In today's installation of Staying Upright, two women – one in her 20s, one in her late 60s — who have, in the midst of pain and uncertainty, found that crochet gives them a stillness, solace and peace.

Sarah Lulu Faith refuses to use conventional terms like sick or ill, when she is feeling unwell. She prefers the term "reduced fabulousness".

When you meet her, as I did recently in Newcastle, you quickly understand – she wears a riot of colours with bright lipstick, has a big, open grin, and the air of someone with an innate capacity to see and emit joy.

When she was in her mid-60s she experienced "severely reduced fabulousness". After decades working in welfare she had been made redundant because of her health, in and out of hospital and then isolated in her home on the mid-north coast of NSW during the pandemic.

In response, she began to crochet, and found she gained a curious strength from it.

"The repetitive, mindful nature of working the stitches, watching the project grow, however haltingly, kept me largely sane. More than sane, it provided comfort, expression and soothed my bruised soul."

Twenty-nine-year-old Maddie Taylor-Harris, who crochets daily, concurs. She taught herself how to stitch when she was a teenager, and in the subsequent years, as she has managed a number of chronic illnesses — including chronic fatigue, chronic pain and neurological problems — crochet has taken a greater importance in her life.

Maddie has not been able to study or work for years, and lives with her parents in Elphinstone in regional Victoria.

During the long lockdown of 2020, her pain and fatigue forced her to give up her jobs and her studies; she was then diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Before long, she needed assistance to shower, was forced to spend days in bed, and received another diagnosis — functional neurological disorder (FND), confirming that her brain pathways were malfunctioning.

She continued to loop stitch after stitch, day after day, making beanies, blankets, stuffed toys, purses, shawls, bookmarks, a dog coat and Christmas decorations, instinctively seeing that moving her fingers was helping her move through her day.

Faith decided her practice was even helping her breath stabilise. Due to a lung condition and brittle asthma, breathing can be a source of huge difficulty for Faith, but she became aware that her "breathing regulated itself with the tempo of the crocheting", which she describes as: "Magic. Really."

Psychologist Sahra O'Doherty recently told the Guardian repetitive tasks make "our heart rate and breathing even out" and lower our blood pressure.

Faith – who has reached the age she now broadly calls "Queenager" — started a "yarners group" for women to talk. And talk they do, about everything and nothing, from trauma to tea, while they knit or crochet.

Crochet is more than craft — research shows its true therapeutic value

Funny isn't it, how long we've adhered to the stereotype of knitters as doddery, sweet grandmothers, as though the activity itself was a sign of ageing, dismissed as useless frippery and distraction – not what it actually is, which is useful and mindful.

While breath experts and "wellness warriors" throng on social media, posing on yoga mats, in ice baths and on headlands, often charging small fortunes to tell people how to fill and empty their lungs, how to learn to be present and focused, the steady click of needles on the couches of Australia might serve as a reminder that knitters have been on to this stuff for a very long time.

A recent research paper titled "Happy Hookers: findings from an international study exploring the effects of crochet on wellbeing" looked at more than 8,000 people (almost all women) in 87 countries, who crochet. It found nine in 10 felt calmer after doing it, while 82 per cent reported feeling happier and 75 per cent felt more useful. Many crocheted to manage mental health and help process "grief, chronic illness and pain".

And Maddie found it too

As Maddie has slowly improved, she can now shower herself, do her own laundry and drive for 15 minutes at a time, as long as she has long spells of rest – lying in bed without screens or books, just closing her eyes and listening to audiobooks– she has found crochet to be a significant aid in managing her condition.

The "flow state" that knitters and crocheters achieve is not about escapism, she says: "Crocheting makes me hyper-aware and engrossed in a task, it enhances my senses.

"It takes me out of my thoughts and sensation of feeling pain and fatigue, and gets my brain to focus on something else in a very soothing and calming way  … doing a task that requires half of my attention and focus, helps to put my mind at ease and makes it easier to sit with my pain and emotions.

"I'm not sure how, but I believe that it lowers my pain levels, because when I don't crochet for a week or two, my pain levels increase. It sounds strange, I know. It also means that I can still do it and benefit from it on my bad days."

Maddie finds "the rhythmic motion of moving the hook and holding the yarn very calming and somehow addictive", and it gives her a sense of achievement, "especially on days where I'm mostly in bed or can't go outside. It is satisfying to complete a few rows or another square, even when I'm not able to do much else. I also do a lot less social media scrolling!"

Interest in skills like knitting and crochet have rocketed in recent years, with many more young women, and some men, professing a love of the fibre arts — with COVID exacerbating this trend.

"If you think about mindfulness, [any of those activities] are very meditative, repetitive and calming for people and it's no surprise that knitting, crocheting, quilting all have therapeutic benefits," says Scientia Professor Kaarin Anstey, director of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

Those who knit and crochet have been derided as simply doing “women’s craft” – in other words, instead of being recognised for canniness when it comes to mental health. Knit, purl, cast off pain.

Another study from the University of Gothenburg, published just last month in the Journal of Occupational Science, found knitting brings calm and structure to people suffering mental illness.

Researchers analysed 600 posts collected from the international online fibre arts forum Ravelry and found knitting helps people unwind, gives them an identity and social network, and helps structure their days. Some found their mind cleared and thinking became easier whilst knitting. Some of the comments cited include:

"The nurses were wanting to give me [an anti-anxiety medication] until I told them that I preferred knitting for the anxiety. She stopped, looked at me, and said, 'That's much healthier than drugs.' Ya think?"

"When my parents convinced me to go to the walk-in centre at the hospital, I was knitting while I sat crying next to my mother in the waiting room. I carried on knitting all the way through the entire hour … I've now adjusted my medication but knitting is still my best tool for reducing stress."

"While my hands are busy doing something, my mind slows to a crawl, and I am actually able to think about one thing at a time … rather than having 20-30 threads all going at once."

But Maddie expresses it best. For her, the quiet practice of crocheting – her form of mindfulness — has heightened her connection to nature.

"I have become a deep observer of my natural surroundings. For example, I no longer see just a tree, I see the subtleties of the light through the branches, the wind in its leaves, its twisted branches, a bird on its branch. At the moment, I'm enjoying the subtle, soft and yellow autumn light, something van Gogh spoke about a lot."

Because of her illness, she can't get out much, she says, "but I don't have to leave my house or property to experience a wonder and deep connection to nature.

"I love observing natural beauty and accepting that it isn't perfect but is still beautiful anyway. I am able to sit and just be. This gives me joy and it is special to connected to something bigger.

"It was only when reading about the crochet research, that I was able to connect the dots and the reason for this enhanced connection to nature. I am very grateful for this."

This is part of a regular series called Staying Upright, where I explore how humans manage to persist, despite everything. Feel free to contact me here.

Kate had a secret crush for 20 years.

The New South Wales woman was married when she first met her crush at a work function. After that, they would regularly bump into each other at different work or social events.

"Every time we met, there was that absolute spark," she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

Kate's crush had a particularly happy ending.

"Skip to 20 years later, we were both single … and one thing led to another and now we're married."

For Julie, another Life Matters listener, things haven't worked out so neatly.

She's been dealing with a difficult crush on a friend that has left her feeling confused and distressed.

She's also married, and has been trying to work out how to protect both her relationship with her husband and her friendship with the object of her crush.

"I don't want to hurt my husband. I'm sort of trying to hold on to that," she says.

"I'm very confused about the feelings."

She's sought help from therapists and friends, and has ultimately decided to distance herself from the crush. She felt that, while she was trying to be vulnerable and honest, he wasn't.

One of their final conversations ended abruptly.

"I just left really quickly. I put my cup of tea down and said 'I've got to get out of here. It's too intense'."

From fun feelings that dissipate to enduring romances, crushes have infinite possible endings. So how do you know which should be pursued and which should exist unshared?

'So glad I drummed up the courage'

Canberra business owner Gabe Trew ran a "secret crush" competition earlier this year, largely promoted through social media. People were invited to share their secret crushes for a chance to win a prize.

It started as a fun way to celebrate Valentine's Day, and Trew thought he might receive 20 or 30 entries.

Within days, however, there were over 5,000.

More than a month later, they're still rolling in.

"[The idea of] a secret crush resonates with so many people," Trew says, of the competition's success.

"I think it gave people an opportunity to share something that often there's not really a forum to openly talk about.

"I think people felt seen."

Crushes shared ranged from cute stories about meeting in the street or on a bus, through to being in love with a best friend who doesn't feel the same.

"We had a lot of stories of hope and happiness and fun, a lot of stories of pain and anguish, and everything in between."

Because many of the stories came via Trew's social media messages, he could respond to them — and he did.

"I just met people where they were, really, and I didn't tread carefully," he says. 

"I'd offer up the same advice, not as a professional ... but just as a human.

"We threw open the secret crush confessionals, it was all on the table. And my position in this was really saying to most people, 'Just tell them. If it feels great, and it's a fun crush, and there's no kind of anguish, tell them. You never know what might happen'."

One Life Matters listener shared how that approach paid off for her.

When she worked up the courage to share her feelings with the man she'd had a crush on for several years, he was completely taken by surprise. However, soon after that, the two started going for walks and coffees, and then eventually started dating.

"Several months later we got together as a couple and eventually moved in and lived together very happily, until sadly he passed away," she says.

"But I was just so glad that I drummed up the courage back in the beginning. I would've missed out on all of that."

Trew says holding in feelings about a crush can niggle away at you negatively — something he argues can and should be avoided.

"If you [reveal your crush to someone] they might say, 'I'm not interested, I don't feel the same'. They might say, 'Let's go on some dates'. They might say, 'I'm in love with you'.

"I think, to change the entire course of your life, that's a risk worth rolling the dice on, right?"

Well, not always

Psychologist Juniper Muller takes a slightly different position.

"I would probably be a bit more on the side of stepping lightly, perhaps especially considering what are the risks and benefits — and also the appropriateness of or the reality of the crush," they say.

"What if a boss has a crush on an employee? That actually might be totally fine to have an internal fantasy of a crush there, but the reality of speaking that out loud, of pursuing it, might be completely inappropriate due to the power relationship.

"So, would I recommend that the boss pursue the crush and confess their love to their secretary who is relying on them for employment and for paying rent? No, I would not. Keep that one a fantasy."

In other cases, whether to share a crush or not can be a matter of more deliberation.

There is vulnerability and courage in the confession of a crush, and there is also a weighing up of risks, Muller says.

"It's OK to have crushes in different ways and maybe even pursue them.

"[But] also, there are so many situations in which there could be huge costs and destabilising factors … What would it do to their family if they up-ended everything [for a crush]?"

How to crush a crush

When a crush isn't just a fun, enjoyable fantasy, you might want to exorcise it from your life.

That's possible, but it's likely to take a bit of work, Muller says.

"I would totally recommend doing a bit of therapy around it, perhaps if it's been a hard one to navigate."

Muller also recommends "taking personal responsibility around how you relate to your crushes" to reduce the power of a crush if, for example, you would like to stay friends.

She suggests trying to write out the faults of the person you have the crush on, or times when they've annoyed you, and giving "emotional space" to those points. 

"And then [think] through, all right, if this person were just a friend, a platonic friend, what would that mean? How would I act towards them? What would our friendship constitute? And what would I be hoping for?

"And that might mean some pretty significant shifts in hope and expectation, from when you're deep in the throes of the crush phase where there might be big hopes for deeper intimacy or more connection or different things like that."

Take it one step at a time — remember, Muller didn't say it would be easy.

"[Do] some of that internal work first, to reduce the intensity of the crush … so that you're seeing the whole person again.

"You're seeing their boundaries, you're seeing their humanity, rather than [an] idealised picture of them."

For thousands of years, carefully placed rocks in rivers and creeks have created fish and eel traps that have fed generations of Indigenous families all over Australia. 

Some examples of such early Indigenous engineering still exist today and have been recognised nationally and globally as protected heritage sites.

When engineer Joseph West, a Murawarri man, looks at the heritage-listed Brewarrina fish traps (Baiame's Ngunnhu) in north-west New South Wales, he sees more than just a few rocks in a river.

He sees ancient ingenuity that could help solve problems in rural and remote Indigenous communities today.

And he sees a way to inspire a new generation of Indigenous engineers and STEM experts, as part of a Return to Country program at the University of Melbourne that aims to help Aboriginal students stay connected to their communities.

Dr West, the university's Associate Dean (Indigenous) with the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, hopes taking students onto country to see traditional structures like the Brewarrina fish traps will also motivate them to create innovative projects to benefit regional and rural communities.

"[The fish trap] is really an amazing engineering structure, which has stood the test of time," he said.

"As an engineer myself, I could only dream of creating something that lasts thousands and thousands of years, even to the point where early last year, people were still catching fish from those fish traps."

Dr West's own journey towards engineering started by chance when, as a teenager in Bourke in western NSW, he saw an army truck parked across the road from Bourke High School and wandered over to have a chat.

That conversation led to him joining the army.

"Since that day, I got my engineering degree while serving in the army and did my PhD after leaving regular service," Dr West said.

Recently, Dr West returned to his old high school to launch the Return to Country program, and took engineering students to view the fish traps, which are believed to be at least 3,000 years old and were heritage-listed in 2005.

"For engineers who are Indigenous, it provides a massive opportunity for them to bring their community challenges, issues and futures into the modern technology space, and bring those modern technologies back," Dr West said. 

"Who better to design a new solution for a local issue to deal with water, or resources or energy than an Indigenous person from that community?" he said.

Inspiration for all outback kids 

Dr West said the Return to Country program gave students the chance to return to First Nations communities and show how STEM subjects could bring new opportunities to children in the outback.

"I'm talking about everyone in the remote rural communities, not just Indigenous people," he said.

Gundungurra woman Tully Mahr, who is studying a Master of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, jumped at the chance to participate in the program and said it was a great way to engage communities in the world of STEM, particularly minority groups.

"It's something I've been advocating for, for quite a few years … for minorities in STEM, and particularly … Indigenous peoples and STEM," she said.

She hopes the Return to Country program can be a starting point for more diverse representation in STEM.

"My hope is for young children in those communities, Indigenous or not, to believe that they do have a space in this field," Ms Mahr said.

A meeting place, a sharing place

Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum tour guide Bradley Hardy said archaeologists and scientists who had visited the site over the years "all have different opinions about the ages of the fish traps". 

However, they all agree that the fish traps "are one of the oldest man-made structures in the world".

Mr Hardy said it was believed the traps were constructed by several tribes from the surrounding region, which could indicate they were also a meeting place for tribes to come together.

"In the beginning, it was a meeting place, gathering place, sharing place," Mr Hardy said.

"In this new time, it's still a meeting place, gathering place, sharing place, a place where we share rivers, that brought the community together, and still brings the community together.

"Our whole people had a difference of an opinion, but they still came together to build the traps for a purpose and they're still here today even after the destruction [by floods]."

Another example of early Indigenous engineering is the Budj Bim eel traps, in south-western Victoria, that are believed to be at least 6,000 years old and became Australia's 20th site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019. 

Engineering roots in 'Indigenous knowledge'

Dr West said engineering students from all backgrounds could learn a lot from how Indigenous knowledge could be used to design and develop projects that were long-lasting and impactful.

"I think there's a whole bunch of benefits, not just for Indigenous people, but also for non-Indigenous engineers," he said.

"The Indigenous way of thinking and developing and designing products is a really good exemplar of the origins of where engineering came from.

"So, we stand to benefit a lot from just having Indigenous knowledge in our engineering curriculum."

Dr West said there was still work to be done for universities to create a seamless pathway for regional and rural First Nations kids to be able pursue further studies in these areas.

He hopes a program like this will open the door for universities to think more about initiatives that will allow students to study while also staying connected to their communities.

"It's hard when you come from rural and regional areas to stay connected to your country, when you go away and do university and study," he said.

"We wanted to get our members back into the community, to reconnect, and to also show how good engineering is as an option for a career choice."

An archaeological dig on Jiigurru, a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef, has found the oldest pottery made in Australia. 

When archaeologists excavated a 2.4-metre-deep midden, they were expecting to find evidence of occupation, such as the remains of shellfish and fish collected and eaten by people on the island.

But what they weren't expecting and were delighted to find were dozens of pottery shards dated between 2000 and 3000 years old, less than a metre below the surface.

The ceramics were discovered in an excavation on Jiigurru conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) in partnership with the Dingaal and Ngurrumungu Aboriginal communities, for whom Jiigurru holds significant cultural importance. 

CABAH chief investigator Distinguished Professor Sean Ulm from James Cook University said the discovery revealed that Aboriginal communities in North Queensland had connections with pottery-making communities of New Guinea.

The pottery is dated between 1800 and 2900 years ago.

Prof Ulm told AAP the only comparable ceramics in this country have been found on the Torres Strait Islands, where they've dated about 24 pieces to around 1700 years ago.

"Pottery elsewhere in northern Australia really only becomes prominent with Macassan seafaring and voyaging from Southeast Asia and working with traditional owners across the Top End to harvest trepang - and that only dates to the last 400 years," he said.

"The age of the pottery at Jiigurru overlaps with pottery production that we know about elsewhere around the Coral Sea that is happening at the same time. 

"Around southern New Guinea pottery is being made around the same time from around 3000 years ago and elsewhere in the Pacific, like Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji."

Analysis of the ceramics indicates the pottery was locally produced using clays and tempers sourced from Jiigurru. 

"These vessels are being made on country," Prof Ulm said.

"They're not being made in New Guinea or somewhere else and traded ... and that means that those old people had that knowledge of how to make that pottery."

Excavation, by its nature, is destructive.

"When you dig into a cultural place, you can't put it back exactly the way you took it out," Prof Ulm said, explaining that meant the team only dug a small space.

"So we've only got a very small window into what those old people were doing in the past from that excavation."

They found 82 pieces of pottery, with an average size of 18mm.

A few of the pieces have maker's marks, but Professor Ulm said they can't distinguish whether they were made using coils or a paddle and anvil technique, the two methods of making pottery widely used in southern New Guinea and the Pacific at the time. 

"Quite a few of the pieces of pottery have some decoration on the neck, some of them have pigment and quite a few of them have little incisions with diagonal lines or little crosses," he said.

"So people are taking care in making these vessels."

The pieces are only a couple of millimetres thick.

"They're not just experimenting with how to make pottery, they knew how to make it," Prof Ulm said.

"The vessel sizes we've been able to reconstruct have an opening at the top of up to 20 centimetres, so these could be quite sizeable vessels ... that takes a lot of skill. 

"So it's not just people practising, these are people who know how to make pots, they have that expert knowledge of how to do this."

The pottery has been identified as low-fired, a technique to harden clay that is still used today.

"In parts of the Pacific and Melanesia often rocks are heated up and the vessels are placed on those rocks and sometimes covered to create kind of an oven," Prof Ulm said.

"Commonly, when you find pieces of pottery in archaeological sites, it's normally fragments, you rarely find whole vessels."

CABAH chief investigator Professor Ian McNiven, from Monash University, said the evidence points to a history of deep connections across the Coral Sea, facilitated by advanced canoe voyaging capacity and open-sea navigation skills.

“These findings not only open a new chapter in Australian, Melanesian, and Pacific archaeology but also challenge colonialist stereotypes by highlighting the complexity and innovation of Aboriginal communities,” he said.

“The discovery adds a new layer to our understanding of Jiigurru and Indigenous Australians’ role in the broader network of maritime exchange and cultural interaction across the Coral Sea.”

Professor McNiven says Jiigurru marks the southern boundary of ancient international maritime networks that linked eastern north Queensland, southern New Guinea and the Torres Strait. 

“These networks facilitated the exchange of objects and ideas between Australian and New Guinean coastal communities over the past 3000 years," he said.

"While some objects, like cone-shell body adornments and bamboo smoking pipes, indicate widespread sharing of culture and ideas, others, such as pottery, also suggest the sharing of technology.”

Jiigurru  has historically been used as a place for ceremony, initiation, gathering, and knowledge transmission. 

Dingaal clan member and Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation chairperson Kenneth McLean said the partnership with academics had been a valuable exercise.

“Working in collaboration with archaeologists and traditional owners and working on country is something that's never been done before for my people, where we work together on country, sharing each other's story on country," he said.

"And not only sharing this story from our people, the Old People, and from the archaeology side, scientifically, which is a good outcome. 

"We can look after the country together.”

Ngurrumungu Elder Brian Cobus said, when conducted in true partnership, research projects help everyone better understand how to look after country.

"Every bit of knowledge we gain helps us tell the story of country," he said.

The researchers are unsure exactly what the pottery was used for. 

"In the future we're doing what we call residue studies to see if there's any residues or oils embedded in the surface of the pottery that might be able to tell us whether the old people were using it for cooking food, for example, or whether it was seafood or plant food," Prof Ulm said.

"That would be really exciting if we're able to do that."

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