The taxi comes to a halt outside Gimme Shelter, an underground rock’n’roll bar in Canggu, Bali. The booze I consumed pulses through my bloodstream and my fried eyes sting and grow heavy with cheap mascara. My lashes crash, reopen, crash. Unsteady and unsure, my frantic fingers get lost inside my wallet and tangle around my…
I was six, and we were the sun and the moon, radiant and bright. Riv had inky black hair, eyes like wet mud smeared across gold and an olive complexion, stars sprinkled across her flesh in the form of freckles. I stood next to her, hair closer to white than blonde, porcelain skin and eyes…
When I boarded my flight to Bali as a naïve, 19-year-old solo traveller, the last thing my mum said to me was “always wear a helmet and please, just don’t do mushies”.
The world of party drugs was entirely new to me, and the thought of them kind of scared me. My first overseas trip…
Using my tweed blazer, online degree from the University of Metaphysical Sciences, and superior height, I convinced three of the mugs I was living with to follow me into a Balinese forest and summon up spirits.
They believe I can read minds. This is half because I keep saying I can, and half because I…
Our legs dragged as we approached the traditional Indonesian restaurant, known as a warung, at the end of the street. Smokey grey fumes swirled from an open wok, behind which sat a small woman perched on the edge of a stool. Alerted by the footsteps of prospective customers, she glanced up momentarily from her work.…
I sat in an acai bowl cafe, the kind with swing seats and fake flowers, on a balmy Ubud afternoon, right in the middle of two 30-something white Americans.
This was my first trip to Bali and it felt like a rite of passage as an Aussie -- you have to have been here to…
I wish I had taken ballet as a kid.
The pirouettes I force myself into, avoiding seemingly inevitable collisions with scooters and cars, on roads that have no sidewalks to speak of and drains wider than a cat is long, would make my grandmother proud. Add to that the scrapes on my hand and pride…
The Enlightened /ɪnˈlʌɪt(ə)nd/ (noun): A group of people who religiously practice yoga, and whose enlightenment through the practice turns inwards and into semi-delusion as to their “goodness”.
Synonyms: Yoga wanker, the author
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The Enlightened are a fun bunch. They’re the ones calling themselves "yogis" and talking loudly in the organics store about how much they…
“You know this is painful spot, yes?”
“Yeah man, all good” I reply, full of false bravado and anticipation.
The understated industrial style studio is clean. My artist has just finished preparing the bench and the smell of antiseptic is still strong in the air. An arrangement of indoor plants and succulents sits on the…
“Let’s just get super fucked up, hey?”
It’s a plan. We drink rum, vodka, gin and Bintang longnecks skulled outside a bar, and multiple free shots of arak given out like candy to babies. We have long-winded conversations that go nowhere, get drenched in the rain and boogie to The Strokes at 2am.
If my…
On Echo Beach in Canggu, an Australian graffiti artist finishes a geometric mural on the back of a warung, a traditional Indonesian restaurant. Down under, he will often be commissioned thousands of dollars for his murals, but here in Bali, he’s painting this wall for free. He finishes as the sun sets, packs up his…
“Terima kasih. Terima kasih,” I repeat over and over, till my throat goes dry and the Indonesian words of gratitude become a meaningless, Australian-flavoured gibberish.
I wince. And fiddle with the label of the plastic water bottle that Ketut pressed gently into my hands. Made chucks me a toothy grin and tells me to breathe…