Leaving the Shore ⛵️

Three weeks have passed since we left Sydney. After seven and a half years, we expected leaving our little cocoon to feel harder. But luckily, it felt peaceful and exciting. Perhaps because the next chapter had already started to grow inside us long before we packed our bags, and most probably because we know Sydney will always be “Home”, one way or another.

Leaving Sydney (For Now)

When we first landed in Sydney in 2019, we were twenty-two years old. With a strong French accent, little money, and no real understanding of what being engineers and responsible adults actually meant.

Eight years later, 30 years old, we left Sydney surrounded by friendships that feel like family, many new skills and carrying experiences we could never have imagined back then.

Sydney gave us much more than a career.

It taught us how to be bilingual, to build community, to volunteer, to grow some food and to care for ourselves, each other and the places where we lived.

Through our work and volunteering organisations like Transition Bondi, Climate Fresk, People For Nature, Regen Sydney, and Midnight Runners, we planted seeds. Some flourished, some are still germinating and some may never emerge. But the ones planted in our hearts will always keep growing.

Of course, leaving wasn’t without grief. We already miss the friends we won’t see for a while, our sit spots to meditate and contemplate, our sunny one bedroom tree house, our extravagant feathered visitors, the cooking feasts, the Manly Food Coop and Sunday farmer market, the Ruby Lane and The Nest breakfasts, and more importantly the familiar rhythm of a life carefully built over eight years.

For all of that, thank you Sydney. Your generosity and abundance will always be with us.

The Gift of the Road

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Augustus Shedd

For the two weeks following our departure, we’ve been slowly making our way through Western Australia. You can picture long stretches of road, red dirt, endless horizons, turquoise beaches, camping under the stars, the big emus, but also an alarming number of dead kangaroos, exploded tyres and mines. Guillaume even invented a game called “Tyre or Kangaroo?” to keep us entertained on the road.

You can see some of these moments on our Instagram.

Some days we spent eight hours driving, which is not that different from the number of hours we used to spend sitting at our work desks. Yet it felt completely different. Instead of a computer screen showing lines of code, spreadsheets or virtual faces, the landscape was always changing and our senses remained constantly awake.

We learned to recognise river systems simply by spotting lines of trees in the distance. We watched colours shift throughout the day. We followed sunset, sunrise, the moon and wildlife. And instead of rushing from task to task, we had time. Time to think. Time to talk. Time to listen. Time to contemplate and time to appreciate.

The best gift was to have time for deep conversations. The ones that begin with: “What if we become this, or do that?”, “What are you afraid of?”, “Why do you think that still affects you?”

We talked about childhood memories, family stories, our dreams, our fears, and what we hope our future could look like.

Cape Range — A Reminder of Living Simply in Awe

While we loved all the places we visited between Perth, Exmouth and Karijini National Park, we found quietness in our minds at Cape Range National Park. For four days, our world became very small. We had a tent, a car, a tarp, a tiny camping stove, a composting toilet and a stunning beach with two turtles as friends instead of the virtual ones we lost to the absence of phone reception and internet.

The first dinner cooked on the tarp felt mildly overwhelming, but with slowness and appreciation, it became enjoyable, and even became beautiful.

The lack of convenience brought more presence to each meal, from its preparation to the cleaning at the end. We spent four days observing nature changing, reminding us of how small we are in this big world and how much time we can lose in worrying about everything.

We watched the full moon rising, the tide moving the sea and changing its colours, the fruit bats sleeping or playing in the fig tree, the rock wallabies climbing risky rocks, the dolphins passing offshore, the large osprey building their nests, and our favourite: the turtles’ heads surfacing briefly before disappearing again.

We slowed down enough to notice and appreciated being one with this stunning and protected environment.

The Act of Presence

One idea kept returning throughout this trip. We encountered it in books, podcasts and our own reflections. Presence.

In this podcast, The Great Simplification, Nate Hagens (Mylene’s favourite podcast for making sense of this big, crazy world) describes how easily our minds drift into imagined futures, global crises, old stories and endless mental simulations. The result is that our life itself becomes a waiting room for a future we can only imagine. By doing so, we forget that today is the only life we have. Living our life fully is the precious gift we’ve been given at birth.

Cape Range (and the trip) reminded us of that and made us more aware of our minds drifting away from the present moment. All the awe moments we experienced asked nothing from us except our attention. We felt calm, protected, deeply connected and profoundly grateful for being alive.

The Mana of Places

One of the ideas we are exploring through Mana Growers is the idea that every place has its own mana. Its own life force, its own story, its own way of shaping the people who spend time there.

During this trip, the mana of Cape Range and François Péron National Parks felt abundant with their protected ecosystems. Our eyes were captivated by the native flowers blooming with butterflies, the whale sharks moving beyond the reef, and especially the red ancient limestone ranges meeting turquoise ocean.

Places like this remind us that when nature is given space, life returns and beauty emerges. And this observation applies to ourselves too.

What We’ve Learnt

This journey is only the start of a long life trip. We’re glad we started it this way, the two of us, away from familiar places and people. We grew our confidence in camping simply, Mylene feels more ready for a van life in New Zealand and most importantly, the silence of nature made space for our hearts to tell us what truly matters. The trip reminded us of the gift of being alive and of being the stewards of our own time to choose to make beauty and appreciation a priority.

See you soon for the next field notes sharing our June experiences in France! Thank you for being here and leave us a comment if you have any questions or reflections to share. You can also follow us on Instagram. And don’t forget, be present in your own life — it’s nature’s most precious gift.