Sara writes: Western Australia has been my home for the last five years. Here I have found an extraordinary wealth of opportunities to escape the ‘real’ world and get back to the REAL world – where there’s nothing but trees and sand and water and blue sky. I live near enough to the coast and a few national parks to be able to pick somewhere to go for a couple of hours most days. For me, the natural world recharges my batteries and inspires me. The world we find ourselves living in for most of the time can be exhilarating, frightening, exciting and relentless, so it is all too easy to forget the simple things: that the same earth lies beneath our feet and the same sky above our heads. There is nothing like sitting on the beach or walking through the bush to slow me down, chill me out, and from there I can tackle all the complexities that my imagination throws at me.  My favourite spot is Yanchep National Park, where you’ll find grazing kangaroos, sleepy koalas, a lake to walk around, a teashop and an inn to sit, drink and write in, and bushland paths everywhere. Best of all, it’s only a short drive from where I live, so in the past few years I’ve spent hours there while working on Come Back to Me and Beneath the Shadows. My local museum at Wanneroo has pictures of people honeymooning at Yanchep almost a century ago, and I love the fact that although it has changed and developed, it has still stayed close to nature and retains that appeal of ‘escape’. Sometimes I have mistakenly thought that I needed a degree of pressure to be able to write, but nowadays I realise that what is most conducive is peace and a relative degree of stillness inside me from where I can venture in and out of the complexities of a story. Yanchep is one of those places that can get me there in an instant, and it’s one of the many reasons why I love living in WA.