One Panel of a Tapestry

Zine produced for BWA 60, May 2000. Originally printed on a double-sided sheet of salmon-coloured US letter-sized 80gsm paper in size 9 sans-serif font.

I've had an interesting life; born in Australia, I didn't manage to stay here for long. My parents decided soon after my birth to take off on a round-the-world voyage. Perhaps more accurately, my father decided and everyone else was along for the ride.

I'm a born Sydney gal, and having returned there a few times since being back in Australia, I am most happy that we have settled in Brisbane (north, and much more tropical and cheaper). I had the time of my life travelling. It's not like when I travel now—going somewhere and knowing that I will return home after a specified period. The yacht was my home, and although I knew that we were going to return to our home country, Australia was a mythical land for me, about which I believed great many things that were not true. In essence, I was a tourist returning. I had no 'country' I could call my home; that was our yacht Pampero II, which now resides in the Brisbane River. I visit it every so often to remind myself of the 11 years I spent aboard her. We went to many countries … over 30 in all, of which we managed to completely skip the UK and the US.

Leaving Australia in 1985, we headed for Asia, going to India first. This was the place that I had my first brush with death. But prior to that, upon nearing the country, we were besieged by 'fishermen' who demanded foreign products such as clothing, alcohol and cigarettes. Not having what they wanted, they left us alone after a while. We stayed up a river for a while, and there we met up with some other Australians and made friends with locals. One day I fell into the river, which had very strong currents. I almost did drown, but my father came to fish me out by the hair. I was pampered for a short while afterwards but then blamed for having fallen in the water. I promptly placed the blame on my brother—not nice of me, I must admit.

Skipping a few countries…Sudan was interesting also, another first. My parents were offered a price for me for the first time. Notice I say first. A local man, he must have been rather taken with my then-blonde hair, for he offered 50 camels in return for me, leading to future marriage. I am rather pleased that they didn't take him up on it.

We also had one of our gerry cans stolen here—something that is very important when one lives on a yacht, as they carry water. We didn't see who it was, and there was nothing that we could do. I hope that whomever took it needed it more than we did. Something that really scared my parents, and because it did them, my brother and I, was when we stopped (illegally, I admit) in an anchorage. We were filming when suddenly the army appeared. We did not speak Arabic and they didn't speak English, but once we realised that they were not there to do us harm everything was much better. They took us back to base—which turned out to be far away—and were nice, that night treating us to a feast. They had been in the middle of a religious festival that insists that they not eat during the day, only the evening and morning, but boy did they make up for it.

Egypt was very interesting—they have a way of doing things that involve bribery to get anywhere. We managed to get to Cairo for one day to look at things, climb pyramids and more. We went up inside one, eerie with scared adults all around. It wasn't scary for me as small spaces for adults at age 6 are not quite so small. No mummies within; we had to go to the museum to see those. I didn't think them that interesting but in no way did I let my parents know that was my reaction.

We went to Israel and stayed at a kibbutz for a while with friends. Jerusalem was large and crowded with much tension. We walked around and oooh'd at everything. Well, I did anyway. I thought the people were as interesting as the buildings, especially the orthodox Jewish men, who I had never seen prior to being in Israel. We were lucky to have left our hostel when we did, for that areas was bombed a few weeks after getting back to where our yacht was moored.

Cyprus was another country were I had a potentially fatal accident. When Pampero II was on the slipway I was climbing to get offboard without holding on, and slipped and fell from the top of the ladder onto hard concrete. When I came to, I could not see, only hear. I was blind for hours, not as worried as I could have been because I could hear the voices of my mother and my friend and her parents. I went to sleep at my mother's urging and awoke being able to see. Lucky for me.

Turkey and Greece would have to be two of the most beautiful countries that we visited, even if they were different. Turkey was a very friendly and inexpensive, whereas Greece was less so and considerably more expensive. We made friends in Turkey and were quite sincerely sorry to have left. We visited castles and other ruins in both countries. It's interesting to see signs of very old cultures where Australia does not have them. I am not saying that we don't have old cultures—we most certainly do, even if we tend to forget the Aborigines. We have art and artefacts, but those are not open to the public and/or stay in museums—not nearly the reminds those large stone walls were. We stayed for quite a while in Spain -- my brother and I went to school, where we learnt Spanish. We stayed there quite a while—for no reason that I can see other than that my brother and I were attending the local primary school.

The yachties have a social system that can be compared to fandom in a way. Everyone knows everyone else, or if not directly, then someone else that knows them. Nothing is secret, and everyone helps others out if possible. On occasion that we were broke, we had people lend us money, we had someone lend us a camera which we still have not returned—not that it is working anymore. It's the grapevine that lets us pass through countries with little or no hassle; this is the place where you can bribe the officials to get through in one day rather than a few weeks, that country is in the midst of civil war. And the like. We managed to stay out of war-torn countries and arrive just after wars had ended thanks to this network. We also used to pick up each other's mail, especially if we knew that the other yacht had passed the port we were currently in. Consequently people sometimes got mail very late. At one stage we had a piece of mail handed over to us two years after it had been sent.

My brother and my schooling were from my parents. My mother taught us mathematics and to read and our father taught us how to spell. My brother was content to leave it at that, but I went further and read every geography, history, science and sociology text I could. In addition to this, I would read the fiction my father picked up in book-swaps (the way all yachties got fresh reading material). I devoured everything—crime, horror, romance (accidents of choice on his behalf), thrillers. The first fantasy book I ever read got me hooked on the genre, which was The Fellowship of the Ring. The last I remember seeing the book it no longer had its cover and all of the pages were falling out. Both my brother and me had quite high educational knowledge, as we found out on our return to Australia.

School was hard. We weren't used to children, despite being children ourselves. We weren't used to the backbiting, the bitching, and the violence. We'd been amongst adults all of our lives, who are generally more subtle in their approaches than walking up to you in the middle of a lunch break and giving you a wallop for nothing more than gazing in their direction for a millisecond too long. Not being precisely white myself (although my brother is), the racism was a new and unexpected thing. Luckily I left that first high school and relocated to a more multicultural high school where one of the quickest ways to get yourself hurt was to be racist in any manner.

I finished high school with no great drama after the initial rocky start, and then started into university. Intending to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, I began the rather different and lonely life of a uni student. First year I stuck my head into books—texts and fiction alike. I started off the same way in second year but then found friends, who changed my priorities slightly, much to the detriment of my studies. I also cooked up the brilliant idea of beginning my own SF magazine. I don't know how I began to think of it, but one night I went to bed considering it and woke up resolute to begin one. I then promptly went about making the lives of most of those around me a living hell.

Not knowing what on earth I was doing, I produced the first issue of Harbinger, then wisely asked those that knew more about publishing for advice. I got it from the unexpected of places, for which I am most thankful. I managed to put out four issues in the one year, but when the money ran out, I figured it was time to go back to studying. I also failed the last semester of third year, when I would have had finished my degree. As such, I am back studying this year, full-time in first semester and part-time in the last.

That is not to say that I am no longer active. I still am nosing around in fandom, attending meets, writing for fanzines and otherwise running around on electronic mailing lists. I was asked to work at Winedark Sea at the beginning of the year by the editor, who knew of my work with Harbinger and my familiarity with the Australian SF scene. It does not affect my studies as much as Harbinger did, mainly because I am not the only one doing stuff, and I am merely editing the stories that he passes on to me.

Such is my life as it stands. It's been an interesting one and I daresay that it will become even more so.