“ I was born in Sydney. Garcia comes from my father who is Colombian. My parents met in Sydney in the early 80’s. My Dad immigrated from Medellin, Colombia to Australia in the early 70’s. His immigration was fuelled by the 50 plus years of civil war that preceded the drug wars. Mum is Sydney born and bred and I spent a lot of my childhood with my Grandparents in Oatley surrounded by nature near the Georges River. I had a smell memory of camphor being rubbed into my chest before a nap and tobacco — My Pop taught me how to roll cigarettes very young (laughs). We’d be at the table with his dog rolling his stash for the week (much to the horror of my Mum years later). His dog was always by his side. The relaxed weekends in Oatley were a stark contrast to the inner city and the rowdy Colombian BBQ’s of Western Sydney. My Grandparents and Great Grandparents grew up in the inner city area and incidentally for me at 30 years old, I ended up opening a cafe in Surry Hills which was close to where they were building houses back in the late 1800s. The other side is first generation Australian on my Colombian side.
I grew up in two worlds, in a cultural context though my parents had a lot of shared values and shared ideologies and that’s what brought them together. My father married earlier and had two children so I have 2 half siblings and another younger brother with my parents. We all grew up very close alongside our extended Colombian family. 4 out of 14 of my fathers siblings moved out here in the 80’s so we have many cousins.
My Dad was a Salsa musician and we grew up with a lot of music and dancing to his 14 piece salsa band when he performed on Sundays at Bondi Pavillon. He really held on to his culture and shared that with us so we were lucky in that regard. We got to visit Colombia as kids which at the time was such a different world experience because there was so much violence, a lot of socio economic issues and socio political issues that were really intense. I went in my teens and It was a difficult place to digest when we were growing up here in a safe and comforting environment in the inner west bubble of Sydney, which is so multi cultural and incredibly diverse yet really cohesive and very community oriented.
I went to Burwood High School and spent a lot of time at an Australian theatre for young people. My real joy in high school was drama and performing. My Mum was a drama teacher and an English teacher and my Dad a performer so it wasn’t surprising. We were all loud and dinner time was a performance. Being expressive, being highly communicative and sharing were just traits and ways of being that were so normal for me. I wasn’t raised in a space being quiet or introverted at all. We always sat at the table and nutted things out until you made your point. Confrontation was almost encouraged (laughs) so you would learn how to get over it.
It’s interesting doing this space (Timbre) and putting a light on diversity in our stories and creating safe spaces for conversations. When I think back, I think I was being geared up for it the whole time. My Mum speaks 7 languages and travelled the world for many years. She encouraged me to learn languages and to be constantly curious about the world around me. I learnt Indonesian at high school so I did a student exchange to Indonesia. I did a backpacking trip with my family across the US where Mum took us out of school to learn how to travel. I never saw anybody as an other. Coming from 2 culturally distinct spaces you don’t get to choose one. I never understood the us and them thing. I was excited about things that were new and different and embraced change. My Mum’s sister travelled to India and married a man from Iran so my cousins on that side are half Iranian. We grew up in a very blended, culturally diverse family.
Vic and I met at work 18 years ago. We were both working in a hotel in Sydney and we are still working together in hospitality. When we met I was planning a trip to Iran but I’d had a falling out with a housemate at the time and there were financial problems so I was in a pit of disappointment about the whole thing. Vic said…Do you want to come home with me to Papua New Guinea? I said Yes, that sounds amazing. We got there and it was wild, it was wonderful and it really changed my life. I’d actually only known Vic for about a month so my friends were a bit concerned (laughs). I got to know his family and I got to see a side that a lot of people wouldn’t get to experience without that local connection. It started me on this journey of reassessing my understanding of even being Australian. Growing up in the city I didn’t have a lot of experiences out bush or experiences with mob. I didn’t have experiences that connected me to country here in the way that I now can as an adult. Being in PNG, a country with such complex, socio political landscape and another mind blowing physical and ecological landscape like Australia and how am I only learning about this now in so many ways? This is on our doorstep.
Vic and I spent a year on the road in Latin America. We travelled to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Cuba. We went to the most epic Carnivale in Cuba in 2009 because it was the 50th anniversary of the Revolution. We had no money left by the end of that trip but we had to do it. I found it hard to ground after that trip and being on the road for so long. We’d been with incredible communities in the Amazon, in highland areas of Colombia, lived and worked on a conservation project in Costa Rica and I was so fascinated by the impact we have when we travel to places, the impact of colonisation and Industrialisation on communities which started to shape my view of the world.
So many things happened that weren’t so great like we were nearly kidnapped in Nicaragua but luckily long story short I knew we were being taken the wrong way and escaped the vehicle. I think I was always aware of that reality but we hoped that wouldn’t be ours. Apart from that one hairy event Nicaragua like most of Central America was incredibly beautiful.
I decided not to go to Uni after school. I was too much of an adventure seeker and the idea didn’t appeal to me but I did end up going to uni in my mid 20’s and I came here to SCU. I did a Bachelor of Environmental Tourism Management which was a mixed degree. In the third year I asked to have heap of units switched out so I could do some through Gnibi, the Indigenous Studies School. I came back to Lismore and my sister had also come to Uni here. I was living in North Lismore on Bridge St and I had sort of broken up with Vic.
It’s been really nice to come back to Lismore after all that time and still know so many familiar faces. I was going diving a lot in Byron and volunteering on the dive boats. Vic came to meet me after a year of me being here and we connected again and went on another road trip to Cairns where we stayed for 4 years. I finished Uni by distance and did my Honours through SCU. I did a thesis project with the Mandingalbay Yidinji Aboriginal Corporation out near Yarrabah about planning sustainable tourism on country.
I went back to Sydney to help Mum care for my Grandmother who was dying. Vic and I had married in Cairns which was lovely and we ended up back in Sydney and opening our coffee shop called Kwila in Surry Hills nearly 10 years ago now. We have staff that run it and it’s still going well. We always knew we wanted to create something together. Working in coffee seemed like an organic thing at the same time. I had connections in Colombia and Vic grew up in coffee in PNG.
The first 5 years of having Kwila we started roasting our own coffee and exploring how to source coffee and we both knew we wanted the business to be something that spoke to community and built a community space. If you visit Kwila you’ll feel that community vibe. Building that community space is kind of the lead on to how we ended up knowing Teela Reid and Merinda Dutton who started Blackfulla Book Club. We met them years ago as customers at Kwila. We had a coffee and started conversation. We built a relationship and collaborated with them in this space.
We purchased the building here in Lismore in 2019. We were ready to renovate and get it all happening at the start of 2020. We’d put in our DA with Lismore City Council which is a story in itself. Anyway, we were in PNG on one of our origin trips and a week after we got back the borders closed with the pandemic. We went into damage control just keeping a small hospitality business in Sydney alive, so our plans here went on the back burner though we still worked on the building. Eventually we planned to open in March 2022. We had all our stock upstairs when the flood came. We were ready but it went over the top of our roof. I think we are the lowest building in Lismore. We had prepped this lower section as we were super conscious of this building being flood prone but this flood shifted the whole building. The top floor tried to float away so we had to re-stump and brace it which took a lot of money and time. After we’d cleaned and helped others then the second flood came and it went upstairs again. We just got in the car and left and went down to Sydney. I felt like I couldn’t deal with people asking…how are you? I couldn’t talk about it, the trauma was still happening here and it was all too raw.
I think we felt how important a community space here and with the intention behind what we are hoping to share was almost amplified after the flood. Even though it took a lot to actually open the doors…Are we actually going to do this here? I’m so thrilled that we have. I love it here so much and I love the people here so much. There’s something about sharing Indigenous story telling at a time like this whereas a global community we are really starting to consider what’s gone wrong in terms of our land management and how we address our resource use from housing to food.
We inherited a dog in the flood who belonged to one of our neighbours but is now part of our home. Her name is Beth and she floated up to our street on a kayak. We are all still getting to know each other. That was a big deal for us to take her on but her early life was a bit rough and she’s about 9. We’ve never had a pet and we don’t have kids. All the neighbours were saying…be careful with that one, she’s nuts. We think she just needed comfort and like someone who’s had a rough go, she just needed love. She smiles constantly so I feel like we’ve found our happy place with her.”
