Notes written in an airport lounge

Launceston - Melbourne - Holbrook - Melbourne - Port Fairy - Avalon - Sydney - Dubbo - Gilgandra - Curban - Coonamble - Sydney - Melbourne - Launceston.

Thursday

Holbrook to Melbourne, Hume Highway (on way back from bull sale):

7am, bleary-eyed, we stare at the self serve McDonald’s menu. A woman taps me on the shoulder. She asks if we would like their egg and bacon muffins, somehow they ended up with two extras. Thank you, we say.

The glamour, charging computer in mcdonalds so i can finish my Country Style column.

Melbourne airport: J leaves me to return to the wild weather. A toddler screams so loudly the air vibrates.

Melbourne to Port Fairy (Port Fairy Literary Weekend): I meet up with my writers group. We load the little car with suitcases and laughter. The talk loops and swirls: books read, knotty plot problems, points of view, tense change challenges, a gear shift and into chat about friendships and relationships, then back out again into writing confidence and routine and tricks to overcome self doubt and how to let the liquid magic of our writing minds find its way to the page.

Saturday

Port Fairy - Avalon: There was a hitch picking up the rental and I am so late back to the festival that I walk on stage in the clothes I’d pulled on when I got out of bed. My friends rush back to the little cottage where we are staying, pack my bag and hustle me from the stage after the panel. And then I’m hugging them and on the road to Avalon Airport. Google maps tells me I will arrive in time, just. The little car rockets along through the wind and rain. I make the flight.

These women….!

Avalon to Sydney: Sleep.

Sydney to Dubbo: I step out onto the tarmac and the sweet smell of familiar earth greets me like a friend. I resist pressing my mouth to the ground. The night sky is high and the stars just starting to come out.

Dubbo to Gilgandra: We (the writer, Jessie Tu and me), rocket along the Newell in our tiny rental car. We don’t hit any kangaroos and find our motel. By the end of the drive we are friends.

Sunday:

Gilgandra to Curban Hall (Stella Day Out)

Is there nothing a small committee of women cannot do?

The hall is decorated with fairy lights and flowers. Oh flowers is a silly description. Let me try again. The stage is wreathed with olive branches, so it looks like we are talking in a bower. Behind the chairs are branches of blossom, foraged from the roadside and so big they would have had to open the double doors to get them in. There’s bouquets of sweet smelling wormwood, pushed through with something purple that I can’t quite recall. It is exactly the sort of gathering Miles Franklin (from whom The Stella prize takes its name) would have been delighted with. The whole thing was a humbling. I realised I’d been chastising myself from Port Fairy to Curban for not being sensible and saying no to this mad cross country jaunt. But here we are with a raffle at the door, a line up of toyotas outside, a book swap in the car park and a happy buzz in the hall.

I suspect our audience wasn’t sure what to expect of a mini literary festival, but they arrived ready to listen, to buy books and eat a CWA morning tea and lunch.

Curban to Coonamble

My daughter drives us out to Coonamble and we make a pot of tea and sit on the couch. As the day draws in we walk along the levee bank, her dog running, nose to ground, tail a flag. Magpie geese wheel overhead. A willie wagtail switches his tail at us from the flowering branches of river gum.

Best dog Bess

Monday

Coonamble to Dubbo:

We talk, all the way into Dubbo and I watch my grown up daughter, a bruise purpling her wrist around the puncture marks of a dog bite, with something that comes close to astonishment. We hug at the airport and pretend we will see each other again very soon.

Dubbo to Sydney:

Three friends order a glass of wine to celebrate the first leg of their holiday. The steward laughs, make the most of every moment she says, and they chink their plastic glasses. Beneath us, crops of golden canola, deep green wheat, full dams and rivers.

Sydney to Melbourne: I hug Jessie goodbye and find my jumper and coat in my bag.

Melbourne to Launceston: I buy the best chicken sandwich in Australia and eat it staring out over the brightly lit tarmac. We get on the plane and then sit at the gate for 45 minutes.

Launceston to home: J picks me up, we will make it home just before midnight. I am travel creased. My brain hitching on small details, people’s names, where I have left my phone charger, what day it is. I take to my bed the lines from Liz Soto’s poem…

Today I am Full of Birds.

“If you run too long, you forget everything.

Even your limbs become invention. A fallacy of skin

you tell yourself you once had when you knew

how to be more, so birds are the stories you now tell

your flesh.”

…and promise time to remember.

mm x

Poem of the Week:

heaven sent, by Jazz Money

Wattle blooms on the 
      harshest days. 
                                     /
           Every southerly will ease. 
           The days are short
but the stars   are many. 

     And you're all wrapped up in 
                               heaven 
             / 
                                   that thing I say 
I don't believe in. 
....

I bought Jazz Money’s, how to make a basket, at the Bendigo Writers Festival and it’s been by my elbow for a few weeks. She’s an exciting, powerful writer and the poems are political, personal and lyrical.

Reading

Jessie Tu’s The HoneyEater, which is popping up on podcasts and reviews everywhere. I read the first 50 pages on the flight from Sydney to Dubbo and then forced myself to put it down so I could write this. Quick reads: Rick Morton’s newsletter Nervous Laughter, always draws me in - this week, on being pulled up by the police in the carpark of KFC because he’s dropped life admin, is so good and so relatable. The late, great Jenny Diski’s essay on Martha Freud (The Housekeeper of a World-Shattering Theory) is a rip snorter and deserves to be read and reread, especially as I’m off to spend the rest of the day cleaning.

Listening

The Blind Boy, look, he won’t be for everyone, but I love him and his last few poddys have been brilliant. His chat with Chris O’Dowd is great craic, but then I also loved him riffing off borrowing a mirror from Kylie Minogue and diving into attachment theory. Also, This American Life on birds. If you are not into Spark birds, or a bizarre meet cute involving a chook, then skip to the third act and be astonished at the wonderful strangeness of the human race.

Watching

Burghley and the mighty Lordships Graffalo with his tiny magician of a jockey Ros Canter. Summary here for those who missed it. (I am laughing as I write this because there’s not a huge portion of you who will be interested…but for those of you who sit in the sweet spot of readers and eventing enthusiasts, well, this is for you!)

Opportunities

I’m a mentor with the Kill Your Darlings Mentoring program in 2025. Is this for you? Details here.

Right, off to tackle the washing pile. Have a good week Sitters.

mm