Drifting Notes

Grief feels like the loneliest thing in the world, until it doesn’t. In this episode, I share how the kindness of friends, spread across Berlin, London, Sydney, and home in Queensland, has lightened the weight of spending my days in palliative care with my mamma, Queenie. A table laid under twinkle lights, a mountain painted in the Dolomites, a ukulele practiced , a power puppy walk, wine at night, coffee at dawn, each gesture threads grief into something communal. Alongside the rock-steady presence of my brother and husband, I realise grief isn’t just mine. It’s a shared archive, passed between us in stories, songs, and the strange, steady wisdom of love.

Although I cannot call you back right now, these are my best words to share and say thank you <3.

There’s a reason we reach for hands, to steady a child learning to walk, to pull someone back from the pool’s edge, to high-five at a finish line, or squeeze tight at a wedding altar.

This week, I’m holding my mamma’s hand as she recovers from surgery. The hospital beeps, the future is uncertain, but her hand in mine carries decades of memory.

Science tells us that touch lowers stress and synchronises heartbeats and spiritual traditions say the palms are vessels of healing. I believe both.

Because as I sit by her bedside, rubbing coconut cream into her tired arms,I feel it, the current of all our shared adventures running backwards and forwards across the years.

Holding hands is simple. And it is everything.

The Mythen peaks in Switzerland don’t talk to each other. But they look like they’re listening, probably to the weather, or to a conversation glaciers started centuries ago.

This weekend, I stayed in the valley between them with my friend of twenty years, Vero, and her rescue dog, Winston (a creature of calm judgement and suspiciously good timing). The rain had other plans for us, so we stretched, swam, and ate like we were training for the Alpine Indoor Games.

Then, just as I was settling into my role as House Guest Who Wears Socks All Day, Vero looked at the sky and said, “Now.” And we went into a forest so recently rained on it was practically gift-wrapped.

This episode is about mountains that don’t move, friends who don’t need to, and the kind of walk where nothing happens… and that’s the best part.

Have you ever had a friendship so steady it could be measured in geological time?

What happens when you find a field of sunflowers... and none of them are looking up?

In this episode, I drift into a small discovery, a sea of bowed yellow heads that caught me mid-run and reminded me that even the brightest things don’t shine all the time. These weren’t the postcard-perfect, face-the-sun kind of sunflowers. They were something else. Tired, maybe. Or just taking a moment.

Join me for a reflection on rainy mornings, the secret life of plants, and why sometimes the most generous thing we can do —> is pause.

No big answers. Just a gentle note from the road.

Have you ever stumbled into a moment that felt like it wasn’t meant for you, but you stayed anyway?

In this episode of Drifting Notes, I take you to Île Saint-Honorat, a small island off the coast of Cannes, home to pine trees, shrugging lizards, and monks who make olive oil that could change your outlook on life.

I didn’t mean to run the whole island…It just… happened.

Join me as I jog a complete loop (28 minutes, thank you very much), witness a boat-to-wine-glass dismount worthy of a slow clap, and sit down to a plate of tomatoes and burrata that feel like the hand of god had preapared it. This is a story about scale, about how sometimes, when life feels too vast to wrap your arms around, it helps to run somewhere small. And finish it. Fully. Before lunch.

What’s the smallest thing you’ve done that gave you a big sense of joy?

Learning to wing foil in the kite-surf capital of the Mediterranean is equal parts exhilaration and slapstick. I look like like I am trying to put a tent up while on a trampoline. Teenagers fly past me in elegant silence. And still, I fall. And fly. And fall again.

Buuuuuut in between, I discover something unexpected → you don’t lift to rise.You press down.

This episode explores the strange, soaring joy of wing foiling, the upside-down physics of flight, and what happens when we stop trying to escape the weight of the world, and stand in it, instead.

Come for the wipeouts.

What’s something you fail at beautifully?

What does it mean to truly learn a country—not through guidebooks or Google, but through voice notes to friends? In this episode of Drifting Notes, I reflect on a slow, curious season in southern France, three months of coastal living, café confusions, comic legends I’d never heard of, and the quiet joy of learning a culture through people who call it home.

From the mystery of café bowls to the comic genius of Louis de Funès, this story unfolds in fragments—sent as messages to Françoise and Matthias, who reply with hearts, recipes, and the occasional ah, Bandol...

It’s not study.It’s correspondence.And somewhere between the anchovy butter and the wind for wing foiling, I start to understand my French friends better too.

This episode drifts between the Côte d’Azur and the Sunshine Coast, between the cheese aisle and the boat galley, between the deeply ordinary and something that almost feels like magic.

It’s a story about my Coles bag, bright red, bought fresh each year when I’m back in Australia, and how it’s become my crunchy companion through dozens of towns and hundreds of unfamiliar grocery stores.

Every week, in every new place, I do the same thing … I shop. I check every shelf like a curious anthropologist. I buy ingredients for soup, always soup, and something I don’t yet know how to cook. And I carry it all home, wherever home is that week, in the same bag from a world away.

This isn’t a story about food, really. It’s about the small rituals that root us. The items that travel with us. The gestures we repeat that remind us who we are.

Sometimes, home isn’t where you are… it’s the way you shop.

Is there a ritual that grounds you when you travel or when life gets busy?

In the centre of Bandol, in the south of France, stands a cast-iron fountain, green with age, framed by 150 café chairs, and crowned with three small angels. They don’t move. They don’t speak. But on this warm June day, I decided to imagine their lives.

In this episode of Drifting Notes, I sit still long enough to give them names, personalities, and preoccupations. One loves watching chairs. One collects toasts. One is devoted to a sleepy dog named Biscotte. None of it is real, but sometimes, the things we make up are the most companionable of all.

Recorded between coffees, under the dappled shade of plane trees, this story is a small invitation to pause, watch, and let your imagination wander too.

If you were one of the angels on the fountain, what would you keep watch over?

One wide-brimmed hat, one snarling vineyard dog, and a French couple in hydration vests. This short story drifts from a sun-baked detour through the vineyards of Collioure to an unexpected moment of grace between strangers—complete with barking, fear, and a mid-run toast.

I run most days, in all corners of the world—from Nigeria to Peru, the Philippines to Papua New Guinea. And often, I run into dogs. Usually, we come to an unspoken agreement. But not on this particular afternoon.

This is a story about what happens when that agreement breaks—and what shows up in its place.

Have you ever been rescued by a stranger—or outwitted by a dog? I’d love to hear your story. Drop me a message or reply in the comments.