Welcome, traveller.

The seasons are always changing, and so is this homepage.

Here’s what’s alive and kicking in my world — for now.

What’s springing in yours?

Catie x

🏡 Life update: We’re jumping on the 2.5 x 8.4m bandwagon and building a tiny home! Until then I’ll be living on Substack.

🚐 Vanlife update: Jord is back on the horse and once again sharing van conversion videos on YouTube. (Yeah we’re a content couple… what of it?)

🐦 Bird of the day: Common Bronzewing. I love seeing these portly pigeons quietly pecking at grass seeds, but more often than not I catch a flash of chrome and the drumming of wings as they bolt. Introverts.

Thanks to Georgina Steytler + Rewild Perth for the lovely capture.

🍳 Breakfast exposé: BF’s GF seed bread + agitated eggs + in-haüs kraut.

✏️ Project of the week: Keeping the blackbirds away from my peas.

🎙️ Other project of the week: A Reskillience miniseries on housing called Gimme Shelter. Seems weird to be talking about growing skills and resilience when so many of us don’t even have a terracotta pot to call home. I’ll be asking a bunch of relevant humans to share their best ideas for subverting/transcending the housing crisis. Coming soon.

🪡 Just can’t warm to: Electroacupuncture.

🌻 Seasonal sightings: Swallows gathering hair and fluff and detritus from our front doormat for their nests. I pinched some of Jord’s premium NZ wool van insulation and left it out as an offering to enhance their property’s R-value. They were pleased!

 
 

Welcome mat

Welcome Swallow 😊

 
 

💌 Blog obsession: Artist as Family have finally made it to India after rockhopping and relating their way across umpteen countries. Their travel writing is giving me chills and insatiable cravings for mango (/putting the whole pit longways in my mouth and smiling).

🎧 Latest Reskillience drop: Episode #25 ~ Green Tech Fact Check with Joel Meadows. We recorded in person in Joel’s kitchen after feasting on spring egg frittata, wild mushrooms and wattleseed yoghurt. Full bellies facilitated a fearless conversation about the false promise of renewables. Some are calling it their favourite episode yet. I dunno, you decide.

🧠 Vocab exploder: Peripatetic /ˌpɛrɪpəˈtɛtɪk/  Peripatetic can be deployed as an adjective or a noun and is pretty much the same as “itinerant”; meaning to travel from place to place – or a person who does that. “The roads are thick with Grey Peripatetics!”

Thanks for taking a pause in these peripatetic times. 

Come back soon to see what’s new ✨

 
 

@catieofthesouthernwild

We are no joke turning the earth into coins. And while I like handing over shiny doubloons for bottles of gin as much as the next person, I’d rather just have the gin and a living planet. So it gives me great and glowing pride to partner with
Luminous wattle, nodding daffodils and spring rains… …must be International Dave Day 🌈 One year since this technicolour dingus crossed the rainbow bridge — or rather, became the rainbow as we covered him in every brightly flow
I get why we breed animals to be big and meaty and docile. I get why we confine them to paddocks and cages, sparing ourselves the chase. I get why we send them far far away to meet their end before returning to us as rectangles. I get it, I get it,
The dramatic tension between knowing when to push yourself and knowing when to lay prostrate on the ground like a piece of rotting seaweed. (With yoga you can do both.)
I dream of starting a blog called Nature Cake that offers trusted reviews of hiking and biking routes that end near gelaterias. 📸 2 + 4 courtesy of @jordosmond 💚
Spotted on the pier: 🐠 One tube of $16 natural lip balm flying out of my pocket, through the mesh walkway and into the drink. 🐠 One octogenarian in small pink shorts and a whopper of a puffer jacket. 🐠 Make that two. 🐠 A know-it-all fisherma
Beach holiday sensory listicle: Smells: caravan park amenities block, hot chips, ciggies, seaweed, pilchards, dog shit. Colours: labradoodle brown, Kathmandu puffer jacket black, wavetop silver, chickensalt yellow. Sounds: swish… kerplunk
Living at Melliodora was like being the resident rodent in one of those fancy green grocers with free rein to nibble everything. Now I’m recalibrating to being a rental rakali in deep winter when the garden’s asleep and I gotta buy the ri
My face was all purple with cold and puckered like a cat’s bum on the morning we walked down to the river, rods in hand and tackle box clacking. It was the ideal temperature for keeping Bird’s Eye fish fingers preserved in perpetuity or

I live, write and grow veggies on Djaara Mother Country, the un-ceded land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people. I acknowledge their continuing connection to country, water and community, and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.