I moved around a lot as a kid and we lost touch after that year until we were 12 and at High School where we became best friends again. Then we were bored teenagers in a small country town; letter books, art and throwing things at boys. I stayed at her house again, and she introduced me to the third boy I pashed, and we wanted to travel the world and be photographers for National Geographic.
We’ve hung out over the years since we left school, wide-eyed and gullible; from hitchhiking to Paris, to sharing a house in Paris Street, parting in London and dancing in the mud at Woodford but gradually life has taken us separate ways, to separate cities. We make sure to keep in touch here and there, and although we may miss the odd milestone in the hustle of everyday life, those few letters we type mean a lot.
In October she had her first baby – a milestone I refused to miss, as our friendship stretches back to when we were babies. I visited her and her sweet and funny partner Ian at their lovely home in the Blue Mountains, and we re-enacted our High School Art project (she nuded up for me – nothing but the size of her belly has changed there!) and then this weekend I got to meet her serene little frog of a son, Keeden Nioka Harrison. It was a delightful moment, and hopefully the first of a new kind of milestone in the next 20-something years of our friendship.
