I Am Byron: The Vagabond
I Am Byron
I Am Byron is a poetic series inspired by the unique personalities who live and breathe Byron Shire values, either residing here or holding it strong in their hearts. Get to know the quirky, down-to-earth and inspiring humans ditching the nine-to-five and exploring a new way of being. Our in-house storytellers share tales straight from the lives of quintessential Byronites, be they long-time locals, new residents or those simply passing through.
I Am Byron: The Vagabond
Story by Rebekah Reeve with Sahar
I don’t like to be tied down to anything - I have commitment issues. I don’t have children or tattoos because I don’t like commitment. But Covid, it made me go: “If you have to choose where you’re gonna be, where is that?”
There was just no doubt I needed to be here, I needed to be in the Northern Rivers.
I’ve travelled all up and down the East Coast of Australia and I just feel like this rainbow region, from Lismore to Nimbin, all the way around the Tweed and down to Byron/Ballina - I feel like this part of Australia is where a lot of people live on the fringes of society.
There’s a lot of creative people here. There’s a lot of people who are progressively minded in terms of just caring about the environment. There’s a bit more…I hate to use the word consciousness because it’s been bastardised, but I feel like this is where the most progressive minded people are.
I feel there’s more caring about self, going within and being conscious of how we use things of how we repurpose things of how we recycle. I feel like this is that kind of community and that kind of area more so than any other part in Australia.
So, now, for the first time in ten or fifteen years I have a new address on my license.
I lived most of my life in Western Sydney, but I was born in Iran and migrated to Australia with my parents as refugees in 1988.
When we moved, I was six. I went to school in Sydney, I went to university there as well. When you grow up in Western Sydney, you kind of become a bit of a ‘Dora the Explorer’ because you live so far away from everything. You want to go closer to the beaches and explore other parts.
Moving here to the Northern Rivers was never about wanting to feel accepted. I’ve never really had a problem with needing to feel accepted. I try to be really authentic in the way that I communicate and the way that I deal with people. I’ve travelled half the world and I know you could just pop me anywhere and I’ll be able to make connections with people.
For me, where I choose to live is more about the kinds of people around me, just my kind of people. You know, their attitudes and the way that they live is the way that I want to live. And maybe I feel like I can learn something from them too.
Like, I was living on this lady’s property with my bus this year in Lismore doing a woofing kind of thing. I was helping her build another dwelling - all from recycled materials that she was finding free on Marketplace and Gumtree. Rich people were ripping their kitchens out, their cabinets and doors.
This lady, she built a whole house almost completely from recycled materials and things she found. She painted a whole house – I helped her paint, with paints that she found at the tip, like, full tins of paint!
I’m from a world in Sydney where you get everything new from a store, Dulux, Bunnings, everything is new, there’s an obsession with ‘but, I want it to be mine!’ Whereas here it’s that culture of recycling and repurposing that kind of turns me on.
Coming from the East and then growing up in Western Society, I’m conscious of how much we waste. So much, like, we are the biggest consumers, but we have the smallest populations compared to millions and trillions of people in the East.
We waste more water; we waste more resources than they do. It just drives me mad that we flush ten litres of clean water every time we go to the toilet. I did this thing when I was living on the road last year - I was living on ten litres of water a day. I only had a ten-litre water tank, and I didn’t have a tap that worked in my bus. That tank was my drinking water it was my washing my dishes water it was my everything water you know. Ten litres!
When you see it as this measurable thing, when you can see it go down, you’re like more mindful of it. But when it’s just coming out of a tap it creates this illusion of abundance, it’s not actually this abundant resource though, there are people on the other side of the world who don’t have clean drinking water.
Whenever shit goes down in my life, I have to remind myself “ah, first world problems, there’s so much other shit going on out there.”
We consume the most, we waste the most, but I believe the change is also gonna happen from here too. I want to be part of that change.
Sahar is an eccentric performer, singer/songwriter, poet, self-proclaimed philosopher, vagabond, mermaid, party girl, social justice advocate and writer since the age of 8. As an active member of the music and poetry scenes in both her hometown of Sydney and her new home in the Northern Rivers/Far North Coast, Sahar continues to use her multi-disciplinary performance skills as tools to inspire thought, change and positive mental health through creative self-expression.