“I sent you a toothbrush?” my husband exclaimed when I showed him what I’ve been keeping in my sock drawer for 30 years. Back in 1990, while I was getting ready to come to Australia from Canada, I received a parcel in the mail with a toothbrush (a very fancy one made in Italy I
I’m happy to report that my sister Aileen and I finished our English Channel swim yesterday! We co-ordinated our times and reached the French shore together. Then we celebrated on FaceTime with a wink and a nod to our Grandpa Jack. (See “More kick to my flutter kick”) Aileen and I have been sending messages
“Could I please have one of those pieces of paper that you put in the chicken wing baskets?” That’s got to be the weirdest question I’ve ever asked. I was in a café in country NSW and I asked for a piece of wax paper, titled “Our Australia”, because I just had to have one!
I’ve always been a bit of a mad-thing when it comes to exercise. I was in a 24-hour runathon when I was 19, a 24-hour swimathon when I was 56, and did 50km walks, ocean swimming races and kayak trips in between. So when my sister asked me to swim the English Channel with her,
Eric the Eel. Remember him? His story brings the importance of life story writing to the fore. I managed to get to a couple of Sydney 2000 Olympic events but quite frankly, it is all just a happy blur. At the time I had three children under five, so the Sydney Morning Herald’s current series,
This photo of the “Dancing Man”, taken on Elizabeth Street, Sydney, on 15th August, 75 years ago, the day WWII ended, captures the joy and relief of millions. During that same year the song “Accentuate the Positive” with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters hit the airwaves: You’ve gotta accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative
It is funny how in the doing of simple little things, the sub-conscious mind can produce outwardly unimportant memory flashbacks lost from the lived experience. This thought came to me in the mundane process of buttering two slices of toast. I caught myself doing something my father often did with butter, honey and jam. He
It is like their friendship is stopped in time. They became friends as teenagers and now into their 80s, do they still think of each other as teenagers? Is David’s friend “teenaged” because they bonded during those formative and carefree years? David’s words made me think of how I relate to my storytellers. I hear
I spend time ruminating my reply as I go about my day, formulating sentences in my head, just for that one person. When I sit down with my steaming cuppa, pen in hand, I chat to that one person through my writing, pouring out my reflections, my hopes and fears. I find it almost meditative.
For me, hearing the stories behind the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was the best part of climbing it some years back. The story I loved the most was of “Lenny the Legend”. In 1932, as a nine-year old boy, Lennie Gwyther rode on horseback, alone, all the way from Leongatha in Victoria to