Riding the waves of a sea change

Journalist Kate Halfpenny has spent decades telling the stories of others, now she’s penned a memoir about her own life.

Boogie Wonderland is the writer’s first book and gives readers a glimpse into what it’s like to swap the city life for Ocean Grove living.

The columnist and her husband, Chris, packed up their lives in early 2020 and made the move to Ocean Grove.

Commissioned by Affirm Press, the concept of the story started simple, exploring what it’s like to make a sea change, however as Halfpenny’s life continued to unfold, the book evolved to include those experiences.

“It coincided with empty nesting for the first time, moving here meant that for the first time ever, my husband and I were living alone,” she said.

“I didn’t have a job for the first time in 40 years, I was starting my own business, I was not an employee, so that was really tricky.

“And also, it came out that my husband started drinking really heavily, he kept doing it after COVID and eventually that turned into a full-blown addiction.”

At the time of writing the memoir, there were a lot of moving parts in Halfpenny’s life, with most of it unfolding as she was writing, almost in real time.

A rollercoaster worth of feelings accompanied the writing process, love for her new town, grief for the one she had left behind, coupled with anger, frustration and the struggle to make friends.

“We had in mind that we would come down here and I would waft around pushing cheese platters, tinkling away, laughing on the deck with our fantastic new friends that we would make here,” she said.

“But it’s really hard when you’re in your mid 50s, as we were then, to make new friends if you don’t have an office to go to, or if you don’t have kids in schools that you’re making friends through.”

While the emotions that came with writing were intense, Halfpenny said she enjoyed getting everything off her chest, feeling cathartic at times.

“It was a mixture of exhilaration and torture, like being dragged nude up and down a cheese grater.

“But I’m really glad that I did, and for me it is a brutally honest portrait of the reality of being a midlife woman and moving to a place where she has no friends, no job, knows nobody and trying to find a new rhythm.”

Halfpenny is hosting book events across the region, including at the Ocean Grove Surf Life Saving Club this Sunday, July 13 and the Waurn Ponds Hotel on Wednesday, July 16.

Boogie Wonderland can be purchased from simonandschuster.com.au