Becoming Letters #6

Movin’ and groovin’ along the Sapphire Coast, Shoalhaven, and Illawarra of Australia

I’m writing this post from Wollongong, the traditional lands of the Dharawal people. It’s been a month of immense movement from place-to-place, leading up to a quieter few upcoming months.

My view as I work on this letter! Swimsuits drying in the window, chocolate coconut water and dairy-free strawberry yogurt at the ready as the waves roll below :)

What I’ve been up to

This past month has been a blend of hectic, constantly on-the-go, and yet very laid back, as we’ve been exploring sleepy coastal towns. The size of Australia continues to baffle me, as we have driven so much and yet seen so little.

I decided it would be fun to have a little map that traces our route from month-to-month, as the size and scale of Australia is rather ridiculous! The blue path that says #4 (for my fourth Becoming Letter) was the first month in Australia, the green one is month two, and the red path is what we’ve done this past month!

Melbourne→Mornington Peninsula→Loch→Wilsons Prom→Yarram/Tarra-Bulga National Park→Paynesville/Raymond Island→Metung→Merimbula→Batesman Bay→Jervis Bay→Kiama→Wollongong = 1,330 km/826 miles and 19 hours of driving over the past month

Before leaving Melbourne, I was lucky to catch a writers festival, the Fitzroy Writers Festival, and attended an incredible talk by Leah Manaema Avene, a powerful human who spoke on what it means to be a good weed in a place that’s not your own. I’ve been grappling with my own identity in Australia, being a foreigner on lands that have so much history. Check out my newest post, A Good Weed, to learn more about Leah’s talk and my own reflections.

Our roadtrip passed through many small towns, an abundance of farmland, and small glimpses of the ocean. Mostly, this area of Australia is very rural and there isn’t much in the way of tourist infrastructure, leaving us to find our own path.

Someone asked me yesterday what my favorite place has been so far in these three months… and I didn’t know what to say. Nothing stands out immediately as the best place. And maybe that’s okay. Australia is a collection of little moments of beauty wrapped up in big swatches of mundane. It’s a different way of traveling for me, to have so much emptiness. We are traveling slower, driving a few hours every few days. This gives breathing room to explore those off-the-beaten-path locations, and I’m surprised at how few things we’ve managed to discover. Australia says, “I’m a big guy!” and big guys have emptiness for hundreds of miles (which I’ve heard gets even more extreme the further inland you go in this country).

Here’s a little collection of some of those bright spots (okay, as I looked through photos of the past month, I am feeling immense joy and gratitude at all the lovely things. I hope you feel the joy, too!):

1. Walking through the hot springs on the Mornington Peninsula; 2. Atop a scary boulder scramble in Wilsons Prom; 3. Cutie koala on Raymond Island; 4. Trying to osmosis with the Sugar Gum Manna trees in Tarra-Bulga National Park; 5. Discovering giant termite mounds that are the size of me in Mimosa Rocks National Park; 6. A surprise full double rainbow we saw after a tour of the Bega Cheese Factory; 7. A sunset stroll along the boardwalk in Meriumbula; 8. Tummy troubles strike again (such is the life of a chronically ill blob!); 9. Camping on the beach in Narooma

1. Exploring the secret Smugglers Cove; 2. Enjoying plant-based sloppy joes and locally brewed beer while camping; 3. Bird (people) watching on Surf Beach; 4. Kayaking in Batemans Bay through oyster farms; 5. Learning to shuck my first ever oyster from a fifth generation oyster farmer!; 6. Kangaroos on Long Beach; 7. Swimming in an ocean rock pool in Kiama; 8. Sea cave overlooking Cathedral Rock; 9. FoGuangShan Nan Tien Temple pagoda, the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere

Lunar Cycle

There’s a blue moon this month, which means tonight is the rare black new moon (the special name just means it’s the second new moon in a single calendar month.) This lunar cycle represents an extra moon, a moon outside the expected count, one that doesn’t quite fit.

The etymology of the blue moon is so fascinating, definitely recommending reading into it! I was particularly struck by an early confusion of translations: belewe (Middle English, “blue”) with belǽwan (Old English “to betray”). This mistranslation led to some believing the extra lunar phase was a “betrayal” of the moon. There’s something I keep turning over in that: a mistake so good it stuck, a moon named for a betrayal that never quite happened.

I’m here in Wollongong, on Dharawal Country, another new place in a growing list of newness. I arrived not knowing much—just the coastline, the escarpment behind it, the particular quality of May light here. What I’ve learned is that in Dharawal time, it is Marrai’gang, the season of the quoll, wet and cooling, the lilly pilly falling from the trees as a signal to begin moving down toward the coast, to mend old cloaks and make new ones for the cold ahead.

There is no blue moon in this calendar. There can’t be! The Dharawal seasonal cycle doesn’t count moons against months: it reads the land, what’s fruiting, what’s calling, what’s moving. A moon cannot be extra or misplaced when time isn’t a container to be counted into. It’s just the moon, doing what it does, over a country that’s been watching it for thousands of years.

I’m the newcomer here. I arrived with the vocabulary of blue moons and black moons, with a whole system for naming the unexpected. And the land is just telling me: the quoll is calling. The fruit is falling. Start moving toward the coast.

Maybe that’s enough to know for now.

A parting question for you…

What are you moving forward with this lunar cycle, in this moment of “extra” time?