Darkness and light
Nae Puckeridge has been shaped by darkness endured and light reclaimed. A Bathurst local with deep roots, her story carries the weight of lived mental health experience, quiet resilience, and threads strong enough to hold.
Tell us a little about yourself and where you call home.
I'm 53, and my life has been a beautiful, messy tapestry stitched together with threads of darkness and light. I'm a mum whose heart walks outside her body, a partner who knows love is choosing someone every single day, and a witch who finds magic in the ordinary and sacred in the soil.
I paint because sometimes colours speak truths that words can't capture. I write, tentatively and newly, because my story deserves to be told, even with shaking hands. Nature is my cathedral; it's where I remember I'm part of something infinitely larger than myself.
I'm a suicide survivor living with Bipolar, and I've walked through the fire of menopause and somehow emerged. These aren't just labels – they're hard‑won wisdom etched into my bones. Now I try to pour that wisdom into my work in mental health, nurturing a peer workforce and leading suicide prevention and aftercare services.
And yes, occasionally I'm a bit of a dick. Because I'm human, perfectly imperfect, and still learning.
How long have you been in the Central West and what brought you here?
I landed in Bathurst in Year 2. My dad got a job with the post office, and just like that, our lives were packed into boxes. We left behind the sprawling chaos of Sydney – the big smoke with its endless noise and concrete horizons – and pointed the car toward Bathurst.
Since then I've tried to leave, several times, but this place is my gravity. It always calls me home.
What pulled you back to the region after time away?
There's a word for it – hiraeth, maybe, or something close – that ache for a place that feels like home in your very marrow. That's what pulls me back, every single time.
My family is here, their roots tangled with mine in soil we've shared for decades. I have friends who aren't just long term; they're threaded through the timeline of who I am, witnesses to every version of myself I've been and become.
But it's more than that. I don't just live in Bathurst – I'm part of its makeup, its DNA. My footprints are in these streets. My stories are woven into its corners, some great, others cringe worthy; but I belong to this place as much as it belongs to me.
You can leave a thousand times, but when a place has claimed your soul, it will always call you home.
Though I'll confess, my soul seems to carry this same hiraeth for places I've never lived: somewhere in the misty highlands of Scotland and the sun drenched hills of Italy, as if I've left pieces of myself in lifetimes I can't quite remember.
Where do you find support when things get hard?
I find my support in the quiet, sacred places: in nature, where the trees don't ask questions and the earth holds me steady; in my partner and my friends, who see all of me and love me anyway; and in the late night scrolling through old family photos, where faces I love remind me of all the good that's already been and whisper promises of all the good still waiting to unfold.
These are my anchors. They keep me tethered when everything else feels like it's spinning away.
What do you want your kids to know about the life you've built for them?
That they are made of stars and survivors. And they are so deeply, endlessly loved.
What drew you to the work you do – and is it what you expected?
Crazy is as crazy does! And I decided if I was going to carry this weight, I'd damn well make it mean something.
So I took my mental health – all its jagged edges and hard won lessons – and shaped it into something useful, something meaningful. I started working in mental health because I understood it from the inside out. Then I fell into peer work, or maybe it caught me, and suddenly I was running peer services, holding space for others walking the same knife edge I'd survived.
There had to be a reason I lived through all of that. Some kind of meaning had to rise from the dark, some purpose pulled from the pain. I refuse to believe I survived just to survive.
Though I'll be honest, the work itself is bipolar in its nature. It can be so incredibly rewarding it fills every hollow place in your soul. But it can also drain you to your absolute bones if you don't fiercely protect your own well-being.
“There had to be a reason I lived through all of that. I refuse to believe I survived just to survive.”
Is there something missing in the Central West that you'd love to see exist?
I would love to see the magic of drive in movies return to our vast country sky. Where families pile into cars with blankets and snacks, where teenagers steal kisses, where the stars compete with the cinema for our attention.
There's something sacred about gathering in the dark together but apart, engines cooling, speakers crackling with promise. It's nostalgia, sure, but it's more than that. It's about creating spaces where community feels gentle, where accessibility meets wonder, where we can be alone together under the same enormous sky. Just magic.
What's the hidden gem in the region that deserves far more attention?
Maiyingu Marragu – Black Fellows Hands Reserve holds something that makes my breath catch every single time.
The art etched into these rocks is between 500 and 1600 years old. Five hundred to sixteen hundred years of stories, of hands pressed against stone, of spirits speaking across an impossible gulf of time. When you stand there, you don’t just see ancient markings – you feel them humming beneath your skin.
The history here isn't trapped behind glass in a museum. It's alive. It's in the air you breathe, the ground beneath your feet, the way silence sounds different when it's been sacred for centuries. The magic isn't metaphorical; it's tangible, electric, undeniable.
Finish this sentence: the women of the Central West are...
… the backbone of everything that matters here. They're the ones who show up, who hold things together when they're falling apart, who carry generations of strength in their eyes and aren't afraid to speak truth even when their voices shake.
If anything in this story resonated with you, you are not alone. Lifeline 13 11 14. Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
