“You’ll lose your friends,” said one of those friends when I moved to Dangar Island. As a migrant, with only two daughters and husband nearby, I was looking for community.
Accessed by boat, a little over 300 people live on Dangar Island, on the northern outskirts of Sydney on the Hawkesbury River.
I’d visited the island many times – we shared a weekender there with friends. But when the girls left home and my husband retired, we moved to Dangar permanently. We didn’t go blindly. Armed with our boat licences, we understood some of the trials of living on an island. We knew a few people by name and others by sight.
I quickly learned that it takes time and effort to become part of a community. It takes even longer to become accepted as a local.
I set to work. I volunteered for the Hall Committee, taking on the unenviable role of secretary. I invited people to dinner. I invited them again. To meet people, I regularly went to what was then a community-run cafe for coffee. Over one such coffee, Michael, who is now a dear friend, cajoled me into participating in an art show to raise funds for the cafe.
I’m no artist. But the theme, Flotsam and Jetsam, spoke to me. Feeling safe and supported, I was happy to put myself out there with a small work. On our little beach I uncovered broken bits of crockery – triangles of hospital green, pieces from saucer edges patterned in blue and white and cream bits embossed with little flowers. I glued these relics into a shadow box. Surprisingly, it sold – for a reasonable price.
That art show was the start of a creative journey. When Michael suggested that Dangar have its own sculpture walk, I didn’t need persuading. Years later, my 14 oversized scrabble tiles that spell “DANGAR ISLAND” plus two other random letters, continue to entertain.
When I pass the “Scrabble” on my morning walk, I often read words pertinent to current affairs or the natural beauty of Dangar. As I stroll, I talk to the birds. Magpies, instead of dive-bombing, warble and greet me back. Kookaburras laugh and tiny white-browed scrubwrens chatter as they flit between branches in the undergrowth.
The squawking and screeching of sulphur-crested cockatoos in our huge, 150-year-old blackbutt eucalyptus once frightened a guest from the city. I looked up to see the birds furiously flapping their wings while attacking a goanna climbing towards their nest. Other times it has been a terrified ring-tailed possum scurrying along ever smaller branches, trying to escape the birds’ onslaught.
Walking to the cafe one day, I met two young children that I only knew by sight. I chatted to them and discovered they’d been harvesting soft clay on the side of the road. Resting in their outstretched palms were a hand-fashioned bowl and an animal which they were taking home to bake in their mother’s oven.
That the siblings could roam around the car-free island unsupervised sent me on another creative journey. I wrote about the island from a child’s perspective in my first children’s picture book.
Over the years, I’ve participated in a pantomime, dressed up for Dangardigras pride parades and joined more than 40 people in a progressive dinner. Sometime in November, people will start asking me about our street party which we’ve held every year for more than 10 years, apart from a break during Covid-19 lockdowns. Everyone looks forward to my sausage rolls.
These days, as I write at my desk looking out across the river, I’ll stop for a minute to watch the ferry chug past. When I hear the familiar commentary from the Riverboat Postman, I’ll know it’s a few minutes past 10am. Time for tea.
In the evening, my husband and I occasionally sit down at the boat shed to enjoy the last warm rays of the setting sun. When we hear our neighbours speeding home across the water, I catch my husband’s eye. In unspoken agreement we walk to the end of our jetty and wave the neighbours in to join us for a drink.
Dangar Island enriches my life. And I still regularly catch up with off-island friends. I didn’t lose them after all, and I gained much more than the community I sought.
