Holding Space 

The road back to Carnarvon was never just another stop on the journey. It was home. The place where Kyalie Moore from Boomerang Consultancy was born, where she grew up, and where so much of her story began. But this time, she returned not just as a daughter of that place, but as a woman carrying a purpose, travelling community to community, listening, documenting, and working in one of the most difficult spaces in Australia, men’s behaviour change and the long work of ending violence.

She arrived with a clear intention to gather stories, to sit with women and men, to listen. But Carnarvon had something else waiting for her.

An invitation to speak at the International Women’s Day event at the Carnarvon Cultural Centre. A room of around thirty women, Aboriginal and non-Indigenous, coming together to share space. Kyalie hadn’t prepared anything. She didn’t need to. As the stories began to move around the room, something shifted. For so long, Kyalie had been the one holding space for others. Sitting with pain, with anger, with trauma, with responsibility. But here, in her hometown, surrounded by aunties, old school friends, people who had known her as a child, the space turned toward her.

“I hold space for people all the time. But in this instance, Carnarvon held space for me.”

What followed was not planned. It was not rehearsed. It was truth.

Kyalie spoke about growing up in Carnarvon, about experiencing sexual abuse by multiple perpetrators before the age of fifteen, about the weight of that trauma and the years that followed, shaped by grief, anger, and moments of deep hopelessness. It was the first time she had shared her story like this, openly, in front of others. But something about that room, about the women gathered there, made it possible.

“It was safe for me to do so.”

The room held her. And then, as often happens when one story is spoken with honesty, others begin to rise. Women sharing their own experiences, their own truths. There was laughter and there were tears, and a quiet understanding that this was not one story, but many, woven together across generations.

For Kyalie, this moment sits at the centre of everything she now does. Because her work is not abstract. It is lived. She has a Psychology degree and is working towards her Masters and becoming a Research Psychologist. She is part of the Research Team at the University of Western Australia and is working with men who use violence. She is also a woman who has survived it. And in that intersection lies her vocation.

“I connected my experience with my commitment to my career in this space.”

It wasn’t always clear. In the early days, there was anger. A sense of injustice. A feeling that men needed to be confronted, called out, held accountable through force. But over time, through practice, through learning, and through listening, her understanding deepened. Real change, she realised, does not come from shame. It comes from story. From creating spaces where people can speak honestly, where narratives can be examined, and slowly, carefully, shifted.

“You need to hear their stories… and then help them shift those narratives towards non-violence.”

The next day, she returned to the work. Sitting outside in 40-degree heat, interviewing men from the Carnarvon community. Listening again. Holding space again. But something had changed. She had come home and spoken her truth. She had been held by her community in a way she had not experienced before.

“It was almost like it had to happen.”

A kind of grounding. A return. A moment that gave her the strength to continue.

Kyalie Moore’s work sits in one of the hardest spaces in this country. It asks her to sit between harm and healing, to work with men who have caused violence while holding deep respect for the women and families affected by it. It requires patience, courage, and a willingness to stay present in discomfort. But it is also driven by something deeper than profession. It is a calling that has shaped itself over time, through her own lived experience, through community, through story.

“I’m starting to feel this sense of alignment.”

In Carnarvon, that alignment became visible. A young girl who once ran through those streets returned as a woman carrying both her story and a purpose shaped by it. Not separate things, but the same thread.

Across Australia, conversations about family and sexual violence often sit at a distance, framed by policy, statistics, and systems. But the real work happens elsewhere. In rooms like that one in Carnarvon. In the quiet act of listening. In the courage to speak. In the willingness to hold space for one another.

Kyalie Moore is walking that path. One community at a time. One story at a time. Holding space for change, and in doing so, helping shape a different future. 

This Western Australian leg of the journey is supported by organisations including DVAssist, Starick and Marnin Bowa Dumbara Family Healing Service, and is enabling Kyalie to move across communities, creating space for conversations that are often difficult, but deeply needed.  She will be moving towards the Northern Territory in the coming months (weather/floods) permitted, and would like to invite any interested sponsors for the NT part of the journey.  Please contact Kyalie at boomerangontheroad.com.au 

By Tom Hearn