Reconnecting with Magnetic Island can happen in all sorts of ways and magnetictimes.com is keen for you, our Aussie and world-wide readers especially, to leave a message for others you met or are trying to track down on or through Magnetic Island. But to demonstrate just how far we can stretch the fabric of the web we thought we'd show you a fashionable idea which could reconnect with Magnetic Island in the most unusual way. We hope you will cotton-on.

Two backpackers, Robert van den Berg and Cheryl Galloway from Rotterdam in Holland met eachother at Travellers Backpackers in 1999. The couple it seems fell in love with each other and Magnetic Island and returned two years ago with a plan to keep doing so every five years.

Since then we have learned that Cheryl has developed a cute little website called Open Wardrobe (click here) that is something like an on-line swap shop that is all about connecting people as well as their clothes.

Got a shirt, jacket, pair of ear rings, shoes or any wearable thing you feel could make a good swap as well as a short yarn: "Mud wasps nested here and raised 23 larvae who consumed 57 jumping spiders before hatching in the inside pocket of this jacket." would probably describe one of this writer's smarter outfits. But who, especially in Europe, could resist such an exotic item with its own lived-in family history.

Open Wardrobe doesn't seem to mind if you stretch the truth a smidge either. Cheryl may in fact be a philosopher in groovy garb as she likes to quote cyberfeminist Sadie Plant, "fabricating fictions and fashioning fashions," as an inspiration for her apparently, not-for-profit operation.

Anyway, from what we can tell, the Open Wardrobe is a way of swapping clothes, yarns and making friends around the planet and is another way to connect our Island to the world and the world to us.

Story: George Hirst
Photo of Cheryl Galloway (right) with a friend by Robert van den Berg