2024: The year of Tiny (or: My year of standing naked in front of everyone)

I love this time of year, this in-between week. Christmas Day has happened but the fairy lights are still up, the new year is yet to begin, and the languid summer days make me feel like I'm in transit with plenty of do-nothing time to pause and take stock of all that's happened in the past 12 months. 

For me, 2024 was all about Tiny. My new book was published by Hardie Grant in late July, after two and a half years of writing and rewriting, thinking and rethinking, learning how to actually write a memoir and finding my voice. And, like building my tiny house, Tiny was a labour of love, only more difficult and more solitary. 

When my advance copy arrived in the post, it felt strange and almost anti-climactic. How could this thing made of paper and ink, a thing small enough to hold in my hands, possibly contain all the love and angst I'd put into it? 

On top of that, how could something so pretty and neat feel so... scary? Ahead of publication day I felt nervous and a bit shaky, having been so vulnerable and open on the page. I was about to step onto a public stage and stand naked in front of everyone I know and don't know. So I called a couple of writer friends for moral support, and reminded myself that everyone has stories, even if they don't share them with strangers. We're human! Also, this is what writers do: we share our stories, to make sense of what happened to us and maybe shine a light for others on a similar path. 

Into the world 

Still, I held my breath when Tiny was released into the wild. And exhaled at my first book launch in Sydney, in early August, where I was drenched in love and support. The same happened at my Brisbane launch a few weeks later. My travel media friends, in particular, were amazing. 

Then Tiny started receiving fabulous reviews, including in The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald (see pic) and Books + Publishing, a big industry publication. Edited excerpts appeared in The Guardian and Sunday Life. 

I talked about Tiny on radio and podcasts, and at author events. (My publicist at Hardie Grant was also amazing.) People I hadn't been in contact with for years - school friends, people I'd worked with on magazines 20 years ago - reached out to say how much they loved Tiny or how much my story resonated with them. 

That's the thing about writing a memoir: publishing is the goal but also a beginning, the moment your story becomes its own entity with its own trajectory out of your control, reverberating as people read it and want to talk about it. That's the magic of story.  

I was also invited to narrate the audiobook version of Tiny (now available on Audible and for free via the BorrowBox library app) which gave me new respect for voiceover artists. This involved spending three days in a studio in Melbourne (my first flight in four and a half years!), reading aloud into a microphone and, much to my surprise, NOT losing my voice. (Big thanks to the wonderful team at Bolinda for this incredible experience.)

New tiny home place 

The other big thing that happened this year was that I moved my tiny house to a new location. It's an odd feeling to move house by moving your actual house. The night before the move, I lay in bed thinking, "This time tomorrow night I'm going to be exactly where I am now, here in my bed loft in my little house, in a completely new place."

Instead of hiring removalists, I hired a guy with a tractor to tow my tiny to its new spot. (After spending a couple of months preparing the new site: creating a gravel pad for my tiny to be parked on, putting in a power and water connection to the main house, dismantling my deck, packing moveable items...)

It all went remarkably smoothly. A few neighbours stood on the footpath to watch and wave as we left the old site and my little house on wheels, which hadn't moved since we'd finished building it three years ago, did exactly what it was designed to do. 

I'm still in the same northern NSW town I've lived in for 10 years (this month is my 10th anniversary!) but instead of living in a busy driveway I'm now on the edge of a green field, surrounded by trees, facing north and out of sight of the road. It's peaceful, I have lovely landlords, the bird life is incredible.

After setting up the tiny, rebuilding the deck and getting everything shipshape inside, I'd planned to go camping or do a post-book road trip. Then I realised I really wanted to get to know my new tiny home place - where the sun rose, which birds visited the trees around me. 

There was so much light! Winter sunshine beamed in, warming my tiny. At night, before going to bed, I'd stand in the middle of my grassy backyard and look up at the stars, so bright in the absence of any street lights nearby. 

It was like the homely hibernation I did after the build, and it was winter after all. I read (here's my 2024 reading list) and baked and sewed and sat in the sun and swam. I was nesting. 

It's summer now but I still love sitting at my bench with the gas-strut window open - or out on the deck in the cool of early evening - listening and looking at all the living going on around me. 

The End

I think I've finally arrived at the end of this tiny house story, the one in which I designed and built (with much help) a home of my very own, let go of someone I really loved, then wrote about it all. The end of another journey around the sun seems as good a time as any to draw a line underneath it.

I'll continue living in my tiny, of course, and this story will always be with me because it rewrote me in so many ways, but I'm looking forward to living some new stories in the new year and beyond.

And although the world is a mess right now, in so many ways, there's still much to be grateful for, and to look forward to. May 2025 be joyful and meaningful for you, and bring you some peace you weren't expecting to find. Thank you, as always, for keeping me company here. Happy new year!

Tiny: A memoir about love, letting go and a very small house is available at bookstores across Australia and New Zealand in print, and as an ebook and an audiobook (you can even listen for free via BorrowBox, the library app). From mid-January 2025, it will also available in the UK, with the US release planned for later in 2025. 

Tiny, the book!

Some of you might remember my previous post, way back in the mists of time in blog terms (aka six months ago) in which I mentioned that 2023 was for me the Year of the Memoir, the year I turned my terrible first draft into a manuscript worthy of sending to my publisher, Hardie Grant. 

Well, that manuscript has become an actual book - I'm holding an advance copy in my hands right now - and it'll be in bookstores all over Australia and New Zealand (with overseas territories to follow, I believe) next week, Tuesday 30 July. Very excitement! 

If you don't remember the post, here's a recap: my book, now called Tiny: a memoir about love, letting go and a very small house, is about my experience of building a tiny house on wheels, to live in, with my partner "Max" as (spoiler alert) our relationship was falling apart. 

It's full of joy and observations about the strange new world I inhabited for eight months, the world of construction and building materials, a world that had its own language, and I related to much of it the way I would have related to a long trip to a previously unknown destination: by taking notes and photos and trying to make the most of this once in a lifetime experience. 

Tiny is also full of struggle and anxiety and sorrow about the falling-apart relationship. And life lessons galore. Writing about it all - using words to make sense of everything that happened - has been one of the most difficult and most satisfying experiences of my life. 

Here's a sneak peak of the cover (above) and the back cover blurb (right). I've done a bit of media so far, and so far it's all been wonderfully positive. Still, I'm nervous. The book is so raw and personal. So having my story - including some of the pics I took with my phone during the build - out in the world feels both wonderful and strange. But mostly I'm excited to share my story and I hope it resonates with people, and connects us. Humans are hard-wired for story after all and I think there's a real hunger for real, authentic stories with all that's happening in the world right now.

For updates about book launches and signings, go to my No Impact Girl facebook page, which I update on a regular basis (that's also where I posted weekly updates during the build, if you scroll back to 2020-21).

Want to buy a copy of Tiny? From Tuesday 30 July, it'll be available from bookstores across Australia and New Zealand, and at these online bookstores. There'll also be an audiobook version, narrated by yours truly (another new experience; they just keep coming!). Thanks, as always, and happy reading/listening! 

2023: Year of the memoir

Happy endings and beginnings, friends. It feels strange to be writing here, having been so absent from this blog space, and from so many other places, this year. I barely even did any sustainable - or any other kind of - travel, or travel writing. Because I've been deep in book-writing mode, working on a memoir about the experience of building my tiny house, with all its inherent (and surprising) ups and downs, observations and life lessons. 

So this might be a short post* because I've spent a large part of this year inside my own head. That's the thing about writing; it's no spectator sport. From the outside, it can look as if nothing much is happening. It's just someone sitting at a desk, her attention turned inwards to where all the (invisible) action is going on. 

And when I wasn't writing, I was reading - also not a spectator sport! - trying to get my head around this new-to-me way of writing. 

For the longest time I felt self-conscious calling my book a "memoir"; it sounded pompous and self-indulgent. But that was before I learned about this often-misunderstood genre, that humans are hard-wired for story, the difference between celebrity memoirs and "literary memoirs" (the kind I'm writing - usually about an interesting part of a non-famous person's life with universal themes readers can relate to, like romantic love or grief) and how to write one. (You can read micro-reviews here, of the memoirs I most loved this year.)

Like building the tiny house, writing a memoir has been like visiting a destination I'd long heard about but didn't know anything about - until I dived into it. Also like building the tiny, it's been one of the most difficult, emotional and satisfying things I've ever done. 

Some days I felt so content and happy that I got to sit at my desk in my tiny house and write about this experience that changed my life so profoundly. Other days, not so much. (I think I'm now halfway between #4 and #5 in the pic above.)

In many ways 2023 was a holding-steady kind of year, one in which I tried to keep my external environment as stable and as plain as possible so I could focus on writing. 

To that end, I still live in my little house - and feel grateful almost every day to have a place where I can live and work in peace. It's still parked in the same spot - though I'm hoping to move in the new year, somewhere nearby with more green space. I'm still doing my best to live simply, frugally, sustainably. 

And I'm still not-travelling. It's four years now since I stepped on a plane, and although that's mainly been due to the book-writing (and Covid before that), it's also a small act of defiance against the status quo destroying our planet's climate and ecosystems. I'm still not sure how to reconcile my love of travel in faraway places with my desire for a liveable climate (for everyone), but I'll have to figure that out one day - or make a permanent peace with not flying. 

(I did write a few sustainable travel stories this year. At the risk of sounding like the Elisabeth Zott - from Lessons in Chemistry, another book I loved this year - of travel, here are two of them: 7 sustainable travel terms every traveller should know and Sustainable travel trends to look forward to in 2024.)

The book is almost done now. I have a manuscript, a publisher, an editor. If all goes to plan, this time next year there'll be a paperback out in the world with my name on it. A memoir not just about building a tiny house but about love, letting go and finding my true home. 

Until then, bon voyage for your next trip around the sun, departing next Monday. I hope 2024 is full of love and wonder, for all of us, and daily natural delights that remind us we're all so interconnected it's incredible anyone could have imagined it to be any other way. 

*So much for this being a short post! 

2022: My year of living quietly

Here we are at the Sunday afternoon end of the year, at the tail end of this secret week between rushing and resolutions, between the year that's all but over and the one not yet begun. I like it. I like not knowing what day it is and feeling as if anything goes. No questions asked. There's time to read and nap and have regular swims to cool off (or is that just me?) and do nothing at all. And maybe cast a lazy backward glance at the year that's about to expire.

I know it's usual at times like this to say that the year has just flown by, but 2022 felt like a long year to me. Not in a dragging, lockdown kind of way, but in a one-day-at-a-time way. 

The world opened up, friends started travelling again. And I stayed put, mainly to work on a book about the tiny house build, which is still a work in progress (who knew writing about building a tiny house would take SO much longer than actually building one?). I don't think I went much beyond a three-hour radius of my little town all year (by car). 

It was my year of living quietly. 

Rain 

Of course 2022 started with the noisy drumming of flooding rains up here in northern NSW (and is ending the same way in parts of South Australia as I write this). My town wasn't directly affected, and my little house weathered the storms and downpours beautifully, but everyone around here felt it in some way, all summer and into autumn. When the sun eventually came out - and stayed out - it seemed like a miracle. Then the government changed (hallelujah) and good things started to seem possible again.

Still, after the flooding, after hearing so many stories of heartache and homelessness, after seeing the sea turn brown and stay that way for months from all the river runoff and all the debris washed up on the beaches, including massive trees with barnacles on their trunks - it felt natural to stay close to home. I felt a new urgency to live simply, for my own wellbeing as much as for the sake of planet. 

Frugal

So I made a conscious choice: to live frugally. This was always what tiny house living was about for me. Now I was finally going to live it. 

I decided to earn less so that I'd have more time and more headspace to write and think. I wanted to be un-busy and feel grateful for all I have here that enables me to live simply, including an un-greedy friend/landlord who charges me minimal rent to park my tiny on his land, a community garden down the road where I can grow some food, and natural places nearby where I can exercise and socialise, and find solace, for free. 

And in living this way, time slowed down. As one of my favourite poets, John Roedel, said recently, "Gratitude has a way of pouring maple syrup on all of the clocks."

Making & mending

Tiny houses are natural life-simplifiers. Being small, they force you to clean up after yourself regularly and keep things ship-shape. Undone chores are right in front of your nose. And with less paid work, I had more incentive - and more time - to make things. 

When I wasn't writing (or reading) and in the spirit of frugality (what a funny word) I spent time making and mending and doing basic home maintenance. Things I made: a camphor bowl, a laptop case, a chopping board, banana bread, pumpkin soup, spinach pie and a deliciously healthy chocolate cake. Things I mended: jeans and shirts and hot water bottle covers. I re-oiled my cedar siding, and the decks. 

Simple travels

When my passport expired at the beginning of the year, I instinctively ordered a new one. I still haven't used it. In fact, this month marks an unfamiliar milestone: it's three years since I've been on a plane. Of course, Covid gave me two flight-free years, and I will probably fly somewhere in 2023, but I do feel rather virtuous all the same (I'm half-kidding: it feels good to not fly when I feel so alarmed by the state of the planet, but I can't get too superior about it with all the flying I've done as a travel writer over the years.) 

To make ends meet this year, I did write about sustainable travel (in between book chapters) - without going anywhere. I learned a lot, about regenerative travel and tourism pledges and cultural appropriation, even quiet travel. 

I also took a casual job at Happy Flame, a local business that makes beautiful beeswax candles; it was my first casual job since I started my writing career 25 years ago, but it was a really enjoyable part of my quiet-year regime: simple work, a regular income, time to think.

Animal magic

When I did go away, it was invariably to go camping somewhere relatively nearby, like Bald Rock National Park, where I saw my first spotted quoll! 

Another first happened closer to home: I was surfing, in winter, when I slid off my longboard to swim around underwater in the lull between waves and heard... squeaks and clicks and moans. Whales! They weren't close enough to see, but within minutes I'd told other surfers nearby and they started sliding off their boards and coming up smiling too. Joy doubled in the sharing of it. 

Tiny life 2.0

When people ask me now, "How's your tiny house?" I have to think for a moment. After living in my tiny for almost two years, my little house is just...my home. I guess that's a sign that it's comfortable and it suits me. Living tiny just seems normal to me. 

I know it's not for everyone, but it's good to remember that for most of human history, most people lived simply, in small dwellings and rarely ventured far from home.

So I'm here. Day by day, moment to moment, doing my best to make the most of everything I have, all the advantages I've been given. And I don't have any big plans to change that anytime soon. I'm starting to miss travel, or bits of it - walking amid big mountains, meeting new people, being away from everything and everyone I know - but for now I'm happy to be embarking on this next 365-day trip around the sun starting in a few days' time. Ready? I hope it's a good one for us all... 

Tourism declares a climate emergency (and so do I)

This blog post is a bit different to my usual sharings. It's about a subject close to my heart - climate action - and how it relates to travel, which can be a prickly subject for those of us who make our living from encouraging people to travel, at a time when we all really, truly need to cut our emissions in every aspect of our lives.

I feel so strongly about this that today I'm signing Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency. 

First, a bit of backstory. 

In January 2020, when the world didn't yet know it was on the brink of shutting down because of a global pandemic, a small group of UK-based travel professionals, inspired by cities and towns all over the world declaring a climate emergency, launched an ambitious initiative to tackle the tourism industry's contribution to the climate crisis.

Tourism Declares was a bold move and, in hindsight, quite beautifully timed. For although the entire travel industry unpacked its bags in March 2020 and stayed home for two years, this enforced pause gave us all time to think deeply, and widely, about the way we'd all been travelling. For those of us working in travel, it was also a chance to rethink travel in all its forms, and reflect on our values and attitudes towards the planet.

I've mentioned Tourism Declares on this blog before and always planned to sign up. Then Covid hit and my tiny house project consumed my life (in a good way!) and with Australia's borders closed and no travel plans, there seemed little point in promising to limit my travel emissions.

Now, with travel back in action, in a big way, it seems a good time to make this commitment. 

This post is a formal record of my commitment. I here declare that:

I strongly support the global commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach net zero as soon as possible before 2050. 

I vow to do whatever I can, in my ongoing work as a travel writer, to promote travel that aligns with this commitment and align my own actions with the latest scientific recommendations to stop the planet warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. 

I formally agree to collaborate with other Tourism Declares and Glasgow Declaration signatories in any way that is helpful to this cause.

*

Of course Covid let me off the travel hook for the past three years. Still, while some of my colleagues and friends have been jumping on planes to travel far and wide since Australia's borders opened earlier this year, I've stayed put - partly to focus on writing a book, partly because earlier this year catastrophic flooding in northern NSW, where I live, made the climate crisis frighteningly real. After that, it's hard to try to pretend that it's "business as usual" for travel - or for any industry. 

In practical terms, I've strived to contribute to a decarbonised travel industry by:

• Writing almost exclusively about sustainable, responsible or regenerative travel since borders reopened earlier this year - and I plan to continue for as long as possible. Two of my latest stories are about tourism pledges and the rise of regenerative travel.
• Not flying for almost three years - no overseas flights, no domestic flights (my last flight was for a work trip to Myanmar in December 2019).
• Reducing my own travel-related emissions by limiting my travel outside the local area for the past three years - during which I co-built a tiny house and started on a book project instead!
• Being an active member of the Australian Society of Travel Writers' (ASTW) Sustainability Committee, finding ways to help the ASTW operate more sustainably and promoting sustainable travel in all its forms to our members, who in turn influence the travelling public in Australia and elsewhere.
• Helping the ASTW sign the Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action in Tourism, earlier this year, with the support of 93 per cent of our members. We're now developing a climate action plan to make this commitment practical.
• Prioritising work assignments that have a sustainable focus and/or require little or no air travel. 

I also try to live as simply, ethically and sustainably as possible by, for instance: being vegetarian; living in a tiny house (pictured at left) for more than a year and a half now - which helps reduce my energy use; most of the electricity I use is solar-generated); and volunteering at my local Landcare group and Community Garden, which helps to reduce carbon emissions by planting trees and maintaining native bushland, and by growing organic food locally.

And I will of course seek to do more (or less, where appropriate!) and decarbonise further whenever possible. 

Want to join Tourism Declares? It's for anyone who works in the travel industry - as an individual or as part of an organisation, government department or travel company, even for those who work in hotels and other accommodation and service providers, anywhere in the world - and it's absolutely free. You can find out more here. And if you work in another industry, find an organisation that can help you reduce your emissions there and spread the word. We're all in this together (as I've said before but, you know, it's true!).