# Sideways is trouble
URL: https://avavu.au/newsletter/sideways-is-trouble
Date: 2026-11-02
Categories: [Newsletter](https://avavu.au/newsletter)
*My blunder in the Blue Moutains*
> Perhaps the sameness of this life has in it the elements of a kind of freedom. After all, freedom, for a train, is in staying on its rails and going forwards or back, but never sideways. Sideways is trouble.
>
> — David Ireland – *City of Women*
Hi again friends,
I'm uncomfortable with the way this newsletter has become a travel blog. I don't think of myself as being very well travelled, a fact only evinced by my latest ill-advised sojourn.
October 4, on the Daylight Savings transition, I awoke at 4 am in the Megalong Valley, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, with my body still on 3 am time. I'm not sure why I woke up so early, or why I couldn't go back to sleep. I had walked for 23 km the day before, when I only expected to be walking 17, and still not made it to my campsite. What I had anticipated as a relaxing solo get away had slowly and predictably spiralled into a small torment.
This would be my first ever overnight camp alone, so I wanted to keep things simple. Thursday night, train to Sydney; Friday, train to the Blue Mountains where I'll stay in a motel; Saturday, I'll walk from my motel to the campground; Sunday, I'll walk back the way I came and get the overnight train back to Melbourne. A simple, self contained adventure.
This whole trip was motivated by my friend Max who had bought a New South Wales train discovery pass, granting unlimited travel to, from, and within the state. Work commitments meant he wasn't able to use it, and, hey— what the hell? I wasn't doing anything that weekend.
I should note that what I was doing was technically illegal. The train tickets are non-transferable, meaning for the 22 hours I was on the train I would be named Max. That fact gave me a little bit of gender trouble. Part of me wanted the ticket inspector to catch me, to have them think, *how could a girl so fish be named Max?* *Of course!* *She must be travelling under someone else's name!* They never caught me. In my past experiences on the Melbourne–Sydney train, they are just happy someone is using it.
To say I was underprepared for my weekend away in the Blue Mountains is a gross understatement. My headtorch didn't have any batteries, I had never set up my swag before, I didn't have a compass, and I stubbornly wanted to use a paper map. I was smart enough to go to the visitor centre before the hike to hire out a personal locator beacon: a device that will send out a GPS signal to police and rescue services once activated. I saw someone on Reddit who lived in the Blue Mountains say the sound of rescue helicopters is constant. So, I wasn't in, like, *life threatening* danger, but that doesn't mean my actions wouldn't have consequences.
Katoomba is cute—more of a Sydney suburb than a town—and the motel was adequate. I set out on my hike on Saturday morning with favourable hiking weather: not too warm or cold. The rain was spotty, sometimes showers, sometimes just clouds, and sunshine otherwise. Even in overcast weather, the mountains were amazing, sometimes resembling the bushland I'm used to in Victoria, and other times resembling a rainforest. I suppose the only issue going was that I'm a stubborn idiot. I got really lost.
The trail is very well signposted and basically a constant descent from the mountain top. Then, it should have been suspicious when the signposting stopped and the trail started going uphill again. One look at the map, the gradient chart, or my phone's GPS would have revealed I was going the wrong direction.
When I finally got back on track, it was mid-afternoon and the sun was starting to fade. The sky ahead of me was becoming dark and I could hear thunder cracking ahead of me. It was hard to tell what was a sheer cliff face, and what was a grey wall of storm-cloud. I decided to change course slightly, and settle for a campsite closer to me.
I made it there about 10 minutes before the storm rolled in. I cowered beneath the only permanent structure, the toilet block. The one downside of this campsite—and the reason I didn't want to stay the night there—was that it was road-accessible. I've never really understood the point of driving to a campsite. It was like stolen valour. This campsite was full of people who seemed to prioritise the destination over the journey. The type to blast *Sweet Caroline* and *Mr. Brightside* out of speakers in their utes.
The weather died down and I set up my swag with the help of a kind stranger. The best part about solo camping, as I discovered, is the freedom to do whatever you like. As much as I got lost, the only person who had to suffer the consequences was myself. And so, when I woke up at 4 am on Sunday morning, it was up to me—and me alone—to decide to pack up tent and leave as soon as day broke. It's not like I often find myself on hikes being dragged down by others—in fact, I'm usually the weakest link—but being able to move with the rhythms of my own slightly tachycardic body clock is nice.
The journey back was comparatively, and somewhat disappointingly, easy. The hard part was when I realised that I had maybe accidentally, sort of, potentially forgotten to book a return ticket back. And maybe, sort of, kinda all the trains might have been fully booked due to a public holiday in NSW that I was unaware of. And maybe also FlixBus gouges last-minute prices so it would have cost $400 for a 12 hour bus. So I was minorly screwed.
It was at this stage that the plan became truly harebrained. My friend Ria—who did three long, hard years in Canberra for a Bachelor's degree she doesn't use—set me up with her friend Lily, who let me stay a night at hers in Canberra. From there, I would get the coach to Melbourne. It didn't quite work out so smoothly, Lily was away until Monday so I ended up staying in a hostel in Sydney for an extra night, arriving in Canberra only to be asked by Lily's housemate if I had actually booked the coach from Canberra to Melbourne. I had not. I don't think I realised that you had to book it. And as it turns out that coach was also completely booked. I ended up forking out for the FlixBus.
Lessons learnt. Sideways is trouble.
## Showroom opens its doors.
This month a friend asked me why I haven't opened Showroom up to the public, to which I didn't have a very good answer. There are the obvious issues that need addressing: Showroom is unfinished. There's no monetisation strategy, no documentation, no support hotline. Even a moderate uptick in users—let's say, going from one user to ten—would be lowkey ruinous.
But I suppose the bigger issue is that Showroom doesn't have a reason to exist. I'm still protective of Showroom's membership because I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this website is going to be, and inviting users means relinquishing some of that control.
Smally, Showroom sends emails. But defining it that way feels a little silly because Mailchimp, Beehiiv, and, hell, Gmail.com can send emails. If you want to share your writing, why not use Substack? If you want to share what you've been listening to, why not use Superfan? If you want to share how your week's been, why not try calling?
### Specialists and generalists
To explain how I see Showroom, I think it's best to borrow an analogy from biology. In the ecosystem of websites, Substack is an omnivore and an apex predator. It can do anything, and fill any niche in the ecosystem. As a platform, it is neutral enough that it can function like a magazine, as in the [Paris End](https://theparisend.substack.com/); or as an appendix to a podcast, as in [Articles of Interest](https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/); or a simple blog.
In a crowded ecosystem, organisms are forced to specialise. Koalas were not able to compete for survival anywhere but the tree tops, where they survived by specialising in eating eucalyptus, a plant no other animal was willing to eat because there are highly fibrous, low in nutrients, and full of toxic chemicals.
Unlike Substack, Showroom is not an omnivore. It can't afford to blend into the background; Showroom is the koala, and micro-newsletters are the toxic eucalyptus leaves: too small and innutritious for larger animals to bother with.
That's the philosophy I'm taking into the website's development. That's also my justification behind the Showroom redesign. I'm leaning into the quirky parts of the app. I've added a wood trim to various borders on the site. Despite Showroom's tiny readership and even smaller userbase, I've already gotten some pushback on the wood motif.
### Founder effect
There's another reason I'm holding off opening up Showroom, and it can also be explained with a nature metaphor. In genetics, the founder effect describes how the founders of a population of organisms have an outsized genetic effect on the future population. On the web, I think it's completely true that the initial group always dictates what a website becomes, and even more so what its culture becomes. I don't think there's anything in Reddit's design, for example, that predestined it to become a hub for snivelling atheist types, beyond the fact that they were the site's earliest adopters.
I have the pretty awesome opportunity to curate the founding population of Showroom: people who I think are cool.
**With that, I have inducted the first two users into Showroom:** my friend Erin and my friend Ava. For very likely the only time in Showroom's history, two-thirds of the apps users are named Ava. That means we already have a username collision. In lieu of a username as personal as her real name, Ava went with the username [1711.room.lc](https://1711.room.lc), her birthday.
Erin chose the name [concrete.room.lc](https://concrete.room.lc). Erin and I make music together, and she has the funny little habit of writing lyrics about concrete when left to her own devices. As an aside, you can listen to her band Darning's latest single *Muscle to the Bone* on Bandcamp.
**Muscle to the Bone** — Darning
[Bandcamp](https://darningtheband.bandcamp.com/track/muscle-to-the-bone)
### Symbiosis
For a final nature metaphor: as a Substack user, your relationship with Substack the platform is symbiotic. Like the bird in the crocodile's mouth, in exchange for them letting you use their publishing tools, it takes a 10% cut of subscription revenue. But this creates a perverse incentive: they want you to grow your audience. That doesn't sound very wicked (it's very likely what you wanted to do anyway—which writer doesn't want a slice of celebrity?) but it has trickle-down effects.
But even for a creator who doesn't monetise—which is most them—there's still that thought in the back of your mind: *what if I make it big?* Rather than writing what you want to write, which is likely only interesting to you and your friends, you write for the hypothetical Substack user. And so, you write, and you write, and you burn out.
The relationship I want you to have with Showroom is purely transactional. That sounds worse, but I think it's better for everyone. You pay me money, you get to send emails.
Erin and Ava are just the two friends who have asked for a page. I'm going to start inducting more users, all I ask is that you commit to using the app and you send me bugs and feature requests.
**If you are interested in a Showroom page, send me an email at showroom@avavu.au.** You are reading this, so I probably think you're cool. It'll be free, at least until I figure out how I'm actually going to do monetisation.
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## *Beat Me at Boggle* hits 100,000
On 19 October, a player from Orlando, Florida played what would be a pretty middling game of Boggle. But that game would be the 100,000th row entered into the Beat Me at Boggle database. It's been half a year since the game launched, and it's so cool seeing it grow. What's been even cooler is seeing how much the average player has improved. I now pretty regularly get smoked, with a score worse than the average. To celebrate, here are some more graphs.
Maybe I've gotten worse, you can see in data that people get better as time goes on. Players can reliably beat me by game ten. Currently, the game is biased against me by default, and it's starting to feel like I should change that.
[Also this month, Beat Me at Boggle got an Instagram page.](https://www.instagram.com/beatmeatboggle/) When I was generating the graphs, I decided to generate a video replay of the top games, and when I hooked it up to sound, I discovered it was pretty satisfying. Kind of like watching brainrot. I was going to commit to producing them for a month, but I've already grown bored of it. If someone wants to get some social media manager experience, I reckon you could grow the page to at least 1000 followers.
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## Avavu.au
I've redesigned my [website](https://avavu.au) every year since 2024, whenever I find my tastes changing. Well, my latest redesign has come early, as I ripped out the website I designed in 2026 and replaced it with something new.
My new website is a dense web of everything I've ever made. I want it to feel like a physical space, with each node acting as an individual location, and each connection a road between them. This very well might be the final redesign I ever do, as I look forward to watching the graph get ever more dense.
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## Music
We are drawing close to the end of the year, and I'm starting to become seriously worried about my Spotify Wrapped. I want to show off my excellent music taste, but the only thing I have to show for the month of October is the Chappell Roan remix of *expectations*; and all I've been listening to this year is Audrey Hobert. Who is going to go to an experimental music show from someone consuming a diet of nothing but Gracie Abrams contemporaries? And I don't even use Spotify, I use YouTube Music. I am practically hemorrhaging aura.
**expectations** — Olivia Rodrigo & Chappell Roan (album)
[Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/us/album/expectations-single/6822390423) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9KcnxA36s04)
Actually, I did see Mouseatouille live at the Corner Hotel, based on nothing but the fact that they are my friend Erin's favourite Melbourne band. Erin has good taste in music. They are kind of like Black Country New Road or Broken Social Scene or other bands with one billion members. There were, like, 20 of them on stage; every time someone in front of you moved, another woodwind appeared.
**DJ Set** — Mouseatouille (album)
[Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/us/album/dj-set/1822692872) · [Bandcamp](https://mouseatouille.bandcamp.com/album/dj-set) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lz0heej3nRONyuAejP2pJSDFCc5pR8A1M)
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Thanks for reading this month's newsletter! I have once again changed the format, I'm hoping this style is a little less cumbersome.
Love,
Ava