G’day — I’m Sharni. I’m a creative thinker who treats life itself as my art form. For as long as I can remember, my work has been to connect with people in a deeply human way, to be of service, and to indulge in a belly laugh at least once a day. I appreciate the wonder in the world, through literally stopping to smell the roses. I also live for music, dance, story, and the simple act of opening my heart and sharing my hearth.
For more than fifteen years I’ve welcomed international guests from across the world into my home — and many Australians too. They’ve come from China, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Estonia, Syria, Chile, Namibia; through formal exchanges, through friends of friends, sometimes simply through meeting at the right moment. I have travelled extensively throughout Australia and around the world, and it is one of my most absolute favourite things to do — but when it’s impracticable, I invite the world to come to me.
I’m a fourth-generation Victorian, and I live off-grid in an intentional community in the forest, high above Melbourne. I’m a mother of two — the most important job I’ve ever known. I’m a gardener, a cook (though terrible at baking), a reader, a singer, a dancer, a curious lifelong student (yet I still do basic addition on my fingers). Song and dance have been part of me forever — sometimes as a hobby, sometimes as something I’ve taught, always as a way I move through the world.
My Facebook says I studied at the University of the Open Road, and that’s the most accurate qualification I have. I’ve spent twenty-five years bringing this same care into wildly different rooms — small business, hospitality, retail, horticulture, public libraries, community leadership. The sectors changed; the thing I brought to them didn’t. Underneath every job has been the same calling: to be humanly of service, and to make whoever is in front of me feel welcomed, seen, and a little more inspired about the world than they were ten minutes ago.
I care about cultural respect, social justice, and the natural world; I work to honour all three in practice, not just in language. I’ve walked alongside causes I care about for many years — quietly, persistently, on the ground rather than in the headlines. What I hope you’ll take away from time spent with me — whether it’s a cultural experience here in the forest, a dance class, or a pop-in boogie down at the Parlour — is the feeling that it was time well spent. And, every so often, the quiet sense that something you thought you knew about yourself, or about somebody else, might just have shifted a little. Welcome. Come in. Get comfortable. We’ve got this.