From our Founder Nicole Banning's Substack. Subscribe here.
I woke this morning with a roaring desire for adventure. It arrived like a wayward friend, brimming with restless impulse and determined to wrangle me along for the ride.
As I rose, head half-groggy with the lifting veil of sleep, I peeled open my bedroom blind. A flock of cockatoos squawked and spun in the gully below. As I watched them drop and soar from their perch, I enquired with myself if that was the kind of adventure I was seeking. The thrill of swooping and flying? Heralding the morning from a tree branch? But that didn’t seem to be what I was searching for.
The view of the Australian bush from my bedroom window
I looked across to my two little boys, deep in paralytic slumber beneath my sheets. I imagined the campervan they were eternally begging for. Imagined waking to the rawness of the Australian bush with them, drinking a morning tea to the scent of an extinguished campfire and eucalyptus gums. But that wasn’t it either.
My mind jumped to Paris, where I had lived for four years. I pictured the once familiar cobbled streets of Le Marais, the winter air crispy blue and thick with the roar of mopeds. An other-worldly city made of dark nights, dim streetlights and ice wind that slices through your winter coat. Perhaps, I told myself, if I could teleport myself to Paris that might be a worthwhile adventure. I pictured myself eating Steak Frites in a dimly lit bistro with a hearty glass of red wine and the winter chill safely at bay. But I quickly reminded myself that I hate airports and aeroplanes, and that the romantic idea of travel rarely matches the cumbersome way we are forced to move through this world.
My morning daydream was swiftly interrupted by the stir of the morning. Weetbix, fresh clothes, brushed teeth. I bundled the two little boys into the car and we sang to 80’s synth rock en route to school. Underneath the burst of activity my mind still wrangling with this curious newfound desire.
This wasn’t to be the kind of adventure I would take in my 20’s. The kind of adventure that would have me uprooting my life and moving to a foreign country. A new city, new language, new friends, and a new view. I had rendered that kind of adventure a search for something outside of myself and I have come to learn that the greatest adventures happen within; going to a place inside myself that I’ve never dared to tread.
I squeezed the boys at the school gate. I was the grateful recipient of smooshy kisses on the lips before they bounced into class. School was back after a long slow Summer. It felt like the true start of a year that I wanted to live differently.
My wheels soon led me up to the South Avalon Headland. Pulled by the lure of caffeine and the promise of a moment perched on the seaside clifftops. I watched the surfers tumble and roll in the turquoise swell. I lay on the grass and let the sun and the air and the waves wash through me.
It’s those little moments, when we quieten our pace, that we can finally hear.
Classic Coffee at South Avalon Headland. Image credit Thai Neave.
At this point, there’s no doubt in my mind that my head is a little antenna and that very often my thoughts are not my own. The idea dropped in.
A Substack. A newsletter. A writing practice.
The idea of sharing my innermost ramblings with the world would undoubtedly be the most adventurous place for me to tread: to share the parts of myself that I have always kept hidden from the world. To write, to be seen, to be known.
Some say that fear and excitement often feel like the same thing and I’m starting to believe that this is true. As the day tumbled onwards this idea, which at first felt decidedly foreign, quickly took root in my body until it was an inevitability that lit me up from the inside out.
That which I have always found most terrifying must be precisely the adventure I am looking for.
The view from my home at sunset
