Basketry always fasinated me. My first harvested and prepared plant materials were jonquils and lemongrass. It was the mid 1990’s. I was hooked! Inspired by women weavers I met over the years, I began experimenting with various invasive vines, coconut fronds, corn husks etc. and a load of different Asian and European weaving styles. Weaving useful containers from natural materials ignited something in my core. It felt like it connected me to my own ancient roots in this earth. Even so my first visit to my children’s family land in Arnhemland deepend this connection beyond anything I could imagine.

There I was mentored in a way I had dreamed of. As soon as it became evident to my childrens’ family that I could weave the elder women drew me into their circle and literally poured knowledge into me. We shared very little language. They just took me everywhere and showed me everything. This experience ignited a fire deep inside me that has not wavered.

That first six months taught me the magic of foraging for fibre and dyes to create a rainbow of materials for creating beautiful strong functional vessels. Each year they sent me off with bundles of fibre to keep weaving until I returned. Each year I learned more about harvesting and processing fibres and dyes as well as about sitting in circle with women. Each year my vocabulary increased as did the depth of what was shared.

I felt more and more lonely when I returned to Tamban. Weaving was still good, but I had learned that community made weaving better. I was sharing weaving skills. From around 2009 I was being invited to share with Gumbayngirr and Dhungatti Elders groups, pre, primary and high school groups as well as cultural camps around the area. But somehow something was missing. Over the next few years I began experiementing with local fibres and dyes.

Kate had the same home birth support person as I had had for my last three babies. She called and told me about an amazing woman who weaves, travels regularly to a remote Yolngu community, forages for bush food, lives in a shack in the bush and picks up roadkill. 'You're living parallel lives!'.

After discovering a whole different depth to weaving, with my children's family at Rorruwuy NT, where sharing and creating in community is commonplace, I felt so alone here on the Mid North Coast, that all changed when I met Kate.

Suddenly new discoveries could be shared. We had a common experience of weaving in a community of women and of foraging, preparing and dying fibres as a group.

We had a common love and deep connection to the land we called home here on the mid north coast and a common desire to translate what we had learned in NT into a sustainable weaving practice down here.
As we were discovering the alchemy between fibres and dyes, it was like there was an alchemy between us as well. Now, after facilitating weaving circles together, and over the last several years of facilitating groups of women to grow their own weaving practice and circles, it feels like our connection has supported us in creating a thriving weaving community.

The programs are our way of sharing what we have learned and our unique discoveries around weaving and eco dyes. They're also a place where women can feel safe in the company of other women and as their hands are busy, they begin to open up and share with each other. This is extremely healing for the women who attend.

I am dedicated to sharing what I have learned about the native materials available to me. Through experimentation I am able to draw on the materials that naturally occur in my environment rather than be reliant on imports and synthetics for my creative practice.