Journey

The Idea

On May 23, 2019, I set off (along with my husband) on a 15,000 km, ten week journey into Australia’s vast Outback wilderness and on August 6, 2019, I return having kept my pledge to write a poem a day. My intention was to challenge myself while I traveled because writing a poem every day means having to look very closely at my surroundings and take the time to consider the meaning of what I see. Less than a week after our return we fly out to the World Fantasy Convention in Dublin and then spend time at various other wonderful places so I am not back at my writing desk until October, and then the priority is to finish my novel I Heard the Wolf Call My Name (later short-listed in the 2019 Aurealis Awards).

It is early 2020 before I open my notebook and look at the 75 or so pieces of writing I have managed to produce on that Outback journey. There is a big difference between jottings triggered by a sight, idea or feeling, and a finished poem and, as I rework the writings over the following months, honing and polishing them, the writings turn into poems that begin to say things worth listening to, as poems should. My intention was to published the poems as a slim volume but, as I become more familiar with them, they begin to reveal a story.

The poems tell of my time on the road and the special places I visit, as expected, but they also tell a deeper, less obvious story; one more attuned to the psychological change we experience as we journey through life. This is the story the mythologist Joseph Campbell explores in his famous work: The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and one I tell in my Deep Fantasy novels. The emergence of this second story is a surprise but not unwelcome. And so, instead of a collection of poems, I end up with a third story; one that uses the poems and parts of my novels to tell of the beauty of the outer journey through the Outback’s wilderness and of the importance of the inner journey through our spirits and souls.

The Secondary World

Journey: Seeking the Sacred, Spirit and Soul in the Australian Wilderness is an non-fiction book and so there is no constructed secondary world in the sense of Allogrenia (in The Kira Chronicles series) or Ezam (in The Angel Caste series), however, it does provide a different inner world to consider that traditionally, is more often expressed in symbols and metaphors than in literal language.

In this spirit, I invite you to imagine that Uluru represents our outer world and that the even bigger part of it buried under the sand, represents our inner world, not visible, but anchoring us in place; and that when crows sing in cemeteries, they sing not only as birds do, but as souls might, as they move between two places; and that when we drive into a mist, we are for a moment, caught between two places, where anything at all is possible.

The Music  

Deep Fantasy

Deep Fantasy is very much about the hero’s psychological journey, the second hidden journey Joseph Campbell suggests is the real reason that hero myths endure. On this 15,000 km journey through the wilderness of the Australian Outback, my second journey is one of stillness of both body and mind, and of the decluttering necessary to achieving this stillness. Fifteen thousand kilometres over ten weeks means a lot of physical travelling, but it also means nights sitting around campfires staring into the flames and up at the stars; thrilling to 360 degree sunrises and sunsets; walking wild beaches and driving deserted roads. It means preparing simple meals; choosing from just a couple of sets of clothes; and standing in Outback cemeteries contemplating those who have gone before, all to the songs of crows. For the first time in many years, I stop and look and listen and feel, and as the journey unfolds, I give myself permission to simply be.

Happy reading.