So much can change

In a season, a month, a minute

The long weekend lands on a sunny weekend after a month of rain. We soak it up, feeling as if spring has arrived – warm sun on our skin, glistening beaches ahead – instead of the seasons tipping over into to winter.

The next weekend a young mum is mauled by a shark at a popular swimming beach, losing an arm and going on life support. The fact she’d been swimming close to the shore, between the flags, with others nearby, in broad daylight, unsettles and shocks the city. I’d been aiming to swim in that exact spot with a friend 24 hours later and have an out-of-body experience reading the headline: a woman in her 30s attacked by a shark in Coogee. It feels far too close to home. I can’t shake the feeling that it could so easily have been me. She made all the same choices I would have, after all.

Today, to mark the solstice, I head over the bridge with a friend to watch the Ice Cold Classic. I’d been planning to swim, but the attack combined with a recent cold means I’m hesitant to get in. We grab brunch and sit in the sun, watching the large gathering of swimmers gliding through the water from Manly, out towards Cabbage Tree Bay, and back in towards the beach. The day is unseasonably warm and bright and sunny, hard to believe it marks the darkest day and the start of winter.

It feels good to be out. It’s only going to get lighter from here.

Change is in the air, a constant swirling presence of positive disruption. A dear friend readies herself to leave Sydney and return to the UK, as I brace myself for weekends without her company – on swims and walks and coffee catch ups across the inner west.

A housemate moves out and I change the second room into a room for guests and hobbies, for writing and sewing and flexing my creative muscles away from the rigours of the 9-5.

My desk buddy gets an exciting new job and we send her off, full of pride and excitement. But returning to work the next week is filled with absence, as I get used to the new normal of an office life without her.

Another beloved friend moves much closer, from more than an hour drive away to less than ten minutes down the road. We go over to help her pack up her flat, transporting plants and pantry items crammed into our cars, ferrying them to her new home. A few weeks later, we pop over for brunch, admiring the way she’s decorated it to make it feel entirely hers.

Now, with the flat to myself, I have friends over – often and easily. A celebratory lunch with wine from a cellar door in the Adelaide Hills. An impromptu dinner of leftover curry after a gym sesh together. Commuting home from work and making dinner together. A ragù on a Monday night despite plans falling through. It feels so good and nourishing to have friends over, to fill my flat with laughter and cooking. To cook for others, not just myself. To boil the kettle and fill a long line of waiting mugs.

I go to Brisbane for a whirlwind trip one weekend, visiting GOMA to see Archie Moore’s kith and kin. I’m overwhelmed by its scale, four large black walls filled with white chalk mapping out a family history over 65,000 years. In the middle, an island is filled with towers of paperwork marking 557 inquests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody between the Royal Commission report in 1991 and December 2023. The combination of legacy and lives cut short is unnerving. What could have been; what is – the knife of colonialism cutting through the past and present.

Brisbane is bright and warm and sunny, more noticeable after long grey weeks of Sydney rain. Giant monstera plants overtake the city, covering brick walls and concrete structures, a jungle-like reimagining of a city left to its own devices. Good food, good wine, a walk along the river at night. The next day, I walk and walk, admiring architecture I once spent days writing about, visiting a book shop I’ve long read about, admiring exhibitions newly stumbled upon. I return to Sydney, inspired and buoyed by a weekend of doing something new, and more assured than ever of the life I’m building for myself.

At the lagging end of May, Sydney Writers’ Festival rolls into town to once again revitalise. I fill my week with author talks and panel discussions, meeting friends by the bookshop, and going for coffee to form new writing relationships. It’s invigorating, as always. Bumping into people I know and people I’ve met only briefly before. Filling our minds with new perspectives and new ideas, walking away buzzing with new possibilities. On the Saturday, I grab lunch with my friend’s mum and stepdad and we share the sessions we’ve been to, swapping recommendations and anecdotes. I feel so lucky to have this London connection, this cord connecting here and there, then and now.

There’s much to look forward to in the months ahead: VIP visitors to my guest room, a big trip abroad to see family and friends, loved ones getting married, and babies being born.

More change, less certainty.

Magic, in the air.

All the stuff that builds and shapes to make an interesting life.