more important than ever. Our lack of these things in ordinary life and in the face of adversity is what has bred so much anger in light of this global pandemic. The most important thing I found was a gratitude for being able to help others less fortunate than I and this gave me a greater purpose. Having a purpose outside of yourself or finding one to dedicate yourself to, was the largest factor contributing to positivity and calmness during this crazy time. But that requires thoughts outside of oneself. It requires selflessness and self awareness. All of the things that our current individualistic society tell us is not important. The reality is, the things that make us happy humans are not the same things that keep the capitalistic world churning. When we buy into the ideals of the latter and an event such as a global pandemic arises, our happiness fades along with the money and the privilege. Mental health issues become rife. However, when we invest in community and our own emotional awareness and learn to resonate with our own discomfort it doesn’t matter what your external situation is. You will choose positivity, compassion and gratitude in the face of this adversity. And your life will be made so much easier for it because you deal with what is thrown at you as something that ‘just is’, instead of something that ‘shouldn’t be happening to me because this isn’t fair’. breeding anger and resentment.

Life isn’t fair. It doesn’t owe you fair. It is what it is. Accept. Let go. Be grateful. Have compassion for others. Laugh in the face of adversity. Because nothing is ever so bad that you cannot find a single thing to be grateful for. Especially when you’re in your warm house, doing your job from home, watching your Netflix, surfing the internet, receiving your government support cheque and eating plenty of food. Our temporary lives are shrouded in so much more privilege than some people’s everyday normal lives before Covid. It might help to remember that too when we consider how ‘hard’ we have it here in Australia.

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Negotiating with life

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“Know what you are willing to offer. Know what you are willing to accept. But most of all, be willing to walk away if you are not going to get it.”

These are the wise words from the guy teaching my online real estate course. And as I walked away from my first big negotiation on a property this week, the feelings hit hard. It felt like a major loss and one that I wanted to keep fighting for because I want it. It was the best one I had seen and in the best location. My lack of abundance mindset and my fear of the unknown had me wanting to do stupid things like throw more money and more effort at it than it is worth.

This negotiation rule is one that makes so much sense, and yet so many of us as people get too emotionally attached to things to follow this rational rule and it got me to thinking about other areas of my life. What am I willing to offer? What am I willing to accept? What do I need to walk away from? As people, we can often let others lessen our standards. We too often stay, when we should be walking away. We accept less than we want to receive. Than we deserve to receive.

As I sit and reflect on my life up until now, I realise that I have over the years constantly let other people and things cross the boundaries that I wanted to have for myself and I let them out of a place of fear. Fear that I am not good enough. Fear that I cannot find anything better. Fear of not being a good person because I have walked away from something I don’t want to be in and I feel guilty about not staying, either out of obligation or a sense of care. I have done it with jobs, relationships, friendships…. But at what cost? I have found that previously the cost staying for others is losing my sense of self.

A wise friend in talking about this told me that empathy is an amazing ability to have for others. But not at the expense of your own self esteem, when you are putting the other persons need to lessen their pain above the pain you take on yourself. That they are different beasts. And I think that as women, we tend to do this a lot. We are trained to be the care takers. To see someone in pain and to want to take their pain away for them. We are trained to put everybody else before ourselves and to our own detriment. To the detriment of our standards and our boundaries. We are fighting a losing battle.

There will always be pain. There will always be disappointment. But by fighting these things instead of accepting them and resonating with them, that is when we start to lose ourselves. That is when we start to cross the boundaries. When we see ourselves as worth less than that we are fighting so hard to keep, when what we should be doing is accepting and walking away.

These are hard lessons. And in life you will win some and you will lose some. It is a work in progress and one I can’t say that I will get right every single time, but as long as I’m getting it more right than before, that is progress. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to keep asking of yourself in relationships with other humans and the work and things what you value. “What am I willing to offer? What am I willing to accept? If not, just walk away.”

Life

What I reckon: Gawking at people in need

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So I’m festivally sitting in a nail salon on Acland St getting my fluoro greens for Christmas when a homeless man outside the shop takes a turn. All of a sudden there are two people on the phone to an ambulance and are trying to help keep him down. They came in for gloves to help him with first aid until the paramedics arrived. From my point sitting in the store, I couldn’t see the homeless man. But what I could see was everyone else in the general public and their disgusting behaviour.

I watched a woman pull out her phone and start filming the man who was disoriented and had just wet himself in the street. There was zero respect for him as a human being, only for what would make a good Instagram post. When she saw me death stare her down for doing it, she stopped. She clearly knew she was wrong to do so, but still did it anyway.

Like sheep, people crowded around the man within meters of where he was just to get the first hand gossip and once the paramedics arrived it got worse. Everyone needed to know what was going on, and everyone needed a piece of the action.

But not a single person at that point other than those who were originally helping him and the paramedics were there out of genuine concern. Most of them were displaying behaviour that was completely disrespectful. If it was you passed out in the street, how would you feel if a crowd was amassing about you so they’ve got some gossip to share with their buddies and videos of you at your lowest to share online. I was disgusted. And voiced as much to the people I was sitting in the salon with.

The thing is, yes, he is a homeless person and yes, he has hit a pretty low point in his life. Most of the time these people are happy enough to ignore this, put their heads down and keep on going until there is some drama we can stand about and judge. But who are we to judge another when we have zero idea what they may have been through to wind up there?Who are we to decide that this person isn’t worth mattering about unless the paramedics are there and it’s providing petty entertainment?

The point is, this man is a human being, not an animal in the zoo to be gawked at for the purpose of the entertainment of others.  To do this is to take away his humanity and those that stood around filming him should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

Challenge, Learning, Life

Things I Wish I Could Do Right Now That I Can’t

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Nearly two weeks ago I wound up in the hospital having myself a glorious appendectomy. Ok, it was fucking shit and definitely not glorious, and the recovery has definitely taken it’s toll. I’ve been told there are things I’m not allowed to do. And i hate not  being able to do things with the entirety of my fierce and independent being. Whilst not doing those things, I’m also left to ponder all the other shit that I want to do but can’t either. Here is a non-comprehensive list of shit I wish I could do right now but can’t.

1. Lift more than four kilos.

2. Go to boxing and hit the bag ferociously.

3. Go salsa dancing and boogie the night away.

4. Drink the five bottles of wine in my car.

5. Book the secret flyer £200 return flight to London for 2 weeks next March.

6. Move house without having to beg others for help.

7. Eat a Tim Hortons chilli with a Canadian maple donut.

8. Drive somewhere far away, pitch a tent and hike a mountain.

9. Sing a song properly without losing my voice.

10. Further investigate the wonderful(ly fucking strange) world of speed dating.

11. Wake up not exhausted and manage more than a long-arse trip to the supermarket without having to take a four hour nap to recover.

12. Concentrate long enough to read a book.

13. Do anything other than watch Netflix and by watch Netflix I mean put it on in the background whilst surfing the internet for flights.

14. Bungee jump.

15. Stop eating the pile of chocolate in my snack drawer because I’m too lazy to cook.

16. Wear pyjamas outside in public because I’m too lazy to dress myself.

17. Be a popstar billionaire.

18. Build something without it being a total disaster.

19. Go for a walk without hurting myself.

20. Stop complaining.

I think that’s pretty much it. Actually it’s not, but you get the idea….

 

Adventure, Challenge, Learning, Life, Road Trip, Travel

Shit I Learned On The Way To Adelaide

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My friends were getting married and so I figured that instead of flying over, I would drive and spend the better part of the week hanging out and helping and this also meant that I could go to the wedding and the hens party. But in the grand tradition of “This could only ever happen to you, Dano”, life had other plans for me.

1. Fill your tank of petrol when  you’re half empty.

I decided that I would go via Mount Gambler to see a few of the sights and stop over for a night. So if that was as far as I  was going, I may as well take a detour to the start of the Great Ocean Road to the chocolaterie place that serves ice creams as big as your head and call it a double and has a giant bowl of free chocolate button samples. This was all well and good. I plugged Mount Gambler into the GPS and set off. But GPS at this location decided back roads and gravel were way more efficient and fun and I agreed up until the point where I hadn’t seen a petrol station in over 400km. I am about 60km put of Mount Gambler when my fuel light is on and I know I’m not making it so I Google petrol station in the nearest town and go there.

When I arrive I can’t find the fuel station and I hit the local pub to ask where it is, only to be told that I can’t get fuel without one of those cards specific to that station. “Fuck fuckity fuck….”. The man in the pub then mentions to me that he may have four litres of fuel in a jerry can in the back of his truck and that I could have it. Thank you to the kindness of strangers. If it weren’t for this man I’d be sleeping in my car til morning until someone came to open up the fuel station. Turns out 4L was more than sufficient to get me there.

2. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Namely when you read that the hostel reception is open between 4 and 9pm and you get there at 7:30pm, pick up the phone on the wall to buzz in and get told they all went home an hour ago and you can’t stay there. Great. Time to go down the road to the local pub instead. In all honesty, five bucks more and my own space. Probably a good thing with what was to come next.

3. Never underestimate Murphy’s ability to fuck you over.

So I spent the night sweating through my bed until I drowned it and woke up with my throat clamped over and unable to swallow. Cool, it’s Thursday. The first one of the school holidays and like clockwork, I am sick. But like always, I think I can manage this fine and I set off on my way to go see the Umpherston Sinkhole, Blue Lake and the Naracoorte Caves and finally get myself to Adelaide.

This is what actually happens. I drive to Blue Lake in shit weather, get out of the car for thirty seconds to look at it and get back in the car. I drive to the  sinkhole, I stumble around the sinkhole for ten minutes feeling like I’m going to fall over and get back into the car and start driving. I get as far as twenty minutes down the road to Penola before I am shaking behind the wheel and concede that I need a doctor so I pull into their hospital/clinic and they have an appointment.

The doctor upon taking one look at me says “Yeah you look pretty septic right now and pills aren’t going to hit this quick enough and before you know it I’m on a table getting a penicillin injection in my arse and suffering a dead leg as a consequence. “No driving” he says “you will drive down the road in thirty minutes to get your pills and find somewhere to sleep and that’s it.”

Well fuck. So much for the hens night. Getting to Adelaide, or any of it. I got to the caravan park in Padthaway and passed out. The next day I spent most of the day in a state of unconsciousness. I missed the hens party. I missed the AFL grand final. I missed being able to consume water.

Three nights in Padthaway later and I was able to eat and had my energy up. I left to drive towards Adelaide.

4. Giant wombats and kangaroos are well fucking cool.

I hit the town of Naracoorte first, slightly backtracking as this is the home of some of the most impressive fossil remains of the megafauna that once roamed the Australian continent about fifty thousand years ago. They have about six football sized fields of fossil remains from where these animals fell through the cave holes and died in there. There were two-ton wombats, round-nosed kangaroos, all manner of super cool and massive animals. They assume their demise was based on an ice age and human hunting.

5. Galahs are evil mofos. 

Get out of the car to the bathroom in the national park after a nice walk around the Chinaman’s Well circuit to have a bunch of Galah’s swoop at you to the point where you can feel them grazing the side of your head and you’re yelling “alright, I get the fucking point. I don’t want to eat your goddamn babies so fuck off and leave me alone!” whilst calmly trying to navigate your way to the car without your brains getting spilled on the dirt path.

6. But mosquitoes are the worst kind of mofos.

I pulled into a free campground a couple of hours out of Adelaide right before sundown and went about trying to set up my tent. I’ve got the hatch open and I’m pulling things out and getting the tent set up real quick when I realise I’m in a mosquito cloud and they are biting my arse through my pants. After getting it all set up, I jump into my car and shut all the doors to realise that my car is full of mosquitoes as well. And then all of a sudden I’m like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill slaughtering anything in the car that moves and screaming “dead body, dead body!” down the phone to my friend who is obsessed with murder shows. About three hundred dead bodies later and I feel I can rest easy in the car but am afraid to run to the tent. But when I got out they were gone. Turns out it was just a dusk affair.

7. The church on the fifty dollar bill is in Raukkan. 

Can’t get into it. I tried. But it was pretty to look at from the outside.

And then I got in my car and finished the leg to Adelaide. Arriving only five days later than I said I would, and with more stories to fuel the Stories nickname….

A woman's lifelong aversion to the word 'No'….