The first time I went fishing with my brother was on holiday at Pebbly Beach on the South Coast. Having received a fishing rod for Christmas he was keen to try it out. We decided to head up the beach on our own and go fishing.

As usual we were on holiday for a week during the long summer school holidays with my parents. Our parents’ best friends from High School rented a cottage at the beach every year and we always joined them. Usually there were long ambling walks with the adults, this time my brother and I headed out alone, him about 10 and me 12 years old.

Off we went carrying bucket and rod, chatting about life and fishing while watching the dolphins surfing the waves. They always surfed the waves down there.

The day was warm but overcast.

“Best time for catching fish” my brother remarked knowledgably.

When we were not chatting I hummed to myself. A dolphin song.

So independent and free without adults, we were sure to catch a fish and bring it back for tea.

The beach was empty. After discussing the pros and cons of various sites

to fish , we settled on a sheltered place where a streamlet flowed into the sea. How to cast the line created another area of debate. Eventually he sent the baited hook out past the waves and stood angle deep in the water.

The grey sky fractured the light and it was deceptively bright.

“There is always more light on grey day than you think” my father would say when he was teaching me to make photographs with the old exacta camera.

“You also can get very burned on a grey day. So wear a hat” My head was hot . I had no hat.

I sat down on the sand and listened to the rhythmic sound of waves and watched the flickering of the light on the water. I wriggled my toes into the sand and tracing circles in the sand I noticed so many tiny bits of shell among the sand grains. I kept drawing shapes and mounding up sand.

“I think it’s a statue” I said to myself- “a statue lying on the sand made of sand and shell grit”. I had molded the shape of a fish in the sand. I looked up into the sky the sun filling my vision. Life was sleepy I wondered how long till lunch.

“What?” my brother asked

“It’s a statue of a fish – you know those ones you can only see one side”.

I couldn’t see him clearly with the sun behind him, he seemed to shrug and turn towards the ocean. I wasn’t sure if he was fishing or not. I had lost interest.

“Caught anything?”

“Nah!”

“Did you cast out properly?” big sister voice asked.

“Yep..”

“Ah …” I stared at the sea, it seemed to be made of glass now, smooth and flat stretching out to the horizon – there were hardly any waves.

“I’ve got one! I’ve got one” he hissed between his teeth as if that would keep in on the line.

Jumping to my feet “Where? What do we do? What do we do?” I was excited. A catch!

He reeled it in- a good sized bream, silver grey, glistening 30 cm of fish, twisting and turning on the end of the line.

“Take it off! take it off“ he shouted.

“How? Ill hurt it”

“Grab the hook!” – Somehow I managed to get the hook out from between the jaws. It was slimy and wriggly to touch. I ripped some skin.

“What do we do now?”

“Kill it!”

We looked at each other _ we hadn’t thought about that. He put in on the sand. We watched the poor thing flapping about and moved if away from the water.

“You!”

“ I cant .How? ”

“Put the knife in here.”

“No I cant! if you know you do it.” I screamed.

He screamed at me “Kill it!”

“No! “I cried “I can’t kill it”

Both of us stood staring at the fish, then looking at each other.

The fish flapping , gapping and gasping for breath .

“Its going back !its going back!” I screamed

Horrified we watched our fish prize escaping back to the sea.

“Grab it!” I shouted and my brother caught it again , this time with his hands and put it in the bucket.

It was contained.

We stood there, sun strong on our heads staring down at the fish now flapping in the round bottom of the bucket. Looking at each other then back to the fish.

In a clam and steady voice my brother looked at me and said : ”I’ll give you a dollar if you kill it.”

Eyes stared at each other over the bucket

“No…. lets take it back.”

“To the house?”

“No…. lets take it back to the water – lets let it go.”

We returned to the adults without a fish. There were none. The story of the catch locked within us – a secret pact held by brother, sister and the ocean.

He bails water with his hands for two days and two nights to keep his family alive. His body is blistered and broken but he works without pause, one eye on his wife and babies and the other on the horizon, scanning for safe ground or a rescue vessel.

He bails as the navy ship approaches, over and over again as they lift his young daughters up on deck and with wild eyes he sees his frantic wife carried off and over the edge to join them. He scoops and heaves the relentless flooding water and watches as the others are lofted over the bow to safety. He fights and claws at the dark water until his exhausted body is finally on deck where the dark curled hair of his daughters meet his skin and his wife breathes in the salty relief of him, for now.

Well. Here I am sitting in a room full of brilliant minds and untold stories itching to be realised. The rain is pelting outside. The storm that’s been brewing has finally unleashed it’s turmoil upon Sydney. It’s kind of nice – being stuck on the second floor of a hip bistro listening to the torrential rain, writing. I’ve never done anything like this before. I can’t believe I’m actually here. I actually bit the bullet and went out of my comfort zone.

I feel kind of out of place, surrounded by men and women (mostly women) who have had amazing and established lives. There are those in the midst of motherhood, those that have retired, those that have quit their day job to pursue that little nibbling need to tell their stories but can’t seem to kick their butts into shape.

I’m well aware that I’m the youngest here. Like a little lamb starting to wander the big wide world, eager to soak up every ounce of inspiration. Trying to make sense of what the heck it is I’m doing with my life.

Is what I’m writing even good? Should I be more profound? I wonder what everyone else around me is writing about. Probably something that’ll change lives. And here I am, indulging in my stream of consciousness. My hand hurts from writing. I should have whipped out my MacBook to type this but I got too shy and self-conscious. I hate that sound that the Mac makes when I turn it on. It’s so loud and obnoxious.

I really need to stop being so hard on myself. I’m here, aren’t I? Despite my crippling anxiety, despite the fact that I would rather curl up into my bed and sleep the day away… I decided to be here. And just hearing all these amazing stories from people twice my age, I’ve started feeling a little burning sensation to go out there and kick ass.

You know something funny? I bought Catherine’s book before and she asked me what stamp I wanted on there. I asked her to surprise me.

I HOPE YOU DON’T DIE AND I HOPE YOU GET LAID.

I wonder if she could feel the depression oozing off me. I wonder if she saw the faint scars on my wrist… or maybe it was just a cosmic sign that there’s still something in me to give. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I’m grateful.

Journals have a way of knocking the breath out of you when you read them many years later. When I cast my mind back to age 32, on a TGV train hurtling through the centre of France, listening to U2 on my brother’s battered CD Walkman, I can almost physically feel the knots in my stomach as I analysed the dysfunctional relationship that had nipped at me throughout the previous 12 years of my adult life. Timothy (not his real name) was one of three young men I was introduced to in the first days of my university life by my high school friend who was studying drama with them. Of the three, I was first attracted to the one who I never ended up with – the tall goofball with the floppy hair. The second one was older, sophisticated and very good looking. He and I would end up in the first fling I had at college, as he and some of the other acting students, “starred” in my first student film, but as first flings often do, it drifted away into the ether.

I can’t remember how Tim and I got together, but even from its earliest days, the relationship was manipulative. When I examine it now, looking at the years of pushing and pulling, the dangling out of morsels of affection in a form which made love seem angst-ridden, dramatic, and hard, I marvel at the girl who believed that this was what she wanted. Even after the unutterably painful episode when he came to visit me in Melbourne, stopped talking to me after one day, and left after the weekend (when he was supposed to stay a week), leaving me a note on the floor of my flat with the lamest excuse in the book, I was again drawn into the narcissistic web of his warped idea of “connection” years later when he moved to Sydney. Again, there would be late night, last minute assignations, with a secretive understanding that the “two of us” as a unit was unique, special, that we had something that others didn’t.

The end was spectacularly undramatic, and satisfyingly final. It was a normal Thursday, as I drove to work at Fox Studios to start my afternoon shift at the Channel V studio. I was about seven months pregnant with my first child. As I walked towards the studio, sitting outside on the bench near the coffee shop was Tim. I looked at him, and for the first time, I did not feel shaky, upset or angry. Instead, the sensation of satisfaction in having found a partner who just loved me without feeling the need to inflict emotional pain was a happy, warm glow that rapidly spread throughout my body. “Hi,” I said, and looked him in the eye. Despite his usual laconic demeanour, I could see that he was taken aback. We exchanged very brief greetings, after which I excused myself to head into the studio to start work. I sat down at the desk, thought, “well, that’s it, then”, and booted up the computer. Who knew it was this easy to say goodbye?