“I had this line about if there’s no green planet there won’t be people anyway. That was my thinking then, it’s changed now, we need both. I quit everything and started making sculptures, quite morbid works like coffins with feathers and bones. I think I was probably in a mild depression again at that point.
I then met John Seed who was the head of the Rainforest Information Centre. He was always touring the world to spread word about rainforests and to do this deep ecology work I was interested in, which is about connecting to the earth and inviting us to feel our feelings instead of shoving them down. We would sit with people and invite their sadness, anger and fear and to express those feelings instead of bottling them up and then feeling isolated the way I had been.
When we were home in Australia we organised blockades and campaigned for forests and against cyanide leach gold mining. It was 60 hour weeks working constantly, hard and unpaid work but very exciting.
It was 1997 when I left the US and now my family was even further away which wasn’t intended. I came straight to the Northern Rivers and lived in Wotherspoon St. I worked for 11 years with John. We were partners both in work and a relationship. We travelled to Europe and South Africa which was work focussed, trying to empower people in protecting the earth rather than going into despair and apathy.
When I first came here my parents thought I had joined a cult. I wasn’t make any money and they couldn’t believe it, that I dropped everything, went to a different country…it must be a cult. (laughs)
I remember thinking at the time, one day people might have these feelings too about what was happening to the earth. I think we’re at that stage now where the environment has taken front page and centre. Almost everybody whether they think it’s human induced or not, is aware that we have some major problems happening and people have feelings about that.
John and I moved out to a shack in Barkers Vale by the Border Ranges. I only left there about a year ago, then in 2008 John and I went our separate ways. I was the Director of the Rainforest Information Centre at that time. We supported campaigns in Ecuador and India and other overseas countries, advocating for them and raising funds for places to be protected. There is still a rainforest reserve in Ecuador of thousands of hectares that’s protected. At one point I was in Ecuador and had to fight off the government officials from our land with their mining hats on From there I went to the Amazon trying to protect and area where the pink dolphins lived.
Those were good years.
In 2008 after the relationship broke up I found myself without a home. I started smoking, going through menopause and ended up in a depression again that year. I was at loose ends with what I was doing with my life. I lived with friends and I couch surfed for that year then I went to Lifeline to work on their suicide lines. I was no longer suicidal because if I go back to that 21 year old me I made the decision then that I was going to live my life no matter what. Lifeline’s program actually really helped me, the training they do and being on the telephone lines helped ground me and find my place.
I then went back to school and got another Master’s Degree to train to be a Psychotherapist which is what I always wanted to be. I worked at ACON and I sort of came full circle, back to working with people. Working as a Psychotherapist I felt like I was back on track.
I was missing creativity though so in 2008 I had this inspiration for a book. I wondered what would happen if there was a round up. I’m of Jewish origin so it’s in my DNA I think from the holocaust years to feel some fear around that. It has always haunted my dream life. I thought what if that happened right here? You can never think, oh we’re safe! It could have been that it was an alien invasion or a nuclear war. We are already dealing with ecological collapse, we are dealing with a lot of war and strife and hunger and racism. All these factors that are already at play. What if you threw in something fully unplanned and catastrophic?
I started writing but I didn’t have the means to get it going and I had no idea where the story would go. I let it go for 10 years and it sat there nagging me. It kept coming back. Finally I committed and I started to write again. It was really painstaking. I could only write a few paragraphs at a time. Sometimes my plan was to write and I’d sit for only 3 or 4 minutes twice a day. It was confronting and it was almost like it would only reveal to me what it wanted to. Finally I found a beginning and an end right before the launch. The book is called The Meeting Place.
It’s about three characters, one out on the land like I was, one in the supermarket rushing home to her children and the other is at lunch from Summerland Bank when the trucks roll in and round people up. It’s not clear if it’s because of a pandemic, the motives behind the round up are unknown. The one at work ends up in a cell in quarantine, the one in Woolies ends up in a house with her son, and a toddler that’s not hers and a dog, Wags. The one on the land is isolated and dealing with mental health issues and everybody else is rounded up. These three friends had all discussed if the shit hits the fan, where will me meet?
That’s why it’s called the Meeting Place.
During the 2022 floods I couldn’t get home because the road to our place had fallen away so it took a while to get home. You are never going to know where you end up or who you’re going to be with. The book is each of them dealing with their strengths and limitations. There’s a lot about their backstories as well. The three characters are all power houses. Self publishing was quite difficult and then we had the cyclone which halted things a bit. I want to do a talk called Living in Catastrophic Times, tips and discussion about how we keep going and can we still thrive in these times.
In 2022 I became part of the Northern Rivers Healing Hub which was put together by Carlie Atkinson of We Al-li which is based on an Indigenous healing framework. It was a way to help the recovery of the Lismore LGA at large. At the moment we are in a reduced capacity three years on but we have weaving circles, art therapy, yarning, food, massage, etc. I became the project manager so that’s been a big part of my life too for the last few years. It integrates everything for me… the ecological contexts of the disasters, the Indigenous connection to country, working with community with trauma and it’s also creative. That’s still continuing now at Timbre cafe on Wednesdays.
As part of writing the book it made me want to live in community, back in town, even though it could feel risky at times. I’ve always been so purpose driven, having purpose and meaning so community is important to me now.
I like living in town, plenty of connection time and I’m growing food, slowly populating my land with edible plants and trees. I love getting my hands in the dirt and that’s one of my biggest joys, eating from the garden.
After my Dad died three years ago, my 92 year old Mum and I became really close after being alienated most of my life. I now Facetime her every morning and we are very close.
I also got my dog Cori in 2022 just before the flood. He was an 8 week old Maltese Shih Tzu. We were down south and I ended up trying to get home in Ballina and Mullum with a puppy, mud everywhere. He got socialised quickly and he has a very special talent. He sings to the flute and he’s a therapeutic little dog and he makes me laugh. He’s going to be a Dog of Lismore this week. He’s changed my life.”