Father's Day 2012

Seems appropriate to come back to the blog today as it is Father's Day. I've already received some lovely cards from my daughters, created at child care, and their Mum has made me a mug of tea. We are heading off to do our favourite walk this morning as a family - over the Booti Booti Hill in the National Park of the same name. It's a lovely day in Pacific Palms. In the time between my last entry about ten months ago and now, I've managed to turn 50 and to do some wonderful trips like cycling around Sri Lanka in May, travelling through the Greek Islands with my family in June and spending about five weeks in pre-Olympics London. In the meantime my eldest Mila has been busily learning to read and to write and is now preparing for her first year at school. How time flies. She is so grown up and travelling over to Europe really made her thrive, so much so that she cried when we left England and said "I miss London town". I don't think you can underestimate the effect of travel in broadening a child's outlook and I would have absolutely no qualms about taking both girls out of school to do longer trips, particularly to Europe and around Australia.

Freya is, at nearly three, turning into a funny little chatterbox and is just a bundle of smiles and cuddles. Gorgeous age this. There is a lot on in my life at the moment. Will I change career after than a less than wonderful year as a travel writer? What will I do? I have irons in the fire so to speak and one of those could yield a new start as a trekking guide which could be exciting. It's going to be hard to find any job that will reward my wanderlust like travel writing but it simply doesn't pay the bills when you have a young family. So, at the age of 50 and with twenty years of experience I have to throw everything up into the air and find a new direction, while no doubt still attempting to keep my hand in at travel writing. Today is a mixed day as four years ago in Barcelona I was by my brother's bedside as he died from cancer. I miss him of course. Over the last few months I have become more involved in my local community, Pacific Palms on the Mid-North coast and have become chairperson of a committee to create a Great Lakes Bicycle Path. I am also standing for council in the elections that take place next week. After years feeling a bit on the outside of the community - isn't that always the lot of the writer - I now feel much more part of it. This feeling was epitomised by a lovely party last weekend held at our home. We had seventy adults and children here, a huge bonfire and a perfect late winter night. Unforgetable.