I was super lucky to be invited to Berlin for a week to attend the ilb (international literature festival of Berlin) in September 2023. I was to do two events - 2 panel discussions about The Boy from the Mish and 2 school visits.

I had never been overseas before. I’d never been outside the eastern half of Australia before! It was all very exciting. I had a 9:30pm flight out Sydney. I was in the window seat (not that I could really see anything in the night time anyway) and I had a young child sitting beside me with her father, so I had to make sure the movies I watched didn’t have anything naughty in them. The four hour stopover in Doha was also really exciting. I didn’t really do anything, just had some food and listened to music via my AirPods, and I was extremely tired, but it was still very exciting. It took roughly 25 hours to get to Berlin. The thing that surprised me most about the lengthy journey was how dirty I felt when I arrived at my destination. The way my feet felt in my shoes, never leaving them between when I left my house in Sydney to arriving at my hotel in Berlin, was the worst.

I was very lucky to have an amazing assistant during my time at the festival, who helped me learn so much about Berlin and politics and the education systems. I was one of only a couple writers flown in from Australia, and I thoroughly enjoyed my two festival sessions. Speaking to a full auditorium of German secondary students, I could hear some whispers in the crowd during my events. I thought to myself that they must be translating for their friends beside them, so maybe I should speak a little slower and more clearly. Everyone I came across in Berlin spoke English, but it was really cool to sit in a restaurant or at a bar and hear German conversations taking place around you.

After my events at the festival, I would sign copies of The Boy from the Mish that were available to purchase for students. Students asked me questions as I signed for them - questions about being a writer, questions about being queer, questions about being Aboriginal. I was really amazed by how curious everyone was to learn more about Aboriginal people and culture, and how interested they seemed in what I had to say.

I’m very lucky in the fact that I have a few international friends. One of my Swedish friends made the trip from Sweden to visit me for two days. It was the first time we’d seen each other in 8 years, but it felt like no time had passed at all. We caught up on eight years of life updates over beer and dinner. On my last day in Berlin, we walked for 8 hours straight all over Berlin exploring. I clocked over 36000 steps in one day, and my legs certainly felt like it! We got to see Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin cathedral, the east side gallery, the Brandeburg Gate and so many other parts of Berlin in those eight hours.

I found Berlin to be a very neat city. I loved the culture of cycling and it felt like a real convenience rather than a nuisance as it does in Sydney. I loved how fast the trains took off and moved from station to station. I loved how the excitement and thrill of the trip pretty much cancelled out any jet lag or tiredness that wouldn’t really hit me until the week following my return to Sydney.

I honestly didn’t have any burning desire to travel overseas before Berlin, but now I want to go everywhere.

Mostly, this trip inspired me to write more. The trip made me want to experience the feelings of excitement and fear meshed together again - the feeing of success that comes with being invited overseas to talk about your book at an international festival. I have fuel to continue writing, to produce more books, all with the hope that they might be good enough to land me this humbling experience again.

I picture myself - a 17 year old closeted Aboriginal boy growing up in a small country town, who had dreams of being a real writer one day but was also so filled with fear and self-hatred that he wasn’t sure he’d make it to a point in life where that was possible. If only he could have known that one day he would be on a stage in Berlin, talking to German secondary students about a book he wrote.