Rewind: I'm glowing and spending money with glee as I stifle my hedonistic tendencies (I lie; I think they are dead) and agree to Buy a Unit. Briefly distracted by such goodies as a purple corduroy modular sofa, champagne glasses and appliances, I have tried to forget that this isn't my home. And I enjoyed it! Oh I did. Even though I will be poor forever, even though it's all terrifyingly grown up and I am generally unsure of where I want to be in the world right now, this small enclave seems as good as any as I work out my thoughts. Part of the issue, I think, has been two days of mindless trawling through Facebook, looking on from my bed as my friends and acquaintances clamber to make their lives look adventurous and appealing with tales of travel and glittering parties. I am faintly amused that not one iota of miserable thought makes it onto those pages - if we are all the same, where is the talk of uncertainty, misery, loneliness and desire to be free? However, all the talk of foreign climes makes me feel sad and longing, while I worry that the relentless tick of time steals my youth and opportunity. Why haven't I been to Rome yet, I wonder, or visited Russia or Turkey or the Greek Islands? I feel slightly maddened at where I have ended up, but aware it's not forever. In the meantime, I have been working on mustering up enthusiasm and eagerness in the face of a slightly grim pall. But ...

Lessons: I made too many promises to a faceless god and now it has visited vengeance. I knew the relentless pull of parties and nightclubs was no longer my style and would leave me bereft, but I chased those disco lights at the bottom of the glass with reckless abandon since I arrived. Week in, week out, I have ignored my body's signals to slow down and stop, a timid whisper that turned into a roar. After the weekend just gone, which featured recklessness fuelled by alcohol which makes me cringe, my body simply pulled the rug out from under my feet. "If you won't listen," I could almost hear the God thunder, "then see how you like THIS for size". And with two nods of his terrible head, he visited me with illnesses which robbed me of my energy and desire to speak, read and write. In a mocking twist, I was left with my thoughts, which have lectured and tattled and admonished until I'm almost climbing the walls.

Yes, I know now.
Yes, I knew already.
I know my weaknesses and I loath them.
This time, I promise, I have learned.

I had a hopeless unrequited crush recently and have decided they are really a waste of time at my age. I flicked through that book "He's just not that into you" in the supermarket which gave me a good giggle as it stamped out sugary, hopeful fantasies in favour of cold, hard reality, wrapped up in Dr Phil styling - exactly what I needed to 'get over it, girlfriend!'

However, I am still feeling mulish and refuse to think that I have to settle for someone I'm not completely infatuated with - so there are slim pickings around here. Sigh. I'm doomed! I'm getting old and monstrous! I may as well get it over and done with and buy six more cats, start shuffling around in pee-scented clothing and grow out my hair to long, straggly proportions. It won't be that much of a stretch, I think. In the meantime, if anyone feels sorry for me and would like to declare their love after years or even weeks of burning secret desires, now's the time. Anyone? Hello? (No, mum, you don't count).

Anyway, tonight I type huddled in bed surrounded by a mini-menagerie, which seems appropriate. My two cats are involved in a fur-raising standoff with the tiny diamante-collared chihuahua we are dog-sitting for a friend and there is much muted hissing and growling going on. Considering we four are all in separate corners of the same double-bed, it seems like a pointless fight over territory. And, as I keep pointing out to them so sweetly, I am the queen of this particular domain.

Today was an interesting day. Although I woke smarting from a vodka-induced headache brought on by another party with the media crew, I remembered to keep my appointment with a local maven of Aboriginal culture, D. D is the son of missionaries who ran the Mt Margaret Mission near Laverton, a place which has churned out an extraordinary amount of respected indigenous leaders in this area. He is by equal turns a tree-lopper, art dealer, driving-instructor and concreter and somewhat unusually is a white man fluent in several languages unique to this region.

Earlier this week, he promised to introduce me to a few local "identities" for a story on indigenous elders, so today I found myself on a brief tour of the communities which pepper the outskirts of town. First we talked to a respected elder of the Central Desert's Ngaatjatjarra people who now lives and paints in Kalgoorlie. I've seen her around - she's short and round with a smile that splits her face in half and always seems to be wearing a colourful beanie. However, today there were few smiles. Only seconds after we shook hands she started crying and speaking to D in language in response to something he said and it quickly became apparent there would be no interviewing. Instead, we packed M and her friendly dog into D's car and drove to the shops, where we picked out a few groceries for her and chatted idly about painting. After we dropped her off, D admitted that he'd told her his 105-year-old mother died in Melbourne last night; to the locals, she was something of a saint.

I offered my condolences, but he smiled and said he felt worse when people asked him how he felt, and it was ok. He insisted on driving me out to Ninga Mia village, a fibro and iron ghost town some way out of town, so we could track down another artist he thought I should meet. The way was littered with broken plastic chairs, deserted houses and flapping doors and I couldn't help marvelling at the fact we were only minutes away from the beating heart of this country's economic boom. We pulled up next to a small campfire around which sat about 10 people, some of whom jumped up to greet D like a long lost brother and others who sat back and watched. I stood back as D announced to the group his sad news in language and the women got teary-eyed and shook their heads while the men stared off into the middle distance. There was a brief silence during which I watched a woman carve chunks off a kangaroo carcass with the sharp edge of a sardine can until D introduced me and asked if anyone would talk to me. I smiled hopefully at each of them in turn and finally, one of the women heaved herself off the ground and offered her hand to me before turning to D. I was asked to come back another day; there was going to be a funeral tomorrow, it wasn't a good time.

For the second time, we piled into the car and headed off in search of groceries, this time with a couple of women from Warburton. What struck me about D was his absolute acquiescence to every request that was made of him; for a file to shape a boomerang, $50 for some food, a box of teabags or a lift. He did not do these things with a sense of martyrdom or bad grace or nobility - he did them as if he was truly a part of the Aboriginal kinship system that dictates behaviour. People needed help, so he gave it to them. Simple as that.

So instead of conducting an interview, I found myself collecting firewood and stuffing it into the back of the car. Right now I can hear rain on the roof, so I hope it provided at least some warmth for a while.

I went home today feeling mildly frustrated, but not for the reasons you might suspect. It feel faintly incongruous to me at times that I have the "indigenous affairs" round tacked to my name at the newspaper, because there are certain barriers to me being able to do the job well. I can't speak the language, for a start - I am sure you can imagine how hard that makes the interview process at times and I would much prefer to let people tell their own stories unaided by interpreters. I am conscious of my own views and opinions threatening to spill over into my stories because I don't think I'm able to write sitting on the fence. I am on an upward learning curve, tiptoeing through the political quagmire - and you only need to look at this week's news to see what a hotbed of opinion Aboriginal "issues" can be. I find myself feeling guilty at causing wretched hangovers in my down time when I sit in court day in, day out, watching as people are sentenced for crimes committed while stupidly, pointlessly drunk.

But I'm also young and still learning, thank goodness.

Anyway, it wasn't until we arrived back at his office that D admitted to me that he had been talking with his mother on the phone last night at the very point of her death. He waved off my apologies and protests that he could have cancelled the appointment and said it had been important to see it through. He furnished me with a knock-down dot painting of snakes against a blazing orange background - a huge piece he insisted on giving to me for a fifth of its price - and asked me to write his mother's obituary for the newspaper. I told him I would be honoured.

After several weeks, I began to study my fellow travellers with surreptitious interest, stealing glances when I thought they might not be looking. Occasionally caught in the act, I would immediately pretend to be interested in the torn edges of the outdated bus timetable or the burn marks on the plastic seat where some cider-afflicted Ned had attempted to impress his mates with attempted arson. But there was one middle-aged woman my stare turned to again and again and as the mornings grew colder, frosting tears onto my eyelashes and turning my nose into a vermillion button, somehow my ire towards her increased. We hadn't got off to a good start, this woman and I, despite it becoming quickly apparent we were travelling the same well worn path to the Mile. On my first day at The Stop, she swivelled one beady eye in my direction while the other remained fixed on the distant point of "bus approach nirvana" - no mean feat for an oldish duck. In that split second of survey, she managed to convey an intense dislike of everything I was, causing my half-smile to falter and crack on my lips. As her glare lasered over my short, spiky hair, ragged hem, glittering nose piercing and eyes bagged from constant late nights in sweaty, subterranean night clubs, she sniffed once, loudly, scowled smugly, and swivelled the eye back towards the road.

From that day on, that woman became the secret focus of my ire and came to represent everything that was wrong with cold Scottish mornings at bus stops where people prickled with such hostility that smiles weren't allowed to flourish. Perhaps we had had a hidden karmic relationship that had bound us together through thousands of lifetimes - in some doing battle, in others reduced to mutually hostile glares. Perhaps I was just tired, and cold and grumpy, and needed a secret object of derision to distract myself from life's simple miseries. From the secret glances I caught her directing at me on occasion, I think she felt the same way. In any case, from a safe distance behind a tree and with the calculating callousness of youth, I began to study her habits.

I discovered that she walked in measured steps and stepped over cracks on her way to the stop and that she liked to be there ahead of everybody else to assume pole position for the bus-coming-fixed-stare. She wore the same sensible mid-calf length wool-based heavy skirts in brownish-greyish tweed each day (I wore mini skirts) paired with sensible brogues and dun-coloured tights. Her hair was carefully sausage rolled and she would stand, slightly duck-toed, with arms held rigidly by her side waiting for the bus to approach. She did not like newcomers to the stop and would shoot sneaky laser glares to any young head-phones wearing offender who unwittingly stole her waiting space. I have no idea how old she was - maybe late 40s? Early 50s? - but youth had eluded her some years before and assumed a flimsy quality she clearly disliked.

When the bus burped and lurched its way tiredly over the hill, she would stand slightly to attention and tuck one arm protectively over her sensible handbag, quivering slightly as it came to a halt. Leading with the same foot each day, she would step onto the bus, hold out her travel card equidistant to the bus driver's disinterested face and her own, and take measured steps towards the seat on the opposite side to the driver, just behind the rear doors. She would sit on the aisle seat so no one could share the space (one day, just for fun, I bravely asked her to shift over so I could sit down and was rewarded with radioactive waves of silent fury and a slight downward tilt of the eyebrows) and position her right hand just below the red button. As we trundled silently through the eight or nine stops to ours on the Mile (yes, we had the same stop, though she walked up the hill while I walked down) that hand would inch ever higher until we had passed the landmark bakery, at which point she would ping the bell using exactly the same pressure each day, causing it to ring out with a pure tone that would have been music to her ears. Immediately, she would stand, brush down the tweedy skirt and assume in-bus pole position in front of the double doors to always, always, be the first to alight from the bus.

Perhaps only I sensed the barest glimmer of triumph she felt as that ritual was completed day in, day out, with nary a variation except for colour. For weeks I listened to the clomp of her shoes up and down that bus with fascination, watching for a slip-up that would render her human instead of wound with a secret clockwork action. Some days it would bother me more - perhaps when I was running late, or had been forced to miss breakfast - while on others her behaviour would blend into a wider sociological survey of the "people at the stop": the weirdo art student, the boring business man with rings under his arms even in winter, the cigarette flavoured single mother with a roguish wheeze. In any case, I can't remember when my mischievous side took over and I started to arrive at the bus stop early.

The first morning she arrived to discover I was standing in pole position, casually whistling as I studied the horizon, I like to imagine I heard an intake of breath. I pretended not to notice as she clomped to stand behind me, forced to stare at the back of my fire engine red locks instead of the comforting bitumen and pulsing traffic. It was my turn to climb jauntily on to the bus and flash my card at the driver, before strolling down the aisle and plonking myself into the seat behind the double doors and placing my hand on the pole. The lady was forced to clomp into the seat on the driver's side, where she sat rigidly and shot invisible daggers into my side.

That morning, however, I might have won the battle, but I lost the war. As I saw the bakery approaching on the left hand side, my hand headed for the button but there was a resounding ping and the red sign flashed at the front of the bus. I turned my head and saw her clambering out of the seat and she was before the doors before I had time to react. I swear that morning I saw a spring in her step as she headed up the mile.

After that, it was on for young and old. I won't bore you with the details of how many times I was first on the bus, or of the many occasions when my nimble fingers were able to ping the bell as my legs swung towards the exit. There were even times when we were both stymied by an early newcomer to the stop, whose hopeful and cheery smiles up the hill would have been wiped away forthwith if they had happened to glance over their shoulder. There were occasions when one or the other of us would leap triumphantly onto the bus only to discover a fat old man had spread his buttocks over the dingy vinyl of the prized seat and had his plump hand at the ready near the button. But the days when it all came together - the stare, the seat, the victory ping and the stride - made it all worth it.

We never spoke a word to each other.

I got to wondering about this funny little microcosm I occupy, the whole process of waking and talking and listening and writing and sleeping with no real sense of what is going on in "the rest of the world". I have just come back from a trip in which I felt stifled by both my lack of knowledge and the desire to know everything about everything, which is virtually impossible. It's a feeling I get every now and again and it makes me reflect on all the alternative lives I could be leading if only I could splinter into many pieces.

Here's me in a cave on a mountain, dressed in yak skin and meditating on the destructive nature of my fellow man, whom I renounced many years ago. Here's me in the front row of a fashion show, taking notes with ink laced with acid remarks, sharp fashionista folly spilling out in the wake of the girls pony stepping down the catwalk. Here's me stalking the corridors of power (ours, not THEIRS), asking witty and incisive questions of politicians who are trying not to look tremulous or of senators who are trying to look down my top. Here's me wandering the streets of New York or London, favourite music plugged in my ears, drinking in a super-soy-latte-with-wings along with the sights. Here's me scrunching up paper and hurling it across the room in frustration as I work on my eighth extraordinarily successful novel, acclaimed by critics and loved by the general illiterate populace. Here's me lying on a beach in Thailand, eyes closed, watching lazily from the inside as the sun dances across my eyelids ...

Here's me in the desert, the real me, wondering where on earth I am.

(Oh, and the yak skin? That might have been going a bit too far. If I'm going to live in a remote cave, I may as well be wrapped in a pashmina).

It's a funny process, this being. I am a little spiritually bereft at the moment because I don't believe in "the universe" or "god" or the "great turtle in the sky" (okay, I made that last one up but I'm fairly sure that someone, somewhere, believes in it). I believe in the individual (but not in that god-awful economically driven individualistic type our country seems grossly populated with) which means that I and only I am the architect of my own destiny. I wonder then who I am and why I do what I do?

I don't ask this question in the midst of some sort of existential crisis or anything like that; I am just taking stock of how I have ended up where I am, at this very point, in this very house. Don't get me wrong - it's not all that bad. My last email to my friends brought forth a barrage of sympathetic replies and a chorus of "you'll be okay" and even a few pairs of lovely socks from one kind soul when I whined about my feet. In fact, since I wrote that last email I have seen a wonder of nature - a gorgeous blaze of sunset over the bleeding great hole in the earth known as the "super pit".
(True environmentalists would be horrified at the sight of the hole, but a mere twist of the neck reveals clouds, refracted light, shadows cast by gnarly gums. The hole might be huge but by god, you can ignore it if you try).

Now where was I? Oh yes. Reflecting on my very existence. I don't have the answers, sadly, and I don't think I ever will. What a cop out, eh?

Okay, so it might be a bit dramatic but it works. A week and a day after leaving my beloved Broome, I am typing with fingers like icicles and toes like a frostbitten Eskimos in a cute little weatherboard house on the edge of Kalgoorlie's main street wondering where on earth I have landed. I don't think my heart has caught up with my head, because while I am being completely functional at work I still feel completely unable to form an opinion of this place. I keep studying maps to gain a sense of place, practicing the unfamiliar place names that I associate with bearded men and picks for some reason: Coolgardie, Leonora, Laverton.
Partly this is due to the fact that I am yet to wander further than the self-imposed Bermuda triangle of work, home, and Kalgoorlie's thriving courthouse, which is populated mostly with bogans in possession of some of the best mullets I have seen in all my years. Forget the post- glam rock ironic style mullet (moo-lay), the boys here are rocking the honest-to-god version that would make Barnsey and Farnsey proud.

The other thing of note is breasts, in all their glory. When I had my first drink thrust at me in Kalgoorlie's famed Exchange Hotel, I accidentally caught a glimpse of Charity or Vesuvius or Veronica or whatever their "skimpy of the week" is called bending over delicately to attend to a beer while Dave or Dazza or Bazza or whoever leered on. All I could think about was what an occupational health and safety risk her lace-up knickers posed and whether or not her pneumatic bosoms in purple mesh could possibly be real. A question enthusiastically discussed by my male companions at some length ... and discussed several times over in the past week. The bar man is a relic in this town, it seems.

In comparison to when I first arrived in Broome ...

((Arriving feels like a dream. We fly over the beach, its colours and scope like the brochures had promised. I put down my trashy magazine to watch as we coast onto the runway, the vague thought playing in the back of my mind that I have done something phenomenal at last, at last. My heart stops in my throat as we land.
Xavier picks me up from the airport in his dusty Landrover, filled with the minutiae of country life - tools, fishing equipment, a battered esky
- which he shoves to the side to accommodate my luggage. We drive for miles and I stare. From the pristine sands of Cable Beach to the mangroves alive with skittering crabs, it feels like another planet.
Gantheuame Point, on the very tip of the peninsula, is otherworldly; the glossy beach against red, red dirt and striated rocks in stacked formations stunning and the sky so blue and cloudless it stings the eyes. I am so dazed I barely notice the first tentative nibblings of the sandflies. After a whirlwind tour and truncated history it is clear that this is a land of contradictions ... of pure white coastline stained with a grim past.
The lazy drift of paradise laced with the unease of disgruntled locals.
The light and the dark, the luxurious and the poor...))

... I cannot feel inspired by this landscape, which is scrubby and dry and arid. Every fence conceals a mangy, salivating and rangy dog that leaps and quails at me as I wander past on my walk to work. I keep expecting to see tumbleweeds drift down the main street, past the quaint buildings and orangeclad men, reflective in the undulating light. Yes, men are yellow and orangeclad here, dusty-faced and tired, chasing the great Australian dream in droves while spending lives underground in the dark ...

But I have been pleased to discover that I love my job here already with the same kind of passion and frustration as the last. Things are serious now - I am part of the sausage factory of journalists on daily newspapers around the nation, fingers whirring across the keyboard as I produce, produce, produce for the daily deadline. I am comfortable in the court house, documenting short sorry snapshots of the lives of those who fall through the cracks, prey on children, cheat, lie, speed and steal. A bigger town brings bigger problems and a stronger commitment by the underclass to rob the society that bleeds them dry. Cops, I have discovered, are the same everywhere you go. People ae surprised that I should be so interested in writing about indigenous issues, and possibly a little uneasy; this is possibly a divisive place, with salt of the earth people.

Surprisingly, the deathly dull "transport" round produced my first front page within days of arriving, a fact I can't help but feel gleeful about. A freight train unexpectedly drove into the back of a woman's car; she tearfully thanked her angels and I thanked my lucky stars for such an early break. No-one was hurt, so I wasn't tempting fate.

I already have friends, the media pack that lurks in dark corners looking for entertainment. They took me to De Bernales, where we creased in horrified laughter as we watched people sucking face on the dance floor as their octopus hands roamed the cracks and crevices of the opposite sex. They drank shots and I sat back and watched, trying not to think of the sticky-carpeted comfort of the Pearlers Bar or the flash new surrounds of the Bungalow. This is it, I was reliably informed, and when they saw my face fall: don't worry, you'll get used to it. When the band broke out into a rousing rendition of "Take the Pressure Down" by John Farnham and the crowd's mullets shook as one in a frenzied bout of headbanging, I wasn't so sure ...

The ongoing chant of what if, what if, what if all blurred together with the occasional firm, sharp and staccato 'just because'. The lunches loaded with meaning. The heartfelt kiss on a bench under an endless, star-studded sky as the universe whorled in a frenzy. The could have been broken heart. The possibilities. The possibilities.

The last few weeks have been exceedingly lonely and sad as is wont to happen at these times. A mess, a mess, a mess. Just as I snipped away at the myriad fragile threads that have tied my heart forever to this funny little town, I had another biting argument with my mum that somehow severed another tie all together. I lost faith in my family once and for all, after years and years of hoping, and clung to the warmth of another, who welcomed me with open arms, even when I was drunk and sniffly and just needed a cuddle.

I reverted to early teenage-hood at this time. I was resentful and self-pitying and treated myself with the disdain of a decade's worth of ignorance. I got raging drunk, did stupid things and lost my dignity in the streets of Carlisle. With the help of gentle friends and quiet nights - and unexpectedly a pair of sympathetic Jehovah's Witnesses - I climbed back into a semblance of myself before I came back to the place I love to start to say goodbye.

Someone I might have loved given the chance told me last night and today that he couldn't stop thinking about me when he lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling. He knew I was leaving and had to tell me so I knew, could feel content that the overwhelming desire to hold him close was not mine alone. Kisses that shoot fire to the pit of the belly and curl the toes followed, and followed. Firework kisses. Bottom of the ocean kisses. To this, too, I have to say goodbye.

I don't know what lies forthwith, and even less about why I am leaving. I am frightened, I think, that the peace I have found in so many ways while leaving here will somehow become brittle, disappear in the pounding hot red dust of inland Australia. The future is faceless and crimson and mysterious and I must, must, must breathe it in.

This is obviously going to be one of those years. Barely seconds after I settled into my new house with a happy sigh comes the phone call offering riches and fulfillment of at least some ambitions ... in another part of the State. Basically, I have been offered a job on a daily paper, for much more money (about 25 per cent more), doing the rounds I love, with the opportunity to progress ... but it's not in Broome. Not in my beloved Broome.

It's in Kalgoorlie.

I have spent all day in an untoward spin. When S first mentioned it yesterday I thought "ha! nope" and then the editor called me. And I started to think "hmmmm".... and that is how it has gone ever since. I feel completely unable to make a decision! So it's time for a list of pros and cons:

Pros:
A new adventure!
Closer to Perth for easier visits!
Concentrated court reporting and indigenous affairs with arts thrown in!
Heaps more money!
Stretching my wings writing wise!
Sideline in prostitution (ok not really)

Cons:
Have to make new friends all over again and leave wonderful friends behind
Moving house for the 5th time in a year (urgh)
Daily deadlines and possible stress increase
No blue, blue skies against red, red rock
Leaving in the middle of writing V's memoirs
Loss of possible screenwriting project
No more Buddhist group or sand mandala project
No dry season and races and general shenanigans.
No more amazing gym ladies and boxing classes

Oh god. Do i really want to be closer to home anyway?

It's work versus heart and something is going to break.

A light went out in Broome this week, at the same time I discovered my heart still breaks a little at times. My horoscope has rarely felt truer than today, when I read it through red-rimmed eyes and fresh from taking a few deep breaths.

Sam died this week. Of course, most people outside Broome would shrug their shoulders or furrow their brow at the name, thinking idly that they may have heard it before; in Broome, however, this event represents the passing of hope, the careless flash of lightening from a vengeful god - and a reminder to live each day to the full.

I have never done a death-knock before - the term used by journalists for the unpleasant task of phoning a family in bereavement to coax answers from their numb lips. I wanted to steel myself for this one, because Sam was important. On the outside, he was just a teenaged kid - I didn't know him personally. Long-timers did though - stories swirled about his antics at football, his family's shock at losing a wife and mother to illness, and of course Sam's own illness - deadly leukaemia.

Sam was a special kid to the town, a proper Broome mongrel breed with nationalities coming out of his ears. People spoke of his beatific smile and enduring cheeky spirit despite his pain, which turned out to be considerable. His plight saw the whole town rally round in a blood drive to find a match for his marrow - no mean feat - in an initiative which spread to the Northern Territory and beyond. Then, the mood was buoyant ... people were convinced that such a gleaming display of human fortitude could only lead to happy results.

But Sam's blood grew sicker and his chances faded with each lab result. Last month, it emerged that a real foreigner - a Bolivian! - had marrow for Sam. The town rejoiced and waited for their son to come home.

Four weeks ago, Sam's body turned on itself again, and he began to die, finally passing away on Monday this week.

Sam was determined to fulfill a huge list of wishes before he died and his dad assured me he got through most of them. He cooked up a feed of crabs and oysters on hot coals on a fire he built himself. He did a naked raindance in the middle of Chinatown in the early hours of the morning, after which the heavens cracked open for days. He had friends around him, lots of them, every night of the week.

Sam's dad later found out he secretly went to Subway and bought six to eight rolls at a time, taking them down to the old blackfellas on the oval, because "they were suffering more than him".

When Sam died, he was lying on the bed wrapped in the love of his father and high school sweetheart and smiling until the light went out. Today was the first time I cried through an interview, but probably not the last. Rest in peace, Sam, and may your example be a lesson to us all.

This shiteous thing just ate my entry! I spent an hour typing! And it was all about what a bad day I had ... I don't believe it. Well, the heavens have clearly spoken and I risk grinding my teeth into dust if I try too hard to recreate it.

What was I on about? I was musing about how easy it is to absorb bad moods by osmosis. I arrived at work feeling cheerful and then a series of small but increasingly calamitous events made my mood dissolve into dust - a shitty phone call from a snooty editor, a snarky response from my boss, a phone that drops dead unannounced. I wish I could let these things drip away like water off the back, but some days it is harder than others. It's like other people's bad attittudes are able to creep into the pores and fill up the air around me until I find myself snuffling in their grumpy vibes.

This is not half as good the second time around, really. I think I will leave it there and mumble my way to bed. Wrapping myself in hot pink blankies and my beloved spotty sheets will soothe all the badness away.

It makes popular books, you know. The typical girl struggling with ingestion and exhaustion and finally finding a way to pump iron while holding the other arm aloft in truimph while the lycra shorts struggle to cling on to slinky thighs. But I do wonder .... As a trashy magazine addict of many years (attempts to find out why have left me scratching my head) I wonder just how real my perception of "real" really is - does that make sense? It is no triumph when I realise that a girl we all coo over has been throwing up her lunch for the past decade in a bid to retain her glamourous edge ... in a kind of sick way we admire her solid commitment to her unhealthy ideals.

So I question myself always on this trundle towards fitness. What is motivating me? What is really motivating me?

Today, what sent me to the gym was stress (see other post). I slammed out of the office in a general funk with noone in particular, feeling all female and tearful and uselss in a hormonal kind of way and I knew that if I went home I would slouch moodily on the couch and probably eat ice-cream while decrying my life. But as it happened, I kept going down the road and decided to kick the shit out of thin air instead, to pummel my reflection in the mirror. Not to beat MYSELF up, mind, but to knock some sense into my petulant brain. Strike one to stress and chalk one up to those sweet endorphins.

Food Diary (Gotta do this for the records!)
Two slices Nancy's amazing soda fruit bread with figs and apricots
One soy coffee
Another coffee as bad mood extends
Few spoonfuls of chickpeas in tomato sauce and couscous
Another slice fruit bread
One piece of chocolate crystalised ginger, one organic plum
Steamed threadfin salmon with capers, tomato and spinach
Mixed steamed vegetables.

I am starting to realise what a science this whole "health and fitness" scheme is, how finely balanced the input of food to the output of energy. I can see how this healthy attention could warp into obsesssion with the numbers if not for a sincere love of food and the associated social opportunities I would loath to give up.

But somewhere along the line I've tipped the balance, clearly - and it's got to be the food. For weeks now I have been religiously attending the gym and watching my muscles harden under the regular strain of kicking, running and boxing, and not a drop of alcohol passed these lips for more than a month until a glass and a half of red on Friday night. Here, the numbers speak volumes - according to my heart rate, my fitness has increased by about 30 per cent overall since I was last tested two months ago. I can feel it too. One minute I am buckling and finding it hard to breathe and the next, when the treadmill has stopped, I am strolling and calmly breathing in shallow gusts of air. My sleeping has improved, my stress levels are way down and I feel much clearer in the mind.

Knowing this, it rankles slightly that my arse hasn't caught up with the action. When I first sat down with Sally, I was genuinely baffled about why the fat wasn't melting off my arms and legs with all that effort until I stopped to consider the small "deviations" of recent weeks - a mini muffin here, a snatched falafel there, a quesadilla or three ... oops. It seems I am suffering from food amnesia. But two Lindt balls can't be all that bad ... can they?

Sadly, yes. "If you haven't been to the gym that day and you eat those, you've just added on hundreds of calories of extra input," Sal says. "A few days like that adds up to a kilo before you know it." She tells me to ditch the chocolates - if only for a month - and cut portions down to fuel size, not fun size.

Damnit. Within that ball lies the way to damnation.

The other thing, of course, is that I should congratulate myself on increasing my fitness so dramatically, whatever the mirror says. But while we all trumpet about working out to satisfy our desire for good health, the secret truth - for me anyway - is that once, just once, we hope to visit the land of "Thin". Oh vanity, vanity, leave me alone.

I'm back! It's been an unfortunately long absence, primarily due to the fact that once again I had to move house and was consequently offline for a while. It pains me that I'm not allowed to visit the Flipside at work due to Concrete's adult content (it can't be myfault because unless you count fantasising about naked Brazilians, there is woefully little lascivious adventure on this blog). I won't bore anyone with my tales of what have been - tune into the cheat sheet on "Noodling" for that.

I was just picking through my old photographs and thinking I should take the camera out more. I had a rare moment of nostalgia last week and sifted through my glory box for a peek into the annals of history - there was the drug fuelled trip to Ibiza, there was the Amsterdam monument (a giant penis sculpture), there was the general mayhem of years gone by. I can't get over how young and fresh faced I was in some of the pics - and how uniform they all were. I cock my head the same way every time, it seems, and my top lip curls in tandem with the ever-deepening crinkles around my eyes.

It's the ones where I'm in love that I find the most fascinating - those snapshots of moments, long-gone, where the camera manages to catch that inner sparkle, happy confidence, guileless joy. That's not to say those moments don't happen outside love - these days I find the same joy in waking up in crispy clean sheets after a long sleep, the darkening skies of my beloved Broome sunsets - but I find myself wondering at that distant youth.

My camera has become a tool for work and I forget to whip it out for those moments ... looking at those old photos made me remember how important it was to record my life. Inside the box of old film photos, I was upset to discover patches of discoloration and decay creeping in strange bloches over the pictures of my past. Those days are already sepia coloured, faded at the edges, with recollections dropping away day by day. Picking up those pictures takes me swiftly back towards a younger me, a more hopeful me, a me that glitters on the edge of my consciousness behind a smokescreen of faded memories. It's a person I wish I could get to know better, before I work out when to say goodbye.

Which brings me neatly onto the eviction. But first, some history. It's often been said that I should write the female version of "He Died with a Felafel in his Hand" because of my long history of berko flatmates in many, many locations around the work. Sure, I've had the anal retentives, the addicts, the food thieves, the generally annoying, the messy pigs, the party animals, Russian strippers (true), the hysterical etc etc ... but until the past year, I have never experienced the misery of being a boarder. For the uninitiated, being a boarder in Broome is like being a prisoner - sure, you've got a roof over your head but IT'S NOT YOUR ROOF.

If you've been reading the papers of late, you will have noticed that Broome has the dubious distinction of being among the most expensive places in Australia to live. In real terms, this means that rather a lot of somewhat antisocial people who live here have been forced to take strangers into their homes to counter crippling mortgages. Now, by no means assume that these people are emotionally ready to share their space with a sparkling, sometimes chaotic, young female journalist with a full and active life. I bring you:

Greg (house number 1): In my few months with Greg, the aviation worker with a face like a bashed crab and two little boys, I discovered several truisms. One was that some people are simply hideous. It started well - you may remember that I baked several cakes with said boys, who were somewhat clingy at the absence of their mother - but then things went a bit askew. I don't know if Greg took a shine to me or what, but he started to get slightly erratic. He was a fan of kick boxing, ol' Greg, and clearly thought his muscle definition was far superior to his face, so when his girlfriend wasn't around he started strutting about in skimpy, tight shorts. Now the problem was, I didn't like Greg one bit. He was what we call a CUB (cashed up bogan) and worse, was delighting in using his two young boys as pawns in increasingly unpleasant speaker-phone fights with his ex-wife).

Around this time, I started seeing Chris, the ill-fated locksmith, and one night he came around for dinner and stayed over. Well, the next day I wandered into the kitchen and got a HUGE dressing down from Greg, who thundered sayings like "not under my roof" and "who the hell is that guy anyway - he's no friend of mine". Clearly not. Anyway, after that things got a little erratic and before you know it, Greg was doing weird things like hiding my food, throwing my cat food bowl over the side fence and being slightly aggressive. I decided ol' Greg wasn't quite all there and decided to investigate his background ... only to discover that his wife had left him after considerable beatings!! Well, it was time to high-tail it out of there, so I moved out and moved in with ...

Cam. "He's a bit grumpy, but you'll be all right," said my friend Mal, who was vacating to go and live in Perth. Relieved to be freed from the Greg shackles, I was moving my stuff in when Cam saw the cat cage. "What the fuck is that?" he said. "My cats - they're really cute," I said hopefully. He shook his head. "Well, they're not coming inside here - I can't stand cats," he said, and went inside and slammed the door. Turns out Cam is not "a bit grumpy" but slightly pathological. He turns out to be an embittered musician with no friends who drinks to drunk in front of the TV each night while I hide in my room and try to avoid pissing him off. I set to cleaning the disgusting unit I have found myself in, which has dirt, grease and stains ingrained in every surface, before finally giving in after weeks. Cam tolerates me for a couple of months, but when I decide to break up with Chris (his friend) he takes to ignoring me altogether and even leaving the room when I come in to watch TV! Unless he is drunk and then he will happily spout forth about what a shit place the world is. One night I go to a barbeque and meet ....

Jonathan. Now JP is old and a bit fat and fuddy-duddy but seems all right and he offers me a room on the spot. The house is absolutely gorgeous and has a giant boab planted right in the middle of it, next to a luscious pool. I'm in! Except ... he hate cats. "I suppose I can tolerate them," he sniffs. I pack up my stuff - by now Cam had decided to move to Queensland, where he is probably wreaking havoc on the locals - and having failed to see the writing on the wall, settle myself in. We have a few weeks of harmonious living - where I am instructed not to keep my pots and pans in his cupboard, not to have too many vegetables in the fridge and not to stock up the freezer - and then he goes away for a month. Bliss! My pad is the hot ticket in town for six weeks, with regular barbecues and pool parties.

I am chilled out, relaxed and settled right in when JP returns from Scotland in a bad mood. Believe me, the place was spotless. Over several days, his mood deteriorates. "You're only renting a room, not a whole house," he mutters, when I am cooking in the (sole) kitchen one night. "You didn't bleach the bins while I was away," he snaps, "and turn that bloody noise off," when I play some music quietly in my room. Then the cats eat something small and native and it is all over. "I can't live with bloody cats so you're going to have to do something with them, or you're going to have to go," he growls. "And I have told you about your pots and pans - I want my kitchen to be how I want it."

I am stunned. I have to move out again!! I cry briefly but then shake myself a bit and realise it's not the end of the world, however annoying. After several weeks of stressing I meet ...

Peter. And he's ace. A quiet, relaxed country boy who's not too messy and not too clean and who even has dinner ready for me when I get home occasionally. And we are both leaseholders - so the house is half mine. And ... we have a spare room, but no spare bed, so bring a swag!

There's loads more to these characters and next time you see me, ask me to do some impressions and I'll willingly act out some scenes from my ridiculous life. Look how much I've rambled about houses! On to boys. I am getting far too fussy in my old age ... New Zealand lasted less than two weeks. Sure, he was fun - if you didn't count the misogynistic, somewhat racist, idiotic nature of what came out of his mouth. I'm ashamed to admit that I succumbed to his charms purely on the basis of his huge muscles, tanned skin, green eyes and luscious lips. Sigh. But my brain caught up far too quickly and I was forced to give him the boot after telling him that I found him ignorant and ill-informed. The odd German backpacker is appearing on the streets so I may have far more exciting stories to tell in that department soon ...

The other big news is that I can run for 30 minutes without stopping and not drop dead - in fact, I can sort of stroll off the treadmill, take a few deep breaths and I'm sorted. That may not sound like much to sporty types but for me it is both an achievement of a long-held goal and a testament to the fact that I'm sticking to my new year's resolutions. I go to the gym at least four days a week now and do boxing on two other days so I am getting pretty fit. And I'm still not drinking! Wonders will never cease. I feel like a salmon swimming upstream in Broome - I swear beer instead of water comes out of the taps here.

Being energetic these days, I have found time to start unfurling my wings and get stuck into being an active part of the Broome community. In the next 12 months, I am part of groups organising a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala (an amazing five day meditation/art project; volunteering at the Shinju Matsuri Festival of the Pearl; trying to get a writers' festival up and running in Broome; and in charge of organising the second Pink Party for breast cancer, which will hopefully be a big gig. Uh oh - that looks like quite a lot now I've written it down - especially when I have just reignited my freelancing career (I am SO poor) and advertised my services to locals as an "award-winning editor, copy writer and proof reader". You'll find me buried underneath a pile of paper ...

Oh, and I'll be applying for cadetships again mid-year ... I could live here forever, truth be told, but my career calls me from distant shores. I hope to make a fortune, enough to come back here, buy a house and write lots of books!

Sometimes it is good
Just to be going to sleep
With a belly full of quiche
Cooked by RSL ladies
And topped up with cheap white wine
Washed down with tepid conversation
On a hot sweaty night in Broome

Especially when
You have just been evicted
For having two cats
No more, no less
That's that

Ain't that the truth! Strike one for future-gazing and chalk one up for meaningless sex.