Belgrave

A collectively pleasant outing

By Thomas Feng

January 27^th, 2017

My friend Jaynaya loves asking her friends to go for a walk before deceiving them into walking a long way for many hours.

It was a very warm day and we had arrived in Grant's Picnic Ground in Kallista just down the road from Belgrave. Lucy, Imogen and I were the victims today as we decided to walk the Eastern Sherbrooke Forest Walk.

The grand canopies afforded little respite from the heat and the lactic acid building up in our legs from walking up and down very steep hills. I annoyed everyone by talking about behavioural economics and how it was difficult to compute/problem-solve/do anything whilst walking steep ascents.

We spoke of many podcasts we had been listening to, ranging from Grace Helbig's superficial "Not Too Deep", Sarah Koenig's dark "Serial" to Holly & Tracy's hilariously informative "Stuff You Missed in History Class". If you haven't heard of the Great Emu War, make sure it is the first thing you Google after reading this.

The best part of being in the forest was how serene and calm it was. Oh how my head was a brewing storm and how the forest blanketed me, snuggled me in and told me that everything was going to be okay.

exploring belgrave

Belgrave has a charm of a little town in the forest except it is situated on the urban fringe of Melbourne.

There are some hip cafes; a lovely little local cinema; an old pub which hosts some excellent gigs with up and coming Australian musicians; vintage stores where I bought some bamboo bowls and learned about the local witch scene; a store which sells local products and retro items from a collective of local artists and creatives; and a secondhand bookstore so overflowing with books you could barely move without an arm or foot accidentally brushing a freestanding stack of books and hoping you weren't going to knock it over.

It is a starkly contrasting place; somewhere where you can have an amazing time meandering around town and speaking to lovely locals only to see intoxicated people yelling abuse at everybody and drunkenly belting out songs for the whole main street to hear.

Nevertheless, it is a little town filled with wonder and I'm very glad to have explored it with the bestest girl gang out there.

The innocent child in me hopes that one day Imogen will be a baker, Jaynaya will be the florist next door and across the road will be Lucy's feminist craft collective and I'll be writing and creating content as a freelance creative in a town like this.

a final note

Recently I have had many great days but I haven't been feeling great. Some days I have found it very difficult to get out of bed and eat vegemite toast for breakfast; other days I have found myself feeling okay; and occasionally a day or two where I want to curl up into a little ball and sit still for a while.

I am not writing for your sympathy but rather to acknowledge that it is okay not to be okay. I think I am okay now or I am at least getting there. I think patience, reflection and being kind to myself have helped a lot and that I am feeling much better than I was on in my previous post. I was confused about everything happening and only recently have I been slowly starting to make sense of it all.