Mandy Nolan

I love Australia, but I don’t love Australia Day on 26th Jan. I don’t love that it is about a flag with a Union Jack on it.

I have never been so proud to call myself a writer. To belong to a group of people who support a targeted colleague, who mobilise quietly with integrity and solidarity. Without self-interest. A group that has moral courage when our elected leaders and our decision-makers seem to have none.

When I was a kid we used to swim in the river. Local waterways were full of fish and yabbies. We’d grab a giant inner tube from a tractor tyre and eight of us would fight to stay on the slippery surface. It was the closest thing we had to technology.

It’s holiday time. It’s hot. The beach is pumping. There’s a sparkle in the air. They’re here. The people who work in shit jobs that are killing them, with people they hate, to save for this two weeks of Byron.

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Margaret Mead said that. She died in 1978, but the words of this American cultural anthropologist still ring true. I hear it repeated often. But today I really thought about it.

‘Survival of the shameless’. I heard that term this morning in a BBC podcast I was listening to with Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, who is calling for a ‘moral revolution’. It was one of those simple phrases that landed in my body.

People have said some crazy shit about me, but the other day a friend told me a friend of his had advised him not to vote for me in the last election because I was in the Illuminati. How bizarre. I am a member of the Greens and the Bangalow CWA, but that’s the extent of my covert memberships.

From 10 December, in Australia, under-16s are banned from social media. I’m not convinced that this is the cure-all safety response that the government wants us to believe it is. It’s a simple solution for what is a much bigger problem.

Older women don’t care what you think about them. I know. I’ve become an older woman. It’s a heady kind of liberation from the shackles of giving a F about approval, or not trying not to upset people. Some days I actually think I am in the business of upsetting people.

Last week marked 27 years since Michael Hutchence died. He was 37. The 22nd of November holds its place for me as the day when things changed. When someone who seemed bigger than life, almost super human, lost his. It was tragic and destabilising. It was unbelievable. We retold his story over and over, always hoping for a different ending. But no matter how many times we told it, it ended the same. He was gone. And we missed the clues, that perhaps things weren’t shiny and bright. We missed the pain.

We can end violence against women and girls. I have always believed that. Some think I’m unrealistic, but I’m not ready to surrender hope. 

Billionaires are on notice. The game is up. When 34-year-old, self-described democratic socialist, former foreclosure prevention counsellor, unknown rapper, Ugandan born Muslim migrant Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, a tiny flame of hope sparked a small fire. They’re listening. The message is finally getting through.

We need to stop buying clothing made by children we don’t know, in sweat-shops we will never see, that ends up in landfill in countries we never visit. A shocking 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year.

Last week King Charles prayed with Pope Leo. It was the first time in 500 years, since the royals split with the Catholics so Henry could divorce his wife.

Someone said to me once: ‘I can’t believe a woman like you would have stayed in domestic violence. I would have left. I wouldn’t stand for it.’

This morning I watched mist float through the treetops in the Wanganui Gorge. Soft greenness. The beginning of a new day. Tears ran down my cheeks. I don’t know if it was an overdose of the DEET in the Bushman repellent, or the build-up of lactic acid from three days of uphill hiking, but I felt very emotionally overwhelmed by this powerful, deep sense of connection. And really sore glutes.

‘It’s harder to take on an entire worldview than it is to correct a few made-up talking points.’ This is the quote I found in an article in The Conversation in August this year titled, ‘Why windfarms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory’.

She is 23 and she is the 34th woman this year to be murdered, police allege, in domestic violence in Australia. These are numbers meticulously kept by the Counting Dead Women Campaign. It happened in Mullumbimby on an ordinary Friday night. It happened in our town, in a community where you should be safe. Where we know our neighbours. Where we protest for peace. Where we have painted placards in our town hall and marched against violence. But we are not immune. The epidemic of relationship violence, of dead women, is real.

You can’t take nail clippers on a plane. They’re seen as a potential weapon. So trimmed toenails are out but booze is in. Yep – you can serve alcohol and lock people in a flying cylinder for up to 15 hours at a time. I haven’t seen the hard data, but anecdotally I reckon drunk men are more dangerous than a tiny pair of scissors.

‘We need to change how we think about food. About what we purchase and how we consume food. We need to look at what we are eating. There are so many benefits of seasonal eating – for our bodies and for the planet. By doing this we can reduce food waste. We can increase economic and environmental benefits, and we can improve food security for all Australians.’

I don’t use AI. Well, I use spellcheck and maps, but I don’t use AI creatively. For instance, I don’t use Grammarly because it makes edit suggestions and I find that changes my voice. I don’t want my writing to be perfect and compliant. I don’t want a machine to decide how to order my sentences. Correct my spelling and fuck off