Westport, New Zealand
3:56 pm
I’m beginning this letter from the alfresco dining table of two new friends named Lou and Jamie, nestled in the desert of Mpartnwe (Alice Springs). Their house is like an indoor/outdoor compound. The property is set on a sandy patch across a dry riverbed, surrounded by rocky hills and gum trees. The kitchen and bedrooms are separate units made from two cargo containers and an old train carriage. The washing machines are plugged-in outside. Birds nest beside the porch. Extra living room furniture stands in the yard. And the bathroom is a compost toilet. I love this set-up because it blurs the boundary between outside and inside – turning the desert sand into an extension of the floors. The house is the yard is the land is the house. And I feel at home.
I met Lou on my first day in town when I wandered into a bookstore where she happened to be working. I went to the counter and asked if they had a section for queer books, and we had a nice chat. I told her about my Watson project and learned she moved to Alice Springs last November. She recommended me a book of stories and told me where the best coffee shops were. The next day, I attended a free conference called The Desert Knowledge Symposium, and when I looked across the audience, who did I see, but Lou from the bookstore! She had come with her partner, Jamie, and from that day on the three of us became friends. I learned that Lou is a writer and Jamie is an academic. Both are politically active, mystical, and conscientious people. When Lou and I met for lunch later in the week, she invited me to come stay in a spare caravan at their home for the remainder of my time in Alice Springs, saying, “It is important to Jamie and me to share the things we have.”
Lou and Jamie encouraged me to rest and enjoy their home while they worked. They pulled out interesting books for me to read from their library. We shared meals and told stories about our lives. Jamie and I had chats about posthumanism and the politics of knowledge. Lou and I cooked oat bars and apple cake. And the three of us plus their friend named Morgan went on a one-night camping trip to the West MacDonnell Range to climb the summit of Mount Sonder at sunrise. I couldn’t stop thinking that I had been swept up into something beautiful.
I tell this story to illustrate the most meaningful aspect of my journey so far – which is being invited into someone else’s life. Someone who you just met, who knows you will only be there for a short time, but who chooses to invest in you, anyway.
The first person I connected with like this was Remi, who became a pivotal and cherished friend. On the first full day of my Watson journey, I wandered into the Surry Hills Library in Sydney and asked the attendant where they posted their community events. I would later learn this attendant was Remi. He told me where to find the posters, and then added, “We also have a free community breakfast every Friday morning. It’s lovely. You should check that out, too.”
And that’s how, a week later, I showed up at the library again for breakfast. I ran into Remi afterwards and thanked him for the recommendation, saying the scones were delicious. He smiled and we began to chat. He wondered where I was from and why I was in Sydney. I asked what he does for fun in the city. And then there was a lull in the conversation. He paused, then asked, “Have you got any friends yet?” Adrenaline came over me, and I shook my head. “Not yet.”
And right then and there, we agreed to meet that night after his library shift ended. As we walked through the streets together, I marveled at how easy it was to talk to him. Remi shared what it was like to grow up in Sydney and told me more about Australian culture. I told him about my fellowship project and why I was traveling. We sat down at a restaurant in Chinatown. And as we ate, we bonded through our shared interest in each other’s lives. After dinner, we ordered purple rice yogurt drinks and kept walking and talking until it got cold.
Over the next six weeks that I lived in Sydney, Remi and I became close friends. We went on adventures together and visited his family, and he helped me plan the next steps of my travels. Though Remi was a local who already had his own community, he was so open to sharing his life with me. I had found my way to a real friend, halfway across the world.
Friendships with people like Lou, Jamie, and Remi are magic to me. I feel like a little sieve moving through the world, and each day my experiences flow through me. But sometimes, there are people who don’t just keep passing me by, but who slow down and stay there with me. These connections make me feel held, and like I have been found.
There is vulnerability that comes with traveling alone. And it’s not the vulnerability that I expected. I don’t feel unsafe or like a target; I mainly feel impressionable and like my heart is open. My style has been to enter each city without much of a plan, putting myself at the mercy of whatever I find there. And that makes kindness from others and real emotional connection feel like a high.
I am grateful to have shared so much of my journey with others. But that being said, I am also working on saying “no” to invitations when I could really use a day to rest, and carving out intentional alone time to read, reflect, draw, or just be. Because even on days when I plan to be alone, I almost always meet someone – whether I try to or not!
Another thing I have been struggling with is making peace with my decisions after they happen. I often entertain every possibility at crossroads big and small. I try to optimize each situation which makes pulling the trigger feel high stakes and agonizing. And then when I do decide on something, I feel a wave of regret and kick myself about what I let go of. Usually, this torment abates after a few hours, and I end up feeling grateful for what I chose. But I want to break this cycle of overthinking. I want to focus on just making a choice and sticking with it and not entertaining constant “what ifs.” But I also want to keep myself open to spontaneity. Like, for example, open to changing my plans and staying in a place longer when it feels right. But keeping all my options open is what causes me pain. And this is one paradox of the Watson. It is very hard to remain spontaneous while also creating structure. To be adaptable but also to have backbone. I am learning to find this balance between commitments and freedom. When are things truly flexible? And when is it important to stick to my original plan?
The other main challenge I face is how hard it is to leave each friend or community I find. It is really sad to move on after building relationships where I feel at home. I put myself through so much with each transition. I was especially torn up when I left Sydney. I was camping with Remi and his family in Barrington Tops National Park, and had already said goodbye to my friends back in the city: to Chris, who I met at a queer panelist event and spent meaningful time with; to Sylvia and Paul, a couple I met at a pancake breakfast who treated me like their daughter; to Karen and Deb, two volunteers from the Pyrmont Ultimo Landcare Group who looked out for me and made me feel celebrated; and to Michael, my girlfriend Olivia’s great uncle, who was the first person to make me feel at home in Sydney. So, when Remi brought me to the train station to send me on my way after our camping trip, that was the final blow. I couldn’t believe that whole chapter was ending. As the train pulled away from the station and he disappeared from sight, I leaned against the window and cried.
It took me a week or so to get back into a flow after that. I drew more comics and wrote in my journal. I learned not to try and replicate the same activities I did in Sydney, but to go to different events and explore new areas of my project that I hadn’t before. This helped me feel oriented and like I was gaining traction.
In Sydney, I mainly focused on photographing urban wildlife (so many bin-chickens and cockatoos) and talking to Australians about how these animals affect their lives. But since leaving the city, I have been actively learning about the Aboriginal First Nations with each Country I travel to – including Ngambugka (Nambucca), Cavanbah (Byron Bay), Meanjin (Brisbane), Gimuy (Cairns), Uluru, and Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Although First Nations culture is diverse and many, there is one fundamental belief system that is present in each that I’ve learned about: the inextricable oneness of all living beings with each other, and with the land, the sea, and the sky.
There is no word in any First Nations language separating humans from the land, unlike in English where we distinguish nature from civilization. First Nations people instead see all things as connected, using solely the word Country to encompass every being and landform on their territory, including even creation stories, ancestors, and songs. Each feature of the landscape has a story, or a songline, attached to it, which links its formation to a specific ancestor. Through these songlines, the past, present, and future are all connected, weaving a deep web of kinship among everything within Country.
And with this kinship comes reciprocity. As Juan, my Kuku Yalanji guide in Gimuy, told our tour group, “We look after Country, and Country looks after us.” There is a symbiotic relationship here, where each being is responsible for keeping the others healthy. Rather than being separate from the environment, humans are an intimate part of it.
Learning about Aboriginal Country has moved me a lot. It resonates with my desire to break down the imagined division between humans and nature through photographing urban animals. These learnings have begun showing me what reciprocal relationships among more-than-human beings can look like. And learning about Country makes me feel like the language I use to describe my project is limited. I think “urban animals” is something I need to expand. I want to reflect on what my goal is and on what aspect of this project is the most meaningful to me.
And my big question is: how can I, as a non-Indigenous person, share the Aboriginal ideologies of a reciprocal connection to Country while knowing my place and respecting culture? What is my place, as a non-indigenous person who cares?
While in Meanjin (Brisbane), I did a walking tour of outdoor art installations created by local Aboriginal artists. I connected well with my tour guide, Dean, and at the end of our time together, I asked him this question. And what he said captivated me.
“Margaret; the words ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Indigenous’ and ‘native’ are all made-up words in English to divide and label people, forgetting that we are all human. In my language, there is no word for ‘Aboriginal.’ We just have a word that means ‘man,’ or ‘human,’ or ‘person.’ These are not ‘Aboriginal’ beliefs, they are human beliefs. You don’t have to do our dances or attend our ceremonies, but you can share our ideology.”
And a lot of things connected for me then. It was the settlers who labeled and “othered” First Nations people as “Aboriginal” through the English language. And so, this is an arbitrary category. We have been trained to see difference, to think of “settler” and “Indigenous” cultures as two different worlds, and that it’s “complicated” or “nuanced” to bridge them together. But that is not true, because we are all human. The problem is not that there are barriers to understanding each other because some of us are “Indigenous” and some are not. The problem is racism, and disrespect of non-Western cultures. The problem is that white Europeans have created arbitrary divisions among people based on skin color that dehumanize Black and Brown people and idolize white skin and Western civilization. These settlers have trained their descendants to think of various groups of people as fundamentally different from one another. And that affects the way we connect to each other, to the non-human beings around us, to our greater purpose, and to the land.
I now think my project is about more than just urban animals and people: it is about relationships. It is about the self versus the other. Non-human animals that live in urban areas are a great entry point into this conversation for Western folks like myself – because through recognizing our kinship with these animals, I believe we can develop a more reciprocal relationship with the environment at large – but I am learning that relationships among humans are also an important and fundamental part of my inquiry.
Many, many non-Indigenous people I have met on my journey so far have met me with the core elements of connecting with Country, which are kinship, reciprocity, and a wide definition of family. I have been taken in by virtual strangers and we together created a network of care. Take Remi, Lou, and Jamie, for example, who invited me into their worlds and looked after me during my short time in their cities. And take the Landcare Group I became part of in Sydney, whose members, through restoring native bush to industrial areas, also cultivate companionship with each other. And, most recently, take Chris, a grandmother I met on my flight to New Zealand, who, when she learned I was planning a road trip alone, brought me to stay at her house where she and her friend helped plan my route and get me the supplies I needed.
To me, these are visceral examples of the humanness that connects us all, and shows how the principles of kinship, reciprocity, and transcendental responsibility are within each of us.
But many of us in the Western world have limited language to understand and feel and describe this deep connection when it comes to Country, or to even conceptualize Country in the way Indigenous people do. We are taught to use words like “beautiful” and “tranquil” and “dirty” and “loud” and “cute” to describe the natural world, but our connection stops there. This language does not teach us that we are in relationship with the land, but that we are above it.
To expand and deepen our connection to Country is to stretch beyond the confines of the English language and into Indigenous ideology. We must stop seeing through the lens of difference and instead view ourselves as interconnected with all the people and non-human beings we share life with. I want to explore how I can cultivate and share this worldview through photographing urban non-human animals, using images to challenge the concept of civilization as separate from wilderness. Because in reality, we are all connected, and even developed land is sacred.
This is not a straightforward year, but it is an adventurous one. I feel grateful for the ways I am learning and living so far. I am actively facing my fears and growing. I feel grateful to be at the hands of magic, figuring out what I believe in.