In the wild that was 2020, life seemingly crash landed into a 1950’s blue weatherboard house by the sea. Having reluctantly relocated from a place in the deep south of Western Australian that I loved, my heart was in a tempest, and the little blue house, a sanctuary in the pandemonium that was the world and my mind all at once. After some time, I learned that the house had a story, one of holding on and of letting go.

Sometime in the 1970’s, on Christmas Eve, a fisherman who was the brother of the original owner of the place that was now mine, went out on a fishing boat trawler with a crew just after midnight. A vicious storm with a cyclone on its tail rose up, the boat, the crew and the brother were all lost at sea.

For years, the brother on land in the little blue weatherboard clung on to hope that his lost brother would one day return, keeping the house just as it was if the lost brother was to ever find his way back home. But years turned into decades and the house stood waiting, the brother at home refusing to sell the house on to anyone who might knock the old place down, a porch light left on for two brothers with loss the size of an ocean in between.

The wreck of the vessel was later discovered sunken, no survivors. Her name was Floodbird.

In name and story, she is vast, intimate and timeless. She is both a longing for and a letting go of, she is rest and wild, land and sea, the memory of loved and dear ones. She is a porch light left on for those in the dark and the space in-between. She is wonder and waiting. She is free, she is found, she is home, anchored in hope, wherever the tides take her.