An award, a birthday and a confession

Horse riding in the Belrowan valley, near Wauchope


Hi there

another long break in posting, sorry but it's been fairly non-eventful around the tracks here. Had a couple of interesting trips around New South Wales, one to the Port Macquarie hinterland with my family and another to Parramatta, outside of Sydney, but other than that it has been nose to the writing and fathering grindstone.

During the last couple of months both my daughters have had their birthdays. I can hardly believe that my eldest, Mila, has just turned four. It seems like only yesterday that I held this tiny being in my arms at Newcastle hospital. I was so scared of hurting her, when she was a few hours old, that I trembled incontrollably while I changed her first nappy! Likewise little Freya, our baby, is suddenly no longer a baby. She was two on Saturday October 29th and is turning into quite a fiesty, funny little character.



As it happens, and I write this with great reluctance as it seems immodest to mention it, Freya's birthday coincided with my winning the Travel Writer of the Year award at the Australian Society of Travel Writers conference in Rotorua. I missed the event to stay home and entertain twenty under four year olds at Freya's birthday party. Maybe I should stay home all the time!

I have to say that I am shocked that I won and tickled pink. It is an award I've been striving for ever since I first started travel writing in 1994 and while not all the best travel writers in Australia are eligible for it, as they're not members of the society, it is some measure of success. There are several really esteemed and wonderful writers in the organisation such as Kerry Van der Jagt (who is also a great friend and won her second individual award at the event), Louise Southerden (who has deservedly won the award twice and is the most graceful and lovely human being), Marc Llewellyn (whose books "Riders to the Midnight Sun" and "Finding Nemo" are superb), Rob Macfarland (another great guy who has won the award before), Sue Gough-Henley (an amazing all-round talent), Roderick Eime (same again and Photographer of the Year this year) and Brian Johnstone. There are many other great writers but the ones that set the standard for all of us younger ones were the irrepressible Glenn A Baker and John Borthwick, not to mention the magnificent Susan Kurosawa, the Australian newspaper's travel editor, who is an ex-president but no longer a member.



Travel writing for a living is an increasingly precarious profession. Opportunities are opening up such as Apps and blogs while traditional forms, like newspaper stories and books, are under threat. I've tried to embrace the new forms and have been an avid blogger for professional sites like www.ninemsn.com.au and www.ourpatch.com.au but my heart lies with well-written travel narratives that take the reader on a journey. I am very fortunate that for the last five years the prestigious Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age travel section has published my work and I certainly wouldn't have won had that not been the case. In fact it's debatable whether I would have continued travel writing if I'd not had that outlet.

As i've mentioned many times before here, the tension between being a Dad and a travel writer is not always pleasant. I have to travel for work and love it while I am doing it but hate leaving the girls and miss them like mad when I am away. Plus while this was always a wonderful job for a younger person with no responsibilities it is not well-rewarded enough financially to enable one to provide for a family properly. I may be near the top of my profession here in Australia but honestly I'm near the bottom of the country's earnings table. As are many of my colleagues. You can see why this happens, many people in the world would kill for our job and so paying us handsomely for what we do just probably seems too much. Instead we get thrown crumbs and often don't get paid for supplying photographs. Does that mean we don't work hard and bust a gut to meet deadlines and provide what our employers want? No.

So I am Travel Writer of the Year and immensely proud of the award and the recognition but as my father-in-law succinctly put it - his measure of success being how many dollars you earn - "if enough people know about it it could be useful". Yes, quite.

Thank you all 24 of you that have followed this blog, it's much appreciated. I've been reading the second part of Stephen Fry's auto-biography over the last few days and have been struck by his self-deprecating frankness. As he rightly says what is the point of such writing unless it is scrupulously honest?

In that light and although it's a bit of a cheat as probably nobody has had the patience to read to the end of this, I have something I want to get off my chest. I have depression. Real, nasty, wear-you-down to the bone depression. The kind that wakes you up in the morning with a "what's the point?" and drags you down from any triumph, any glimpse of longterm happiness. It's being going on all my life and stepped up its dirty work over the past year. I've resisted them all my life but this year have been on anti-depressants. The first one had limited success, the second was so debilitating in its effect and so alarming that it sent me to hospital on a couple of occasions and the third, Valdoxan, has helped considerably but is not eradicating days of self-hatred, frustration and total lack of motivation. Productivity has plummeted and every single story that I've managed to finish has been a huge, titanic struggle. If it weren't for the support of my partner Sarah and writing buddy Kerry I probably wouldn't have managed to write anything. So you can see that this award would mean a lot to me.

One thing that has improved with the Valdoxan and with quitting alcohol altogether over the past seven months is family life. I am much more even-tempered and easier to be around and I am very thankful for that because frankly, my little girls are my life and understandably my partner was on the verge of leaving with them. I don't blame her whatsoever - I have been the most difficult of human beings to share a space with - and am glad that she has stuck with me. The kids are a challenge of course, especially as they add sleeplessness into the mix for both their parents, and don't exactly make it easy to write some days. For instance during the forty minutes or so it's taken to write this I've had to break to clean teeth, attend to my youngest twice as she went for a phantom pee, help my oldest choose clothes for the day and comfort both of them for one reason or another. Concentration is at a premium.



And yet. And yet. A single smile or cuddle from either Mila or Freya is more sustaining than any other thing on the planet. I just pray for their sake that this illness is not necessarily genetic and that they get her Mum's happy genes instead. A loving, uncomplicated environment is also important I know in generating happy people so that is why I have been so determined to get on top of my depression.

I can't blame my condition for all my difficulties or indeed for all my many character flaws. I can, I'm sure, be the most difficult and unlikeable of people both personally and professionally and I know I have not behaved well in the past. I'm sure some people just wouldn't want to take the risk of working with me, travel writer of the year or not, and some that have probably regret it. Others will be well-pleased with what I've managed to produce for them and I've forged some really lovely and sustaining friendships in this industry. I am hugely grateful to the open and welcoming nature of Australia and Australians for giving me my break.

This has gone on far too long, like many of my stories, but feels very good to have got off my chest.

What's the point of this confession you might ask? There may be none. I may have written the above for nobody other than myself and perhaps two other readers. But to those two and others that may have read on then thank you. Perhaps the fact that I have managed to continue writing over the years can give hope for others who have the condition. I'm not special - 1/5th of the Australian population has a mental health issue every year - but I do think that the more open we are in society about depression and its effects the more we diffuse its power.

I'm about to head off to Kangaroo Island and join up with an old pal Richard Mayne and his new trekking company http://www.australianwildernessadventures.com.au/ for a five day walk. Part of me can't wait. I'll try to report in from there.