Wishing on a sunrise
Welcome to Wild and Wonderful 2025
Dear friends,
Hello and welcome to the first edition of Wild and Wonderful for 2025.
Thank you for joining me, I am excited to be back writing and sharing my words with you.
With love and kindness,
Kate x
It’s the hour before dawn and I’m riding my mountain bike along a 4WD track to Cape Boullanger, the northern tip of wukaluwikiwayna / Maria Island.1 Its the fourth day of the New Year, a little late for resolutions and promises, but time enough to make a wish upon a sunrise.
I ride alone. Not for any want of solitude but because everyone in the campground is still asleep.2 I carry a notebook, pen, drink bottle, and phone in a small black backpack. All the things I need to have a heart to heart with this New Year.
The sky is brightening, fast. And I must hurry if I am to catch the sun before it bursts over the horizon. I push down on my pedals and my wheels turn, but so too does the Earth. It is a race, against the sun, against the beginning of the day.
I pedal harder, gulp lungfuls of sea-salty air. A trio of native hens dart across the track. A duck lifts off from the lagoon, still dark enough to reflect the twilight stars. And three kangaroos turn to look at me, ears sharp as knives. I am wild with excitement. And though my four children are not with me, I can almost hear their voices on the breeze — race you there, Mum!
I ride past a jetty waiting patiently for tourist boats, under three disused concrete silos, keeping watch over the Bay, and up to an old convict-built brick barn resting at the top of a rise.3 I don’t go too close. Something about this soft light unsettles me. And I wonder if it is the way it falls without a shadow, the way it makes things seem larger than they really are. But perhaps it is just the lone wombat shuffling past me on the track, head bent to the dew wet grass.
*
From here I can see all the way down the Island to the white sandy beach where we swam yesterday. And further still, to the cinnamon cliffs where we snorkelled, pulled ourselves under a ledge to glimpse a clutch of crayfish. Across the Mercury Passage to the west I can see the small hamlet of Triabunna. And to the east, the dark tops of the mountains silhouetted against the tangerine sky. But it is to the horizon in the north that I must go, to the fossil cliffs at the edge of the Island, to the rising sun.
Thing is, I have a bone to pick.
Not with the fossils buried in the sediment under my feet, or with this strange Island, which is home to a stranger collection of creatures — little devils, honking birds, and white wombats.4 No, it is with this New Year that I am quarrelling. Its neat promises, its clean resolutions. This year knows too much and yet, it is only just beginning.
Like this new day on wukaluwikiwayna.
Look, here comes the sun, bursting from behind Bishop and Clerk, the grand mountain that rises from the sea floor like the head of a dragon. See the golden light gushing into the sky. And the sun-pink sea, look how it rushes towards the Island and back again, exposing long tendrils of green-black kelp. Watch the gulls rise from their roosts on a sea-stack, so littered with guano it could be an iceberg. Smell the freshening breeze — salt and sulphur and clay — it sends goosebumps scattering down my arms. And listen to the sounds of the surf, washing ashore below weathered weary cliffs.
I want to stand on my toes and shout — New Year, who do you want me to be?
But I do not.
Instead, I sit down in the damp grass, amongst fossils more than 200 million years old, and make a wish.
And this is what I wish for —
Days without fear, of the unknown, of the blank page, of saying what my heart yearns for, and of the tumour sleeping inside my head. Maybe this year will be without illness or loss or the presence of death.
And I wish for trees and mountains, oceans and birds, words and music — all the beautiful things that will help us survive in these trying times.5 And I wish for curious eyes and gentle ears, and time with the people I love.
*
I tell you this because a wish is much easier to hold than any other New Year thing — a goal, an aspiration, a theme, or a word. It makes room for uncertainty and for the gush and mystery of our lives.6 Just like the sun, rising each morning, without knowing how its light will scatter and colour the sky.
A wish is gentle way of going forward.
But perhaps I am being a little romantic. And now I remember that I am alone, sitting on the edge of a cliff, making a wish on a sunrise. And even now, when I should be thinking of how lovely everything looks, I am thinking of how we are all connected, of how this sun comes up for everyone, of how this golden light is tender and life-giving like mothers and the making of art. And I am thinking of my son’s hair pressed into his inflatable camp pillow, because it is the same colour as the sun, and because the days and nights are no longer mine to wish upon, but ours together.
*
And you? What do you wish for?
A poem for summer
Things I’ve loved reading on Substack
- . The blank page is a dare wrapped in possibility.
Abandon All Hope, Ye Toad Who Enter Here by
. So many laughs reading this tale of the great cane toad bust in Boonah, south east Queensland.Noah Beach by
and Meg Morrison. Beautiful poetry and artwork about a very special wild place.
A few tales from summer
Our chicks are now nine weeks old and well loved by my children. Please admire their gorgeous feathered heads below.
The cupboards are in. I love them, all the possibility. The builders were not sure what I would put in the top cupboards (3.4 metres off the ground), or even how I would get to them. Are they for a giant?, they had joked. Perhaps they do not have four children and camping equipment for six! Now my husband and I are painting, late evenings sipping tea and cutting in and rolling.
We have a rat situation. Not your ordinary vermin, these creatures are meaty, the size of a small lamb roast, they glare at me with their black eyes as they scurry across our lawn in the middle of the day. My boys shoot at them with their plastic Nerf guns and position our 12 year old cat directly over a rat hole. No luck. My husband digs wire under the chicken pen. The neighbours come over to swap notes on how best to kill the beasts. There is talk of a rat bin and a device to zap them like flies. One afternoon we come home to find we have caught one of our chicks in a trap, my eldest daughter wails. Though luckily it is unharmed. The battle continues.
We bought my youngest daughter her very first pair of sports shoes for school (no hand me downs). She said, it’s like walking on a dream, Mum. If only everyone in the family were as easy to please.
Enjoyed watching Eat the Invaders with the family. Cane toads, rabbits, carp and sea urchins, all introduced species in Australia that have had disastrous effects on the environment, have been served up. Though no one is suggesting eating a rat.
Summer reading — the back of paint cans and Jamie Oliver’s 15 minute meals (the kids and I are going retro and finding a lot of inspiration in this gem of a cookbook). I loved reading The Hummingbird effect by
. A story about four women living across different times but connected by a river and the desire to create a better world. And this memoir, The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw, who runs two tiny bookshops in the deep south of New Zealand and who has had a life full of wild adventure (thanks N for the loan). Trying to settle on a new novel. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
What I am up to next
Excited about heading into the wild this weekend with my ten year old daughter and two of her friends and their mothers. A girls adventure! Can’t wait. And also a longer mission with my husband later this month to celebrate my fortieth year. And so there will be a few stories from the wild lands of Tasmania to come.
School starts tomorrow and this year I will have all four of my children at Primary school. Wahoo! Times are changing and I am feeling excited and nostalgic for all those years at home with my babies. If you have children starting something new this year I wish you all the best with the transition.
What have you been up to?
I’d love to hear what adventures are on your horizon.
Until next time,
Wising you all the colours of the sunrise,
Kate xx
a small stretch of protected land a few kilometres off the east coast of Tasmania. I wrote another story about a family trip to Maria here, if you would like to read.
That’s you Grandma, Uncle Ned and Aunty Alice, baby Monty, my children and husband, and the Hewer family!
It was built two hundred years ago by European convicts when this Island was taken from the Parwdarerme people and made into a penal settlement by British colonists.
Maria Island is a protected National Park with no cars or major predators, making it an ideal habitat for native and introduced species to thrive. In 2012, a number of Tasmanian devils were introduced to the Island to protect them from a deadly facial tumour disease. Cape Barren geese, which are rare, have also been introduced and now thrive. Wombats are abundant on Maria, and there is a small number of albino wombats, a rare genetic variation, too.
Wildfires and rising seas, extinctions and ceasefires, and a loss of trust, in governance and those who hold power.
Thank you for all your images and descriptions. You mentioned you are interested in novels. May I suggest, "Flames," by Robbie Arnott, a Tasmanian writer. It's was his first book. I always look forward to each of his novels as they get published.
Your sunrise sounds magical, Kate. I wish all those things for you too.