‘Who is the bay really named after?’

‘Me!!.’

‘But really?’

‘Oh I don’t know..’

‘Rob, you’ve never asked?.’

The silence implies a no and we keep walking. 

Once home, a brief search reveals it was re-named for an early, English settler, John Watkins, who was celebrated for his successful fishing business, buying land, and donating it to the public as a park. 

Hmmm, let’s try that again.

The bay was renamed for a man who fished in unsurrendered waters, bought unceded land, and operated a business in a stolen country. 

After a few clicks and scrolls, I find it, the bay’s name. 

Bullarto N’yoweenth (Plenty of Sun). Bullarto N’yoweenth was a gathering place, especially for women. There are records held spanning thousand of years recording annual visits to this area and yet I could only find Bullarto N’yoweenthon mentioned in a trail walk guide, obscured under multiple pages and links.  

it is challenging to fully understand my appropriate role as a settler but my purpose here is to learn, decolonise my language, become more informed, and tell stories with respect to their full history and context. 

This week’s dive into exegetical theories on methodology and method invited me to begin thinking (seriously) about how I write. In Oliver Shaw’s, ekphrastic approach to writing through his ‘collaboration between locality and the self’ and Antonio Point’s chapter from the A to Z of Creative Writing Methods, 'Staying in the middle,’ wherein she correlates the practice of yoga to the practice of writing’, I began to realise there is no 'right' way to write. 

It seems that the methods in service of methodology can and should be varied from writer to writer and even within one's own practice. Perhaps to become a serious writer I need to protect the silly and the surprising so as to not stifle my spirit as Julienne van Loon emphasised, I need to play. 

In a somewhat nebulous task, I found surprising insight into my own voice or rather the micro choices and considerations that lend to my unique personality on the page.

Observing Shelia Hetty's piece written in an alphabetised, listing, style with a focus on banal everyday day activities, gave rise to new ideas around what a text could possibly look like. I look forward to experimenting with my own voice over as I progress throughout the course.

Our hesitations only grew when we were 'the youngest people they had seen all weekend,' but how we were surprised by the rich discussions and inspiring, generous, knowledge shared by the panelists that left us in humbled, awe. 

Below is a snippet of the quotes, thoughts and questions discussed on the drive home.  

- 'A technological change can change history, the way we live and the expectation of what life is about.' Barry Jones

- humanities, science and art are not separate ideas, there is under tapped protentional in the intersections between these fields. 

- ‘The past is only the present in different underwear’ and 'some stories are historical, some are contemporary. some are both' - Tom Keneally

- 'Something being labelled as a "feminist historic novel" because it has a strong female character is almost sad.' Sarah Schmitt

- What would you do? What would you see? What would you say? Ponder on the questions that we can relate to by simply being human.