Apparently we are more likely to die from accidents resulting from taking selfies than we are in getting eaten by a shark, unless of course you live in Australia on the Northern New South Wales coast, you don’t like swimming nets, and you want to behave like a distressed seal.

You are also more likely to die from being conked on the head by a falling coconut. It has also been said that, on average, people who complain tend to live longer because they are able to unwind tension and this improves their immune system, improving overall health. Constant complaints may also cause your partner to bang their head against a wall, which probably will not boost their own health, but apparently doing that does burn 150 calories an hour.

The Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang died from mercury poisoning because he’d taken too many mercury pills which had been faithfully prescribed by his doctor to make him immortal. I’m not sure if this fits the true definition of “irony” but it must be close.

And here’s another one. In 1985, a New Orleans man drowned at a party attended by 100 lifeguards who were celebrating a summer without any drownings. We share 70% of our DNA with a slug and 94% of our DNA with a chimp. Sorry, that one is not really related to my story but it does explain a few things about politicians.

Former US President Jimmy Carter once sent his nuclear missile launch codes to the dry cleaner. It must have been very tempting for the dry cleaner to press the codes (and then hang them up, covered in plastic with little tags on them, awaiting collection).

The only medical operation in history with a 300% mortality rate was conducted by pioneering Scottish surgeon, Robert Liston. Not only his patient died, but so did his young assistant and a distinguished medical spectator as well. Sounds like the chainsaw he was using got away from him.

A few weeks ago my father turned a very sharp, fit and healthy 84. His grand-kids insist that he is, in fact, Colonel Sanders, and every time I see him now I feel like racing out and buying a bucket of chicken.

His year of birth is etched indelibly in our minds because of several bottles of 1933 very special Para Port that he never got to drink.

There bottles were stored in perfect conditions at the far reaches of the household cellar, where the bearers and joints hung low to the bare earth, a space generally consigned only to pointy nosed rodents and smallish, long tailed marsupials.

It was Dad’s expressed intent that these special bottles of port be shared on his 50th birthday with family and friends. There is nothing more exhilarating than wriggling out and blowing the dust off a bottle that has been loyally mellowing in its own deep dark musty stillness for half a century.

Dad checked on his commemorative stash back in the mid 70’s, when he was still in his 40’s, and it was at that time that he made a grim discovery. There was only a mouthful left in one of the bottles. The treasured contents had been all but looted.

The cellar immediately became a crime scene. Being a lawyer, our father was forensically inclined, and appropriately skilled at cross examination. I don’t recall seeing the cellar taped off, or white chalk outlines drawn around the strewn bottles, but we all felt at the time that a “line up” might be imminent.

A list of suspects was quickly drawn up, and no-one was above suspicion.

The list included anyone who had access to the cellar or who might have had occasion to be in the garden, and certainly anyone with a known interest in fine port. Children under the age of 10 (there were 3 of them, aged 9,6 an 1) were initially ruled out, although they might later be required to help Dad with his inquiries. I was 11 at the time, and my elder brother 13, so we would be required to give a statement, separately of course, so that our testimony would not be co-authored.

The fortnightly gardener, Marcelo, unwittingly became the prime suspect, as he could be placed at or near the scene of the crime, and may have had motive, as Dad openly held the view that Marcelo had totally annihilated the Agapanthus bushes at the back of the garden. In truth, the plants all thanked Marcelo for being cut back to within an inch of their lives, but their resulting nudity was open to conjecture. Perhaps, in an act of unbridled retribution, Marcelo had found himself in the cellar (there was an unlocked garden entrance) guzzling away, with a middle fingered salute, singing opera style, with his handkerchief still tied (at the corners) around his head, and traces of freshly slashed Agapanthus clinging to his sweaty forearms.

Common sense later prevailed on the gardener theory, however, because Marcelo was a kind, honest, gentle man who did not have a nasty bone in his body, despite the ease at which he took to plants with razor sharp shears. So it was going to difficult to finger Marcelo for the crime, and the investigation therefore continued without a solid lead.

The subject was subsequently raised at the dinner table one night and it yielded fruit. Young eyes quickly exchanged glances across the table, and the clatter of knives and forks was suddenly drowned out by the sound of children nearly choking on their lamb chop tails. Eventually a full confession was made. As it turned out, the deed was carried out by a devious couple of little trouble-making pirates. One of my siblings and a cousin of ours often played in the garden area near the cellar, and over many occasions, spanning possibly years, they would venture into the cellar and help themselves to a ritualistic swig from one of the port bottles. No big deal, they figured, it was only just a taste, and surely no-one would notice. It tasted good, a bit like that cough medicine, and it warmed their stomachs. Just a swig though, better put the bottle back, and leave some for next time. It was a little bit of mischief that got out of hand only by the duration with which it continued undetected.

I don’t remember Dad being particularly happy about the loss of liquor but I do remember him being far more moved by the forth righteousness and honesty displayed by the child in question, and a sermon may have followed from the end of the table, espousing the virtues of always openly owning your mistakes, and doing the right thing when it counts, and how good is that Yorkshire pudding, is there any more left in the kitchen?

My sibling cheekily said to me last week that if it had been public knowledge that Marcelo was the prime suspect, moves could have been swiftly made to properly fit him up for the crime. A pitchfork could have been left leaning suspiciously up against an open cellar door, and perhaps a sweaty “smoking handkerchief” left at the site of grim discovery, there beneath the joists and bearers, at the far “marsupial” reaches of the household cellar.

Now, quite correctly, all these years later, a bottle of fine Para port was presented to Dad on his 84th birthday by the same sibling, with “1933” handwritten on it (and dad’s age of “84” on it as well, just in case subtraction is no longer attractive or available). I don’t know if it was suggested to Dad at the time, but it only makes sense that he put the bottle down until his 100th birthday so he can finally fulfill his wish and crack it open with family and friends. Maybe he can pull the cork it when he receives, in his words, his “Telegram from Camilla”.

This time the bottle and its contents should be safe. Our parents no longer have a cellar, their kids are in their 40/50’s, and Mum and Dad do all the gardening. He would do well, however, to keep it out of reach of the younger grandchildren.

Photo courtesy of Matt Collopy.

“Collopy for Toys” didn’t just sell toys.

Not so long ago, in the jaws of Melbourne’s historic Camberwell Junction, where 3 main roads intersect and distribute masses of people and cars in 6 different directions, there stood, nestled in amongst the hustle and bustle of it all, an iconic retail institution – a “jewel in the crown” – a toy shop.

And it was an institution. Everybody knew where it was, everybody bought toys there. Hopeful children instinctively lured parents and grandparents in through the doorway. Sometimes they even dragged them in.

But what awaited them inside the store is what separates the “now” from “yesterday”.

I can still see the enormous, genuine, delighted smiles on John and Barbara Collopy’s faces as they greeted you. You felt like you were the only person in the room. And it didn’t matter if you had been shopping there forever, or if you were wandering in aimlessly for the very first time. But one thing was guaranteed, you never left empty-handed, and you never left without a smile on your face. And you knew you’d be back, because you found the exact toy or gift that your were looking for, but more than that, you left with a bit of extra self-esteem. Barbara and John had taken the time to chat with you not only about the child for whom the gift was for – their age, likes and interests – but along the way they had also found out about you, and what you were all about. The issues facing the world, the state of the economy, and the prospects of Hawthorn winning the next AFL football flag usually got a good run as well. Any children accompanying their parents were greeted with a warm smile, asked their names, what their favorite sporting activities were, and, with a jovial wink of an eye, advised that it wasn’t too late to “get on the band-wagon” and inform their parents that they going to switch their allegiance to the Hawthorn Football Club. I bet a lot of people visited the store without even looking for a gift. They might have just been going past, and decided to stop in and say hello. Other shopkeepers were often to be found in there chatting away at the counter. Barbara and John were able to connect with people.

I can’t think of too many stores I could walk into and engage with in that way now. It seems, to me at least, that the rise of large retail franchised toys stores and globalization (with online shopping) has shifted the customer’s concept of “service” more toward accessibility and price; and away from a personalized shopping experience. Maybe that’s just me.

Dean’s Garage, corner of Balwyn & Belmore Roads, North Balwyn, Melbourne. Circa 1976. Photograph courtesy of Rick Dempster.

I can also remember stopping at our local petrol station before we became a self-serve society. A grubby, grease covered man in weathered overalls would release a broad smile and wave at us kids in the back seat of our family car as we pulled up next to a bowser at Dean’s Garage, on the corner of Balwyn and Belmore Roads, North Balwyn, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. We all sat there, frying in the scorching summer heat, windows all down (no Air-conditioning in those days), bare skin stuck to the burning vinyl seats and our midriffs getting seared, medium to well done, by the chrome metal seat belt buckles (for those of us in the back seat that actually had a seat belt), and we panted like dogs that have chased a ball for an hour.

“Fill ‘er up with super?” the attendant would cheekily ask my mother as she handed him the keys out the window so he could unlock the fuel cap.

“Yes please, and would you mind just checking the oil?”

Of course that was no problem, and the oily rag that dangled out of his back pocket and that swished like a tail as he strode past, was swiftly removed and readied for dipstick inspection. And all the while, his cheeky smile remained intact, only disappearing from view momentarily as he ducked under the car bonnet. If it was 35 celcius (100 degrees) in the shade, it must have been 45 celcius under that hood; but as he re-emerged, and wiped away the sweat off his brow, the smile on his face was just as wide, and would only widen further as he spotted and greeted another motorist pulling up behind us. By now the petrol bowser would be agitating slightly and the hose tightening and shuddering, indicating that car fuel tank was full of super, and that the bowser was getting anxious to serve the next vehicle.

I don’t miss cars without air-conditioning, but I do miss the greased, grinning man who went out of his way in the blistering heat to offer some good old-fashioned service. He wasn’t just dispensing petroleum, he was a friendly face that everybody knew. He, too, was able to connect with people.

“Collopy for Toys”, in the very heart of the Camberwell Junction, has been closed for quite a few years now, but I stroll past occasionally and can still mentally picture parents being towed into the store by their little people. “Dean’s Garage” is also long gone. It was converted into a good Chinese restaurant called the “Lion’s Den” and was popular for its delicious Yum Cha lunches, before the site was eventually redeveloped into an office building.

Whilst these businesses have closed down, and life moves on, it is important that we remember not to forget the old-fashioned standards that we have been lucky enough to experience. We cannot go back, but we can remember.

I remember that “Collopy for Toys” didn’t just sell toys.

This list is not exhaustive. Numerous other worthy acts of stupidity could have arguably been selected. The publishing of this list, is, in itself, just another example of how someone with a room temperature IQ can be astonishingly stupid.

I recently posted “The 4th most stupid thing I have ever done” and I was asked what the other 3 more stupid things were, if that was possible. I thought I’d sensibly round it up to 5.

Well here they are, click the links to the relevant stories, or simply scroll down the page.

1. Looking for Huntsville – giving new meaning to the term “Mystery Flight”.

2. My car drove off without me! – driver-less car technology before its time.

3. My brush with “no mess” Charlie – a nuclear reaction in a bottle.

4. The 4th most stupid thing I have ever done – flying without a permit, rough landing.

5. The blowfly mountain – lost…plain and simple, with emphasis on simple.

With an honourable mention to “When you say the word ‘country’ you should always try and finish it” – not because I was stupid; it was just the awkwardness of it all. It was also my first ever post and a personal favourite.

1. Looking for Huntsville.

Information desks provide information. They had it, and I needed it.

“Well hello sir,” came the greeting from the spritely young female behind the counter, “Now, how can I assist you today?” The question came with a searching look, as I must have appeared to be a little disoriented.

“Where am I?” I asked. I was hoping that she might know. They had it, and I needed it.

The young lady took a step backward, as if, for a moment, she didn’t quite know where she was either. She eyed me carefully; puzzled, and slightly amused. Everyone that she had ever met in her life had known where they were. She looked upwards and to her left, as if the answer might be hanging from the ceiling on a long piece of string.

“Excuse me, but you don’t know where you are?” She laughed a little, checked herself, and then tried to be serious.

“No, I don’t… I don’t know where I am. Can you please tell me?”

This was too good to be true. She was going to smash this one out of the stadium.

“Why, you’re at the AIRPORT!”

Yes, Okay, I had pitched that one up, but I didn’t have time for games. “I know I’m at an airport. Can you now kindly tell me WHICH CITY?!”

Priceless. The attendant shot a sideways glance at her male co-worker, to see if he had picked up on the conversation. They had themselves a real one here. Might be needing security on this one. It was just like the training video. The red button was probably just below the desk. She took her hands off the counter and put them by her sides. So, this guy with the funny accent doesn’t even know which city he is in? With a grin that was broader than it should have been, she put me out of my misery.

“Why, you’re in HUNTSVILLE!”

“That’s great,” I spat back immediately, “but I’m supposed to be in LOS ANGELES!”

Her fingers may have been circling the unseen panic button. The attendants were too afraid to look at each other, in case they completely lost it. Then, after a moment of re-composure, they swung swiftly into crazy passenger management mode, and asked me to take a deep breath and start from the beginning, pointing out in lowered calming tones that they were, indeed, there to help me.

So I hastily explained what I think had happened. In a nutshell, I must have caught the wrong plane, then fallen asleep, snoring through any PA announcements, and then come to when the plane was losing altitude (after only about 30-60 minutes) above snow-covered fields, landing on a smallish landing strip, and spilling out into this airport terminal. No signs, no discussions; I simply walked off the plane with absolutely no idea where I was. Ridiculous but true.

The male co-worker now had his eyes closed, his frame tilting a little, and slightly trembling. He looked like he was moments from lift off. The girl focussed on her rapid keyboard tapping whilst taking long steady breaths, so that she didn’t fall over behind the counter and spasm with laughter.

Now, I’m happy to be labelled as a complete numskull, and yes, I did mindlessly board the wrong plane; but at a stretch, I deserve a few credit points because they (the airline) let me do it. I had been working for nearly three weeks in Atlanta Georgia (this was back in February 1995), and I was tired and just wanted to go home to my young family in Melbourne Australia. Atlanta was unusually cold at that time and totally covered in snow, and, of course, I didn’t even have a coat. Really clever. Anyway, sitting at Atlanta’s departure gate lounge, I do remember not feeling all that sharp. When I thought back on it, there were two gates being serviced from the one lounge, and there were two planes boarding at the same time. I had a feeling that the “gate-keeper” checked my ticket but did not scan it, and then ushered me cheerfully aboard what would become the plane of shame.

My Melbourne bound connecting flight departed LA in seven hours time, but if I didn’t check in within five hours, my forwarded luggage would be offloaded and I would miss the long haul flight home. So I needed a lifeline flight to LA. They had it, and I needed it. The keyboard tapping stopped suddenly as a flight had been found … to Memphis. I paused and stared for a long time at the dynamic duo behind the counter, trying to detect any escaping merriment. They were serious. “I’m sorry,” I started, “but I don’t really want to go to Memphis right now. I really need…”

“…It’s the only way. You’ll have to try to get another flight from Memphis to LA, but there is no guarantee, sorry. Here’s your ticket, good luck, we hope you make it!” I took the chance, because that is what people with no other options do.

When I saw the plane sitting out in the field on its own in the semi darkness, I felt confident that my grinning counter buddies were peering out a window at me somewhere, doubled over, wetting their pants.

I was about to board an igloo with wings.

It was totally frozen. Great, I thought. I’m to be propelled off the ground in a popsicle. It was a twin prop plane, a 20 seater I think. I climbed the frozen steps and clambered aboard. By the time I sat down my teeth were chattering. It was freezing in there (no coat, remember), and I couldn’t see out the windows. I wasn’t even sure if there were any windows. A loud engine noise outside was followed by a continuous thudding noise on the roof above me. The captain crackled over the PA, “Welcome aboard. We’ll be on our way just as soon as the tanker can DE-ICE the plane!” So now I was very nervous, and cold. There were only two other people on the flight and they both had massive overcoats and scarves on. So I was nervous, cold, and envious. I started seeing headlines. “Lost idiot falls out of sky, trapped in refrigerator.” The ice started melting on the windows as my deadline time clock ticked down. It took 15 minutes of solid soaking to thaw out the vehicle. Eventually the props agitated themselves to life and we taxied out and left the mystery town or city of Huntsville behind.

Thankfully the aviating igloo arrived in Memphis, and after repeating my story again at another information desk (this time I knew where I was), A connecting flight to LA was found. The timing was tight, but it was my only option. Once again, I took the chance. The airline that I had booked with was keen to take care of this issue because they sensed some liability for allowing me to board the wrong flight.

But it was all to no avail. Arriving in LA, I had missed the baggage cutoff time by 20 minutes. I was gutted.

Now I had to conference call my bosses in Melbourne and tell them that I was a complete idiot, and that I was going to be staying an extra night in a hotel in LA and returning to work a day later than expected. I answered everything truthfully, however they did not ask all the right questions. They asked what had happened, and I explained that I missed my connecting flight by 20 minutes. There was silence at the other end of the line for a while, and I was waiting for the question “why?” But it never came. It was not uncommon for one of them to ask, “Is there anything you haven’t told me?”, but this time neither of them pressed me on it. They moved on to the details of where I was going to stay, and then onto work related issues. My bosses both had a good sense of humor and they would have handled it well. I always thought I’d tell them the story at some stage, but I never have. I might have been too embarrassed. One of these guys (the company CEO and my ultimate boss) will probably read this and finally find out the whole truth. Hope you enjoy the tale Hoops!

Some time after making it home, my wife Susie, my Aunt Jacqui and Uncle Geoff, and I, were sitting around chatting, and the story resurfaced. We decided to hunt down that mystery city/town to find out where it was.

Looking for Huntsville.

We looked it up on the on the Internet, and to our surprise, discovered that there are in fact three Huntsvilles in the US; one in Alabama (180,000 pop.); one in Texas (38,000 pop.); and one in Tennessee (1200 pop.); and all were within the flight time window from Atlanta that I had snored through.

So, to this day, I still have no idea where I landed on that freezing late afternoon somewhere in the southern states, welcomed by a couple of grinning, out-of-stadium ball slogging comedians. I’d say the smart money is on Huntsville Alabama, but you would do better than getting your “smarts” from me.

[Footnote: “Hoops” did read the story and we had a good laugh about it later.]

2. My car drove off without me!

Stupidity has me on speed dial.

And mornings are not my strong suit. Deprive me of caffeine, and what may start out as a barely functional morning can then trail off very badly.

Routinely parking opposite the post office one morning on the way into work, I emptied our post office box and filtered out the junk mail. There were quite a few unsolicited mail items on this particular morning so I lingered there for a few extra moments. I then re-posted the unwanted items (is this wrong?) so the post office sorters could re-offer these items to other irritated PO box customers.

Having meandered absently down the ramp from the post office, thinking only of ridiculously strong coffee, I then started to cross the road to where my car wasn’t parked anymore.

Stupidity requires that you absorb critical data slowly.

I stopped dead in my tracks, did a double take, retraced my movements, and still came up with the same result. But something had been tugging at me whilst I was walking down the ramp; where something familiar but somehow out of place had moved through my field of vision. I now knew what it was.

I ran faster and more frantically than I have ever run in my whole life.

My car was about 50 metres (150 feet) down the road, drifting silently backwards into a very busy “T” intersection, tracking a perfect path toward a power pole on the other side. It wan’t travelling fast, a bit less than walking speed, but it was an odyssey promising disaster.

The total traffic anarchy was profound. Cars screeched, swerved, pulled over or rapidly or reversed out of the way; whilst stunned and bewildered pedestrians, open mouthed, watched as a complete idiot wildly chased after his car. It was sheer madness.

I covered the distance to my car in Olympic time. With the car now well beyond the centre of the intersection and only metres from the power pole, I wrestled with the driver’s side door but it was locked. Of course it was locked! I had forgotten to put the car in “park” and engage the handbrake, but I had remembered to lock it! Doing the maths, I figured there were only 3-4 seconds left before impact. Scrambling around in my pocket, while dancing sideways so I remained in line with the driver’s door, I frantically dug out my keys.

Now in the final stages of adrenalin driven hysteria, and still dancing like I was putting out a bush-fire, I stabbed madly at the key fob … and successfully unlocked the rear hatch!

There were maybe 2 seconds left, one last chance. I squeezed the other end of the key fob, and finally the doors unlocked. I lurched into the car in the most unflattering jerking motion imaginable, all arms and legs, and stamped on the brakes. My whole being had transformed into one big single raging pulse. My ears were pounding.

I started the car and rapidly cleared the scene, stopping at the next set of traffic lights 150 metres (400 feet) up the road. Exhaling and trying to calm myself, I prepared for the immediate onset of denial. Relieved that I hadn’t caused a major traffic accident, I could now move on and instantly forget just how stupid I had been.

But there was now a complication behind me, expanding in my rear view mirror.

A car was moving up from behind that I quickly recognised as being the first on the scene at the intersection and one that had swerved severely out of the way. I was hoping this driver would stop behind me so I could avoid confrontation, but to my horror it moved alongside me and the passenger-side window started lowering.

I was now preparing myself for one almighty verbal spray.

I lowered my window down as well, to take my punishment.

The driver, a male in his forties, was shaking uncontrollably in his seat, and screaming with laughter. He tried to speak but all he could do was shake his head. He ran out of breath and starts choking. He may have even soiled himself. We didn’t speak at all, just laughed.

This guy was now going to own the water cooler conversation at the office, but only after he quickly ducked back home and changed his pants.

I now drive a car that won’t turn off unless the car is in “park”, but frankly, I’d prefer one that makes strong coffee.

3. My brush with “no mess” Charlie.

I cannot believe that I am actually posting this story.

Caveat: If you secretly yearn for the zesty lemon fragrance of freshly Fabulon-ed sheets and towels, please do not read any further. However, if you have ever camped for a week in a desolate location without proper showering facilities, then continue with caution, but please accept my apology in advance for what is to come.

I was Backpacking around Europe at the age of 20 in 1983, and a friend in Germany kindly offered me the use of his vacant apartment in Paris for a week during the French tennis open. I took him up on his gesture, and life in the Parisian sunshine, for the first 4 days, was like something lifted directly out of a travel brochure. My luck ran out very early on the 5th day when some guy and his wife burst into the apartment, full of attitude and aggression, claiming to have made previous arrangements to stay in the same apartment for the next 7 days. There were a lot of rapid hand gestures, French exclamations through clenched teeth, personal space invasion, and severe doubt cast over my birth status, sexual preferences, and ancestral lineage; before I was suddenly cast out onto the street, reasonably insulted, with the mercury rising, and without the benefit of a shower. There may have even been a final shrill (but then muffled) insult directed at me as the door slammed shut.

Oddly enough, hotels aren’t exactly chasing you for business when the French Open is on.

After many hours of lobby shopping, the only place in Paris that would have me for the next two nights was a shabby little back street establishment that had been built before they discovered water. Seriously, my room was like a broom closet. In short, I went without a proper shower for three long hot summer sightseeing days. I tried sneaking into other hotels that had running water but they saw me a mile off; I was that unwashed guy that they are highly trained to look out for. I had to settle for limited splash washing in cafe powder-rooms, but of course you never get the same coverage. It was a record-breaking heat wave; I was chalking up the kilometers, and I was hygienically unhappy. Stray animals began following, at a safe distance, behind me. Large birds gathered, with an air of expectancy, in nearby trees. A Renault mowing down a nearby fire hydrant would have truly been a godsend.

I’m still learning to deal with the shame.

At the end of the week, I returned to the place where I was staying in Germany a little heavier. I walked differently; a bit like John Wayne after riding a horse for a month. My hair was oily and plastered to my skull, and my body odor had a pulse of its own. When I walked in the door, no-one seemed very interested in talking to me, so I headed straight for what was possibly the best, hottest, and longest shower I have ever had. I let the water cleanse away the indignity of the previous days, but I noticed when toweling off that some unwanted sweat rashes remained. My hosts had left an elaborate array of deodorants and body talc’s on the ledge above the wash basin, and a frenzy followed. I covered my body in talcum powder. I smelt great, looked clean, but still walked funny. The only option available to me now was to slide off to bed and pretend that the previous three days hadn’t happened.

Something woke me up in the middle of the night. I felt rigid, like I’d been immersed in a mud bath and had been laid out to dry. Mind racing, I “zomby walked” into the bathroom to take stock of the situation, and then hurriedly hunted down the bottle of talcum powder that stood, now mocking me, on the shelf above the basin.

I don’t know what they call it in Germany, but here we call it “Ajax”. I looked in the mirror, and my jaw had dropped so much I could see where my tonsils had been removed when I was six. I immediately swung into damage control, and moved to wash off the household cleaning agent. It wasn’t until I had the water running that I remembered the ad with “No Mess” Charlie; that jolly, oval-faced plumber that cleaned up his mess in a jiffy with the wonderful new formula Ajax. You may remember how the “Deep Action Cleanser” really worked hard (like Charlie) to get in and get the job done.

If water had met powder that night, my fathering future would have been napalmed before my eyes. Nevertheless, I had to act quickly, because I noticed that the sweaty areas had started turning blue. Again, I had memories of Charlie swishing out the vanity grime with Ajax’s magical blue rinse. I don’t know how long it took me to rub off the caked on powder, but I took my time. It was very abrasive stuff. When I had given myself the all clear, I retired again for the night.

The morning heralded a remarkable discovery. That German Ajax powder had “Nuked” the fungal bacteria, arrested the “Long March”, and restored peace and unity to the neighborhood. I felt like I’d been rid of a poltergeist. That is one wicked formula, our old Ajax. Charlie’s work was done, and I could almost see him grinning and flirting in the bathroom with that charmed 1960’s lady of the household, holding up the Ajax bottle so the camera could get the “money shot”.

Naturally I didn’t let on to my hosts about what had transpired. Something again to do with the shame.

Of course every little story has a moral, but this one has many.

Firstly, be sure to only stay in Hotels that have water!

Secondly, always travel with a bicycle lock so you can chain yourself to something large and heavy in the event of a pending eviction.

Thirdly, be careful using anything in foreign language bottles, especially in bathrooms where your host has recently sanitized it for your use. If you have foreigners staying at your house, clear away the cleaners and solvents.

And of course, lastly … if your overseas guests start itching and walking funny, just leave a bottle of Ajax on the vanity top next to the deodorant.

4. The 4th most stupid thing I have ever done.

Last month I had a “Wile e coyote” moment. I was replacing a down-light globe in our kitchen, and as I stretched upward toward the ceiling on an aged aluminium ladder, the side extrusion broke a rivet. The ladder buckled on one side, the cross support arms flipped upward, freeing the ladder from its “A” configuration, and I was left, suspended in mid-air, holding up a little “Help” sign, with sagging ears and haunted bulging eyes, as the ladder flattened out from under me and crashed to the floor. The Road Runner did his little “beep-beep” routine, pecked at a little pyramid of seed, and sped off down the hallway. Luckily I was able to land upright with feet either side of the ladder in a perfect dismount. A solid 9.7 from the judges. No damage, no injury. No startled soot covered face or piano accordion style walk off. I dismissed the incident, retrieved another (newer and more robust) ladder from the shed and continued on with changing the light bulb, knowing that what had just happened would not even rate in the top 50 list of the most stupid things I have ever done.

But as I fiddled with the light connection again (with wife Susie white-knuckling the sides of the replacement ladder to keep it steady this time), I remembered another not so clever ladder performance back in 2002, one that currently sits mockingly at #4 on the stupidity charts.

In a hurry to drive my young kids to school (our daughter Emily was 8 and our son James was 5), I accidentally pulled the front door shut with my car keys still inside the house. That in itself was pretty stupid, as I am in the business of importing/wholesaling door locks for a living and I should know better. I decided to hurriedly climb an extension ladder up onto the roof of our home and climb through a second storey window. Easy. Should only take a jiffy, grab the keys, and get the kids to school on time.

A year or so earlier my Dad had given me a very long and old wooden extension ladder that he no longer had a use for, cheerfully informing me at the time that falling off a ladder was the second most common way for males over 55 to die. I grabbed that old ladder and hastily set it up on our rear patio, leaning it up against the roof guttering. It extended so far beyond the roof line that I was going to be able to step directly off the ladder and onto the roof. No problems at all.

I wish I had checked to see if the ladder had rubber stoppers at its base, and I wish I knew more about physics and opposing forces. I reached the top of the ladder and moved to the side and leaned against the rungs while I stepped onto the roof, and in doing so, I shifted a lot of the weight onto the top end of the ladder, allowing the bottom of the ladder to lift and take off. The roof line is over 3 metres off the ground, and standing upright, my pea-sized brain was elevated roughly 5 metres above ground level, and I suddenly felt very much in the same kind of deep shit our coyote is accustomed to.

The ladder disappeared. I had one foot standing on the guttering and the other was now supported by very thin air. The “Help” sign came out again, along with the whole coyote “eyes of doom” routine. There would now be a whistling descent sound ending with a final impact “poof” and an expanding debris cloud at the bottom of the canyon.

Having spent a lot of my youth perfecting splash-bombs off diving platforms and off piers behind ferries, I was able to become horizontal, roll in the air to one side, cradle my head with my hands, and absorb the full force of the brick paving below on my right shoulder. If I had been off-balance when the ladder vanished or had rolled any other way, it may have ended very differently. It was a clean descent, although my inside leg collected a timber bench seat on the way down, which was not ideal.

I wish that my son James hadn’t seen it all unfold, and the cry that he gave out as he rushed to get his sister for help is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

I lay there where I landed, happy to be alive, but unhappy about pretty much everything else. The kids ran next door to get Helen, our neighbor, to help me.

10 minutes later we were all standing in Helen’s kitchen next door, and she asked what the hell I was doing on the roof. When I explained that We were locked out of the house without a key, she outstretched her left hand and retrieved our spare key from a hook on the kitchen wall, saying “Why didn’t you just come and grab this one?”

Because I am an idiot. That’s why.

But of course I still had to get the kids to school. My right ankle was a mess, my brain had been pin-balled around inside my skull, and my entire inside leg (down to my ankle) was soon going to feature a hematoma of biblical proportions, but there was still time to get the kids to class before the end of their first lesson.

I knocked apologetically on the open door of James’ prep year classroom and was about to explain his late arrival, but stopped when I saw the sheer horror and disbelief on the teacher’s face and on all the young children’s faces in the room. The teacher jumped to her feet and rushed toward me, motioning me back out into the corridor and closing the door behind her, shielding the sight from young impressionable eyes.

Apparently the only thing missing from the scene was an axe handle hanging out of the side of my head. My head, face, and clothing was splattered with dried blood that had leaked out of the gash on the side of my head, which I, in my state of shock, was totally unaware of. In my haste to get the kids to school I had exited Helen’s kitchen before she had a chance to explain how I looked. I had covered the side of my head with my hands on impact so I assumed that my head was ok.

I groggily took the advice of the teacher and sought medical help from a clinic situated a short drive up the road. The two reception staff started running when they spotted me in the waiting room, one to grab me and the other to rustle up a doctor, whose immediate questions were “What happened to you?” and “How did you get here?”

“I drove from home…after dropping the kids at school.”

I wasn’t sure why the Doctor’s jaw dropped. What? had I done something wrong?

Top 4, no doubt about it. Profoundly stupid. At times, since 2002, I have thought that other acts of stupidity might have given the “roof incident” a run for its money – there is still plenty of time and it’s not like I’m getting any smarter – but for now it’s good thing seated at number 4.

If there is ever a silver lining to these things, my son James learnt to kick on his non-preferred foot playing Australian Rules Football. He was originally left-footed, but when we played together at the park with my sprained ankle, I had to kick on my opposite foot and so he did the same, and he finished up preferring his right foot rather than his left. A very handy skill, having equal kicking ability on both feet at such a young age.

It’s just a pity that I had to throw myself off the roof to facilitate improvement in my son’s football skills.
5. Blowfly mountain.

My father drove my younger brother Barney and I to Aberfeldy, an old gold mining town in Victoria’s Gippsland ranges, 2.5 hours east Melbourne, back in 1980. Dad had a part share in an inactive mining lease up in the hills there, which, at the time that gold was discovered back in the 1860’s, had a population numbering in the 1,000’s, and was thick with of gritty prospectors, living in tents and lean-to’s, frequenting dozens of pubs, and pinning their hopes and dreams on the unearthing of precious metal trapped in quartz deep beneath their feet. High up in the hills, this area was now riddled with old abandoned mine shafts and tunnels, cut deep into rock, following seams in search of the mother lode, and finally left as dark, silent reminders of a bygone era. Whilst the tunnels had been long boarded up, many of the deep vertical shafts had been left unsealed, covered now by dense scrub and bracken. Fumbling around up there in the hills after dark on your own was not a such good idea.

I was under pressure to produce an oil painting that weekend, to complete my year 12 art folio. We were staying in an old mining hut, perched at the end of a long and winding gravel road. It was a warm November day (30 celcius, 90 degrees) and whilst my father and brother went for a long walk, I set up my easel and canvas on that road and went to work on my folio piece. It was so quiet there, I was completely alone. Except for the blowflies. These agitated airborne missiles had mutated to the size of small birds, and were totally ambivalent to insect repellant. In fact, repellant just made them angry. I sat there in the brilliant sunshine, in a T-shirt, shorts, and thongs (flip-flops), painting and swatting. Three brush strokes, one swat. Incoming assailants, outgoing mortar fire. My air defence campaign became intrinsically woven into my brush stroke technique. Get some paint on the brush, dab it on the canvas a few times, then slap my face and arms to ward off the incoming attacks. It was like a war dance.

Despite the annoying blowflies, I still managed to lose myself in the moment and drift away. Painting does that to you. I thought about what it must have been like back when gold was discovered in the area, and how the prospectors must have lived. I thought about the hut and how it had weathered the years, with its rusted roof and awkward timber structure. My mind meandered through dozens of other subjects that seemed important to a 17-year-old.

I woke up from my drift when the painting was finished, feeling completely refreshed, sun-burnt, with sore arms, and with a discovery.

I had completed two paintings instead of one. The second one was a self-portrait.

There was nearly as much paint on me as there was on the canvas. And with the earthy colors I was painting with, I was practically camouflaged. I looked like something out of Rambo. My face was spattered, my shirt and shorts streaked, and my bare arms were crisscrossed with streaks of color.

I felt a bit silly at the time, if the truth be known, with all that paint on me – but what I was about to do next would plumb new depths of personal stupidity.

It was now late afternoon and my father and brother Barney emerged from a trek up the steep hills that rose up next to the hut. Once they saw through my camouflage and realized that I wasn’t a tree, they told me about the abandoned but uncovered mine shafts up there in the hills. I decided that once I’d cleaned the paint off, I would take a walk up the steep hill through the dense scrub and check it out for myself.

Dressed for the beach, late afternoon, on my own, no provisions, totally isolated terrain, and wandering off aimlessly into the hills.

Really clever.

I initially followed a path up the hill that was so steep that it was hard to keep your footing without sliding backwards in the gravel and leaves. My brother Barney was chopping wood next to the hut, and the sound carried up the hill through the bracken and echoed through the trees. I decided to make it to the top of the hill, which was a good 30 minute climb. I didn’t see any abandoned mine tunnels or shafts along the way. At the top of the hill I found what appeared to be a fire track, a winding road that ran long the mountain ridge. I decided to walk along this road for a while, but I was conscious that I needed to re-enter the scrub at the same place that I came out of it. I could still hear Barney chopping wood way down below in the valley. The walk along the windy ridge road was very pleasant but probably took a bit longer than expected. It was very late in the afternoon now, and I figured that it was time to return to the hut. The heat had gone out of the day and there was now a breeze freshening in the air. Retracing my steps along the fire track, I followed the sound of chopping wood. Yes, Barney was still chopping. It was not uncommon for him to cut him to cut wood relentlessly for hours. He was a very fit and strong young human being. I kept following the sound until it was suddenly behind me. I turned around, took several steps backward, and looked up in horror. The sound I was following was not Barney chopping wood, it was a large piece of stringy bark, hanging off a gum tree branch, tapping against the tree’s trunk. This was not good. I had walked along the winding mountain ridge for a few hundred metres using a false guide, and I now no longer recognized my original point of exit from the scrub. There was no other human settlement on this mountain range, and with the road being so windy, I knew that if I commenced my descent at the wrong point, I could be heading back down on the wrong side of the mountain. I walked up and back along the track trying to make sure of my bearings. The light was starting to fade. I figured I had roughly 20 minutes before nightfall, and the descent may take 20-30 minutes given how steep and dense the forest was. That was, of course, if I was on the correct side of the mountain.

I eventually had to make a decision. I settled on a point of re-entry that felt correct but really was only marginally better than a complete guess. The descent was steep and tough going, given the density of the bush vegetation. It was hard to keep my footing and I slipped a few times, falling backwards. After about 10 minutes I found myself on a small clearing with a shallow dug out pit with side walls about 3 feet high. Dusk was maturing to darkness. I was seriously worried by this point because I had not seen this clearing on my way up the hill. I noted that the wall of this pit would provide some degree of shelter should I need it. I decided to press on for another 5 minutes and then, if I was not confident I was heading in the right direction, I would retreat back to this clearing and stay put for the night, and then return back to the top of the hill to the ridge road in the morning and stay there until someone found me.

The final 5 minute descent did not bring any joy. I was now calling out, trying to get some validation that I was going the right way, but my calls went unanswered. The temperature was dropping at a rate commensurate with my self-confidence. With a cloudless sky, the temperature was likely to get as low as 2-3 Celsius (32-33 degrees overnight), and I was dressed for the beach. If I was to spend the night up in the hills, I would survive, but it wasn’t going to be a lot of fun, and it would be worse for my father and brother, left to wonder if I had fallen down a mine shaft.

I had no choice but to retreat back to the pit for shelter. It would offer at least limited protection from the wind. This was not looking good at all. I started the slow ascent back up the steep incline through the bracken to make it back to the clearing before total darkness finally fell. I kept calling out, in hope that someone would respond. There was no moon that night in the hills of Aberfeldy, and it was now cold, and getting colder. I prepared myself for a long and difficult night on my own.

Then I heard my father’s call.

It was very distant, and with it came an overwhelming sense of relief. I was on the correct side of the mountain. I called back and established a connection.

It took another 15 minutes to reunite. I saw a torchlight occasionally bouncing off the tops of tree trunks, but the scrub was so dense the light did not find its way through to me directly. We kept calling so dad could track me. It took a long time for him to navigate his way through the last 20 metres (60 feet) because the undergrowth was so thick, and because dad was physically exhausted. He had grabbed a torch taken off up that steep hill in a mad panic to find me, and, for him, it was the second climb for that day.

We took our time carefully making our way back down to the hut, using the torchlight to guide our footings and to find branches to hang onto.

Poor old Barney was very pleased to see us when we got back to the hut. We ate dinner in front of the best open fire I have even seen. I described to Dad and Barney the pit that I was going back toward, to shelter for the night. They knew about this clearing, because they had seen it during their climb that day. There was an unblocked vertical mine shaft at that site. I hadn’t spotted it as I went past on the way down, but in the near total darkness, on the way back, it may have found me.

I slept that night, fully clothed in a sleeping bag covered in blankets, and I was still cold, but I didn’t care. I have never been so grateful to be a little bit cold.

My painting of the old rusty roofed hut on the winding gravel road sits on a wall at my parent’s place, and whenever I visit them I look at that painting and return vividly to the events of that weekend. I remember the blowflies and waking up with paint all over myself, and I remember what it felt like to be briefly lost in the dark up in the hills of Aberfeldy. I remember how relieved I was to be warm with food, fire, and family, and that dad had exhausted himself, racing up that hill, to find me.

When you say the word “country” you should always try and finish it.

There is no word in the English language that demands completion more than the word “country”.

This is particularly true when you are giving a lecture to about 300 post graduate marketing students, and you are blessed with a stutter. People are, in general, more afraid of public speaking than dying, and I can tell you, vocal suspension provides a brand of terror that has no equal.

I was 27, working for an Australian machine tool manufacturer in Birmingham, and giving a lecture on the topic of “Marketing Australian Technology to the world” at Warwick University in Coventry, England. The opening greeting and first few sentences of the lecture had gone well. Then I intended to lead off the next point with “in my country, marketing technology abroad requires removal of barriers to entry, including the tyranny of distance, and being able to demonstrate your product in-market.” Instead I stopped dead halfway through the third word. I never finished the sentence “in my country”. The first part of the word “country” sailed out beautifully, but sadly, the second part just never came. I was stuck, with nowhere to go, in a vacuum, and unable to take back my unfinished work. Eyes bulging, lungs inert, my life shrank into a single atom of nothingness, for what seemed like an eternity. The world stopped turning for that moment, resting on its axis, awaiting further instructions. It was truly one of the lowest points of my existance. There were no warning signs, nothing to give me a chance to select an alternative word. I just froze.

The silence in the room was beyond description. Someone coughed awkwardly, but that was the only audible sound to be heard. My mind raced, trying to take in what I had just said, and what the room had just heard, and I was then trying to work out what the hell to do next. In the end, I just did what I always do. I stopped, drew a very deep long breath, waited for one or two unending seconds, regrouped, and then tried to say the same sentence again. The risk in getting stuck in exactly the same spot was very real, but If I didn’t restate it and get it right, the audience would not be able to dismiss my first attempt as a mistake, and they would be left with a word that is never spoken in public in polite company, let alone an auditorium. And that wasn’t the worst part. The two and a half words stood on their own merit as a legitimate sentence. I still shudder when I think about it.

My second attempt, from the outside, was projected with clarity and purpose. From the inside, my mind continued unpacking suitcases of unshackled terror. Thankfully, the sentence was complete this time. The audience was more relieved than I was. Far more relieved, in fact. They exhaled audiably. They had been holding their collective breath in rapture, not sure what was going to happen next. Their faces peered back at me, motionless. I definitely had their attention. There was a lecturer sitting in the front row directly in front of me, dressed in all his pomp, and he looked up from something that he had been reading and peered over his bi-focals directly at my face; but he fixed his stare unblinkingly on my lips rather than on my eyes, willing out the next sentence. I was thinking along similar lines. Get some words out, try and assemble them in some kind of order, check as you go to make sure the words belong in the dictionary, and keep talking until you are satisfied each sentence can hold its own as a structural string. Then get back to the topic and move onward and updward. It worked. The sentences were flowing well now and the mechanics of thought and language were back in sync, and I knew from that moment that I had turned a monumental corner. Something about taking a lemon and making lemonade.

This will sound strange, but despite the chaos that had only just played out, I started enjoying the new moment, and began moving and gesturing confidently, using tone and expression in my voice, raising and lowering at the right moments, pausing for effect, and introducing lighter moments where appropriate. I was back in the game, in control, and the remaining 40 minutes of the lecture was without incident. At the end of the lecture I threw to the audience for questions, and I was completely unprepared for and overwhelmed by the response. A sea of hands immediately shot up, raised high above heads. To my disbelief, question time went almost as long as the lecture itself, for another 30 odd minutes. The questions were thoughtful, on topic, resulting in healthy robust discussion, and quite a few moments of levity. On reflection, I think they understood what had happened at the beginning at the lecture and wanted to let me know that it was Okay. So what had started out being one of the worst days of my life finished up being one of the most rewarding, and one that I will never forget.

After the lecture, the room emptied into a large dining room with long tables set up for lunch. Guests seated near me said they enjoyed the lecture and some also acknowledged that it had got off to a bit of a shaky start. A guy sitting opposite me said “You obviously have a stutter, right?”, which opened up the conversation on speech impediments. I am always happy to talk about my stutter and it makes people around me more at ease when the topic is out in the open. Inevitably the conversation drifted happily on to cricket, as the Ashes tour of 1989 was in full swing in England at the time, and we Australians were making unexpected progress against the favoured English team, and would later go on to win the series convincingly.

The biggest moment of the day, however, occured in the street after the lunch as I was making my way back to the carpark. As I fumbled for my car keys, a man started waving at me from the other side of the street. He seemed anxious to get my attention. I waited for him to cross the road, and as he approached me, I retraced my steps in my mind, wondering if I’d left something behind or forgotten to do something. The man looked to be aged in his mid to late twenties, roughly the same age as myself, medium height and thin, well dressed with ginger curly hair. What was most noticable about this man was that he was crying. When he was close enough he reached out and grabbed my hand with both of his and started shaking mine madly. The tears streamed down his cheeks. I had no idea what was going on until he started to speak. His words stammered out with great difficulty. I wanted to finish his sentences for him but knew from experience that he really wanted to finish them himself, and eventually he did. Through his tears and stammerings he said something I will never forget.

“All my life, all I have ever wanted to do is what you have just done; to have the courage to stand up in front of a whole lot of people and give a talk … now I know that I can do it.”

Then he thanked me again, released my hand, and walked away. That was over 25 years ago, and I can still see his face, and I can still hear his words. I often wonder if he ever achieved his goal. After seeing his passion, however, I have no doubt that he did.

I felt on that day, that I had made a difference.

Last month I had a “Wile e coyote” moment. I was replacing a down-light globe in our kitchen, and as I stretched upward toward the ceiling on an aged aluminium ladder, the side extrusion broke a rivet. The ladder buckled on one side, the cross support arms flipped upward, freeing the ladder from its “A” configuration, and I was left, suspended in mid-air, holding up a little “Help” sign, with sagging ears and haunted bulging eyes, as the ladder flattened out from under me and crashed to the floor. The Road Runner did his little “beep-beep” routine, pecked at a little pyramid of seed, and sped off down the hallway. Luckily I was able to land upright with feet either side of the ladder in a perfect dismount. A solid 9.7 from the judges. No damage, no injury. No startled soot covered face or piano accordion style walk off. I dismissed the incident, retrieved another (newer and more robust) ladder from the shed and continued on with changing the light bulb, knowing that what had just happened would not even rate in the top 50 list of the most stupid things I have ever done.

But as I fiddled with the light connection again (with wife Susie white-knuckling the sides of the replacement ladder to keep it steady this time), I remembered another not so clever ladder performance back in 2002, one that currently sits mockingly at #4 on the stupidity charts.

In a hurry to drive my young kids to school (our daughter Emily was 8 and our son James was 5), I accidentally pulled the front door shut with my car keys still inside the house. That in itself was pretty stupid, as I am in the business of importing/wholesaling door locks for a living and I should know better. I decided to hurriedly climb an extension ladder up onto the roof of our home and climb through a second storey window. Easy. Should only take a jiffy, grab the keys, and get the kids to school on time.

A year or so earlier my Dad had given me a very long and old wooden extension ladder that he no longer had a use for, cheerfully informing me at the time that falling off a ladder was the second most common way for males over 55 to die. I grabbed that old ladder and hastily set it up on our rear patio, leaning it up against the roof guttering. It extended so far beyond the roof line that I was going to be able to step directly off the ladder and onto the roof. No problems at all.

I wish I had checked to see if the ladder had rubber stoppers at its base, and I wish I knew more about physics and opposing forces. I reached the top of the ladder and moved to the side and leaned against the rungs while I stepped onto the roof, and in doing so, I shifted a lot of the weight onto the top end of the ladder, allowing the bottom of the ladder to lift and take off. The roof line is over 3 metres off the ground, and standing upright, my pea-sized brain was elevated roughly 5 metres above ground level, and I suddenly felt very much in the same kind of deep shit our coyote is accustomed to.

The ladder disappeared. I had one foot standing on the guttering and the other was now supported by very thin air. The “Help” sign came out again, along with the whole coyote “eyes of doom” routine. There would now be a whistling descent sound ending with a final impact “poof” and an expanding debris cloud at the bottom of the canyon.

Having spent a lot of my youth perfecting splash-bombs off diving platforms and off piers behind ferries, I was able to become horizontal, roll in the air to one side, cradle my head with my hands, and absorb the full force of the brick paving below on my right shoulder. If I had been off-balance when the ladder vanished or had rolled any other way, it may have ended very differently. It was a clean descent, although my inside leg collected a timber bench seat on the way down, which was not ideal.

I wish that my son James hadn’t seen it all unfold, and the cry that he gave out as he rushed to get his sister for help is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

I lay there where I landed, happy to be alive, but unhappy about pretty much everything else. The kids ran next door to get Helen, our neighbor, to help me.

10 minutes later we were all standing in Helen’s kitchen next door, and she asked what the hell I was doing on the roof. When I explained that We were locked out of the house without a key, she outstretched her left hand and retrieved our spare key from a hook on the kitchen wall, saying “Why didn’t you just come and grab this one?”

Because I am an idiot. That’s why.

But of course I still had to get the kids to school. My right ankle was a mess, my brain had been pin-balled around inside my skull, and my entire inside leg (down to my ankle) was soon going to feature a hematoma of biblical proportions, but there was still time to get the kids to class before the end of their first lesson.

I knocked apologetically on the open door of James’ prep year classroom and was about to explain his late arrival, but stopped when I saw the sheer horror and disbelief on the teacher’s face and on all the young children’s faces in the room. The teacher jumped to her feet and rushed toward me, motioning me back out into the corridor and closing the door behind her, shielding the sight from young impressionable eyes.

Apparently the only thing missing from the scene was an axe handle hanging out of the side of my head. My head, face, and clothing was splattered with dried blood that had leaked out of the gash on the side of my head, which I, in my state of shock, was totally unaware of. In my haste to get the kids to school I had exited Helen’s kitchen before she had a chance to explain how I looked. I had covered the side of my head with my hands on impact so I assumed that my head was ok.

I groggily took the advice of the teacher and sought medical help from a clinic situated a short drive up the road. The two reception staff started running when they spotted me in the waiting room, one to grab me and the other to rustle up a doctor, whose immediate questions were “What happened to you?” and “How did you get here?”

“I drove from home…after dropping the kids at school.”

I wasn’t sure why the Doctor’s jaw dropped. What? had I done something wrong?

Top 4, no doubt about it. Profoundly stupid. At times, since 2002, I have thought that other acts of stupidity might have given the “roof incident” a run for its money – there is still plenty of time and it’s not like I’m getting any smarter – but for now it’s good thing seated at number 4.

If there is ever a silver lining to these things, my son James learnt to kick on his non-preferred foot playing Australian Rules Football. He was originally left-footed, but when we played together at the park with my sprained ankle, I had to kick on my opposite foot and so he did the same, and he finished up preferring his right foot rather than his left. A very handy skill, having equal kicking ability on both feet at such a young age.

It’s just a pity that I had to throw myself off the roof to facilitate improvement in my son’s football skills.

“You need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself”, I advised my father, “and decide if you really should hang on to all this junk”.

We stood and surveyed the contents of Mum and Dad’s garage floor at the rear of their property in picturesque Mansfield, 2.5 hours out of Melbourne in Victoria’s high country region. My parents are on the move again, embarking on their next life adventure. They both retired and moved out of the city 12 years ago to retrace their early years living in country Victorian towns, and to be near some of their children and grandchildren whom had settled in the area. Now their offspring have nearly all moved out of the district, and as the distance to Melbourne has become increasingly difficult to manage, they have decided to spent the next chapter of their lives by the sea, and closer to Melbourne. They made the decision one day over coffee, sold their house a few days later, and purchased another house on the Mornington peninsula a few days after that. They don’t muck about, my parents, but I guess there is no time like today, and whilst they are still in reasonable shape, they want to squeeze what they can out of their tomorrows.

According to Dad, the garage had already been cleared of all unwanted items. Some items had already moved out and found happiness living with my siblings in sparkling new sheds with newer tools and appliances to play with; whilst other less fortunate items were sadly discarded and left exposed to the elements at the local tip. Some may have even met their fate in the jaws of the dreaded rubbish “Crusher”. All the shadow boards on the walls had been cleared, and what was remaining was sorted and arrayed in piles in the centre of the garage floor. There was still a heap of stuff there, that, to me, looked like old junk.

“What have we got here, Dad? Surely you’re not going to keep all this stuff. You’re 83, and the likelihood of you never using any of it again is 83%. What are you going to do with it all?”

Dad knew exactly what he was going to do with it. “I’m going to put it into temporary storage until I can get a decent sized shed built at the new place, and then I’ll transfer it all in. No problems, then it will all be sorted and in its place.”

I just couldn’t see the sense in it. “So you are going to move a whole lot of old stuff into a storage facility, waiting for a new shed to be built, and then move it all again, and then never use any of it?”

“That’s right.”

“Look at this!” I said, pointing at a box neatly populated with 10 bottles of weed sprayer, “You’ve got more bottles of weed killer there than you can poke a stick at!”

Dad laughed and confessed that every time he ever tried to find the weed sprayer, the garage was too cluttered and it was always somewhere in there “hiding from him”, so he would have to go out and buy another bottle, and he said he had no idea just how many of them he had accumulated until the clean up. “Most of those bottles still have something in them”, he contended, “So I’m not throwing them out. And whilst hand weeding is not really an option any more, I can still nuke those weeds with the bottled stuff.”

“And what about all those old crusty paint tins?” I continued, “Walls haven’t seen those colors since the 70’s!”

“That’s not true. Those colors are just coming back into fashion. I’m not sure what the condition of the paint is like, so I’ll need to open them up and take a look inside at some stage, but I might still find a use for it all, you never know.” Dad smiled broadly and then cheerfully recounted a story about how he had painted one of the houses we grew up in as kids. He had started with the kitchen. Then he gradually worked through each other room in the house as time permitted, and when he was just adding the final coat to the entrance hallway, a visiting friend candidly noted that it all looked great, and that all Dad had to do now was to finish by painting the kitchen. Dad said painting that house was like painting the Sydney Harbor Bridge – once you finish at one end, you had to start all over again at the other!

But I wasn’t letting up. “So what about all these old rusted tools leaning up against the wall, you’re not going to keep all those, are you?”

“As you know,” he insisted calmly, “I distributed a list of all the items to everyone in the family, and these are the leftover tools that no-one really wants. They are still perfectly good tools, I’ve had them forever, and it seems a shame to get rid of them … even if, as you keep telling me, I don’t ever use them again.”

I remembered many of those tools from when I was a child. I remembered all those gardening afternoons we all had as a young family, digging out our vegetable garden, and planting Rhubarb that we could already taste in mum’s famous rhubarb pies. My siblings and I also used a lot of the tools to build cubby houses in the fruit trees in our back yard – Dad always said that if he was looking for the hammer it was quicker to search for it under the apple tree where we had invariably left it.

I left Dad standing in the garage, staring at all the stuff that he would probably never ever use again, and went to help mum clear and clean out some kitchen cupboards. Soon afterwards, I spotted Dad sitting in their sunny indoor courtyard, and as I studied his face from a distance, he looked to be uncomfortable in his thoughts. As I sprayed and wiped the insides of cupboards and periodically backed away from inhaling the cleansing agent’s toxic fumes, I monitored’s Dad’s expression as he stared up through the glass ceiling of their sun-room, just pondering what we had discussed.

I knew that look on his face, I had seen it many times before. As a retired lawyer, he was carefully weighing up the evidence. My words were challenging his previous judgement, so had re-opened the case. I had submitted my closing argument, and he was now considering all the facts in front of him, but there was also an uncomfortable sadness about him.

In between holding my breath and diving into cupboard cavities, I too began to think about what we had discussed in the garage. I’m not one to hang on to things. I work on the “12 month rule” – if it doesn’t get used in 12 months, it should get tossed out, and this applies to everything in my shed except my surfboards (with every rule there has to be at least one exception, right?) I throw things out and then some of them manage to find their back into the shed again after my wife and/or kids rescue them from the bins or hard rubbish collection.

And that was when the penny dropped. Why do I believe so firmly in the 12 month rule but have an exception for my surfboards? When I am older and have a zero probability of ever using them again, will I throw them out? I know that I won’t. And why not?

Because they hold my memories.

Dad’s hands may have lost a lot of their strength and dexterity, and he is now limited in how much he can do around the house, but he still remembers vividly all the things he once did, and those bits and pieces that I called junk has his DNA embedded in it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look at them, or smell them, or take a look inside the tins to see what condition they are in, and conjur up all those memories of things that he made or rooms he has painted, or cubby houses that we kids invariably hid the hammer under. Nothing wrong with that at all.

I know that you will read this Dad, but rather than say it at the time, I thought it might be nicer to tell the story and finish it by saying this…

“You need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself … and decide what your new shed is going to look like, and make sure it is big enough to neatly house all of those memories”. I’ll help you move them in, and I’m sorry for misreading that moment in the garage.

Footnote: I walked into my own shed to take some suitable photos for this story and the first thing I saw was 7 bottles of weed spray on a shelf. And I don’t have an excuse for having so many of them – they weren’t hiding from me.

“He was not an advertisement for early morning exercise.”

For 7 years, starting around the year 2000, my very old friend Iain and I played dawn golf (up to 3 mornings a week) at Burnley golf course in Melbourne’s inner east. The course was short and very “forgiving” (you could slice savagely onto the adjacent fairway and still confidently find the green on your next shot), so we could play a quick 9 holes and be on our way by 8.30am most days. We would tee off in the pre-dawn gloom using fluorescent balls, tapping the ice that collected under our shoes with out putters (during winter), and leaving zig-zagged foot-print trails stenciled into the dewy fairway behind us. Sometimes those footprint trails disappeared into bushes and reappeared out the other side. Sometimes the trail even led over fences. And I use the word “sometimes” liberally. Sometimes after teeing off we would crouch and shudder and wait for cars to crash beyond the protective nets to the far left of the first fairway. The onward ramp to the Monash freeway from the 7th tee was Iain’s best effort – we always joked that he had the world’s longest drive because one of his balls had hitched a ride to Frankston in the back of a truck.

We repeatedly asked ourselves why we did it? What would possess two idiots to get up in the dark and chase a little white round thing around a park? What were we thinking? I guess people the world over often ask themselves the same thing. You only have to execute 1 decent stroke each round to lure you back for the next game. That’s golf.

Iain and I grew up together, meeting when we were 7 years old. I am 2 days older than Iain, but he will tell you that he looks a lot younger than I, which I tend to let ride, because, standing us both side by side, the court of common sense (and the laws of gravity) would find in his favor. He also has a very relaxed and observational dry wit. Being friends for so long (and having lived together in our 20’s), we are comfortable in our own combined space, and we don’t need to talk if there is nothing to say. We have played entire rounds of golf without talking at all. Not one word, except maybe “hello” and “goodbye”. During other rounds, if there is something to talk about, you can’t shut us up.

On one particular frosty morning, we teed off in the dark and were just approaching the 1st green, when we noticed a dark bulky shape on the 6th green off in the distance. There was a clearing halfway up the our fairway so we had an uninterrupted view down the length of the 6th hole. It was still too dark to properly make out any definition on the shape, and although it struck us both as being a little odd, we dismissed it, thinking that someone had left their golf bag on the green. We continued to navigate our way casually around the course. I don’t think Iain and I spoke at all as we took in the crisp morning air, although we had both already played our “lure” shots – the ones that would bring us back for the next game later that week.

The penny dropped at the 6th hole, when we suddenly realized that the bulky shape that we had seen earlier was a dead body.

We raced to the green and along the way we calculated in our minds how long he must have been there for. When we arrived it was clear that he was beyond help. He had been there for at least an hour, and by the way in which he was positioned on the ground, we knew that this man had died instantly. We found out later that his name was Kent, and that he was in his mid 50’s, and a regular at the course. He was a large man both in height and girth, and looked to have enjoyed the good things in life. Perhaps he was working on his fitness with early morning exercise but, sadly, had left it a little too late.

As we stood there on the green, taking in the situation, we noticed something odd. There was 1 body, but 2 balls in play, both sitting within a metre of the hole. We suddenly felt an extra chill run down our spines.

Was there a second golfer?

We conducted a forensic survey of our surroundings, like they do on CSI, and concluded to the negative, that this was a clear case of 1 golfer, playing 2 practice balls. Nothing untoward or sinister. The landscape was pristine, and there was only 1 set of tracks in the dew, apart from our own. We also knew that Kent had died this morning, rather than last night, because his tracks were fresh in the overnight dew.

Kent had been practising very well indeed, as both of his tee shots had neatly carried the 117 metres in the still morning air and dropped within a putter length of the pin. Normally shots like these would “lure” you back for the next game, but sadly for Kent, these were to be his final approaches to the green. Kent’s footsteps down the short par 3 fairway were purposeful. He had probably already congratulated himself, and was now visualizing these two “gimme” birdie putts sinking into the pot.

Instead, Kent walked up to the flag, hoisted it out of the hole, and died.

Kent’s lights went out so suddenly that his shoes were still planted on the ground, facing the flag, but his torso had buckled and twisted to one side as it sharply descended. There was no doubt that he was dead before he hit the ground.

We alerted the paramedics and the clubhouse, but there was nothing else we could do for this man. We both stood there on the green with Kent for a few minutes, saying nothing to each other, in a degree of shock.

Kent had a really nice gold-plated putter. It was resting beside his body. The same thought crossed both of our minds at the same time. We looked at each other, looked at the gold putter, the balls, and at the hole.

“If I were in his shoes I would want us to finish off those putts” Iain said quietly, with his hands linked across the back of his head, as if what he was saying was making his brain hurt.

I agreed, wincing. My head was hurting too. “And do you think he wants us to use his putter to do it?”

The rules of golf – that you never hit someone else’s ball – was being weighed up against a dead man’s possible final wish. It was tempting, in the same way that I get irrationally tempted to randomly put my hand up at house auctions. It seemed like something that needed to be done, but we just couldn’t do it.

Apart from the fact that it would have been very inappropriate to disturb the scene of a death, and that it may have been enormously disrespectful to Kent’s family, we also knew we didn’t have the right to change the circumstances. Kent’s life ended when and where it did, and that’s all there was to it. As passers-by, we had no right to interfere with Kent’s final mortal imprint.

Still…the balls were just sitting there, and the hole would never be properly finished!

Then another thought surfaced. What if we putted and missed! I’ve missed putts (without any pressure) from far shorter distances than what was in front of us at that moment. It was just too unthinkable. I just hope that Kent’s soul wasn’t standing there next to us, willing us toward his putter and pointing at the hole, beckoning us to go ahead and tap those balls in for him.

As we heard the paramedics arriving we continued on our way. We decided to finish off the 7th, 8th and 9th holes for this fallen golfer. We could still do that for him. We didn’t talk much, we were both deep in thought and still somewhat in shock. We both agreed that there were worse ways to end your life, albeit that is was way too soon. There is a lot to be said about going out whilst doing something that you really enjoy. And I would definitely rather die playing golf than surfing – Getting eaten by a shark is not the same as setting up for a birdie putt.

From that morning onward, for every round we ever played at Burnley, Iain and I played the 6th hole differently. We always chatted on the tee because we had a lot to talk about. Iain had inscribed the words “Kent’s Hole” in pencil onto the back of the timber information sign at the side of the tee, as a sign of respect. If the flag was located on the forward, right hand side of the green, it was regarded as being “On-Kent”. If we drove that green from the tee, it was considered “Kent-like”, and if you were ever left with a putt within a metre of the hole, well, you were shooting for a “Kent” – and for the purposes of this story, they always went in. Neither of us are overly superstitious, but we never played extra practice balls on our own at Burnley, because that would have been just asking for trouble.

Many years have now passed since we last played early morning golf together. Iain eventually moved to Byron Bay in northern New South Wales with his wife Yvonne and now they both live in the French Alps, so the opportunity to play together no longer exists. I play very intermittently at a different golf course now, and I do miss the times that we spent together, happy in our own shared space, half asleep, scouring bushes and climbing fences, crouching and shuddering, and both wondering why we did it.

Iain made the comment last week that Kent “Was not an advertisement for early morning exercise.” Of course Iain was only being playfully dry when he made the comment, and he would equally agree that, on the other hand, Kent’s circumstance was very much an advertisement for any form of exercise.

For Kent, it was a case of “too little, too late”. For us, however, it is a grisly reminder that, when it comes to exercise, it’s never too little, and it’s never too late.

And we still wonder if we should have made those final putts.

I understood what I was hearing about embracing change, but as this consulting doctor and I were both middle-aged, and we didn’t look remotely alike, I wasn’t clear on how I had suddenly become his son. His field of specialty was Haematology and Oncology, not Anthropology or the practicalities of reproduction – but It could have been worse, I could have just as easily become his dear old fellow, or an old sport.

“What sort of lifestyle changes do you have in mind, Peter?” I asked.

Addressing him as champ, or big fellah had crossed my mind.

Dressed awkwardly in sagging brown corduroy pants and flaunting deplorable handwriting skills, Peter informed me over the top of his tethered bifocals that I have non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which can be managed with a new diet and exercise regime, but if left unchecked, could lead to serious complications down the track. After absorbing the news, I wondered briefly if the good doctor dressed himself in the dark in the mornings, because, though far from being fashionable myself, not even I would be caught wearing those pants in public.

“You are going to have to give up a lot of the things in life that you enjoy.”

As he reeled off a list of junk and fatty foods and beverages that I was to ban myself from, Peter also scribbled rapidly on a notepad and sent it across the desk between us, as if, by reading this piece of paper, I would be doubly illuminated. Of course it meant nothing to me. It was just scribble. However, through the unbridled jagged doodling, I was able to make out what looked like the image of a fried dead possum dangling from a power line.

“And whatever exercise you are currently doing, you’ll need to double or triple it.” he added, for good measure.

Our appointment ended, I thanked Peter and left, but not before I told him that he had, in my opinion, the worst handwriting on the planet. He laughed and confirmed that pathologists and chemists all over town agreed with me. I decided not to comment on his pants.

I was pleased that I now knew what was ahead of me. The 3-4 weeks of tests and scans and not knowing was stressful. I knew something was clearly shutting down, with symptoms of extreme fatigue/weakness/nausea etc, but until I knew what it was, I was left to freely google my symptoms and self diagnose every terminal illness ever documented, which was unhelpful.

So fixing things with a new dietary/exercise regime was something I figured I could easily manage. How hard could it be? My wife Susie eats sensibly and slots Pilates and Yoga into her busy work schedule most days. In stark contrast, I eat whatever isn’t nailed down and collapse on the couch after work. I walk our dog Rosie in the mornings, so I guess that counts a little. Friday night fish and chips have been a ritual for me since early childhood, and I am no stranger to pizza, hamburgers, souvlaki, snack foods, biscuits, cakes and ice-cream. I am a pantry inhabitant. A chocolate bandit.

But above all of those things, I am a fresh, warm, crusty white bread lover. I can eat it all day. And although I enjoy drinking good white or red wine, my general alcohol preference is frosty cold beer. I don’t play nearly enough golf (usually a quick 9 holes before work when the seasonal daylight permits), and our garden may feel a sense of abandonment.

Now, I had a long-held the belief that our BBQ would not light unless I had a beer in my hand, but a few nights ago I cooked on it holding a large glass of iced water and miraculously the grill still functioned. That was a turning point.

Breakfast now involves blending fruit and raw vegetables into what my extended family affectionately call “Pond Slime”. It is green and slimy, and looks like something that collects on the walls of a fish tank, but it tastes pretty good. But no crusty white bread.

Lunch is home-made soup and fruit. Snacks are nuts and seeds, no biscuits, no white bread. Dinner is whatever we are all eating, but smaller serves and minimizing the carbs. No beer, wine instead (preferably red) and only socially. No junk food.

It has been 3 weeks since the possum doodling man of corduroy said I’d be giving up a lot of the things in life that I enjoy, and on that point, I think I’d now have to disagree with him.

I have started to gain back other things in life that I truly value, such as energy and vitality, an optimistic clear head, and a healthy functioning body; and on balance, these gains far outweigh the sluggish and fatigued world of fish and chips and beer. Just as we emerge from a dead cold Winter into a warmer, vibrant, and regenerated Spring season, I am finding a new appetite for life. I don’t want to give up feeling this way. Losing some middle-aged kilos doesn’t hurt either.

The garden is starting to get some attention, the dog is getting walked, and early morning golf will hopefully start again in the weeks ahead.

And you know, fresh, warm, crusty whole grain bread (every now and then) doesn’t taste too bad either.

Sometimes the future arrives early and catches you by surprise.

When our first-born child arrived, late in August 1994, we were totally unprepared – and then we had to roll the dice.

Let me preface this story by apologizing for its length, detail, and gravity. I can promise a positive overall outcome, so please bear with me for the duration …

The doctor delivering our baby physically pulled me into a tiny room next to the operating theatre and hurriedly blurted out, “We don’t have any time to talk. It’s not good at all. Get ready to lose your wife or your child, or both.”

My mouth opened but nothing came out.

“Your wife and your child are both 50/50. There is a 25% chance you will lose both of them, and only 25% chance they will both live.” The doctor fixed a stare deep into my eyes for a moment, just to make sure that I had received his message. I nodded. Then he fled, and I was left alone in that tiny room, with the dice.

An hour earlier, I had been at work, stuck in a meeting, when a message came through saying that I needed to urgently collect my 7-month-pregnant wife Susie in the city from her pediatrician’s rooms. I arrived 20 minutes later, without knowing how serious things were, and saw the pediatrician, David Francis, running frantically down the hallway toward me. He shouted, “No time to explain – Susie has a very rare but deadly Liver disease, known as ‘Fatty liver’, and she needs to be Caesar-ed immediately.” I was now starting to panic; the hallway had suddenly become very small, and David’s anxious face ballooned into my whole field of vision. I started to ask what we had to do next, but David cut me off, saying “Get her to St. Vincent’s as fast as you can. Every minute counts. The faster they can get the baby out, the better Susie’s chances are. I don’t care where you park, just do it anywhere you can; on the footpath, in the middle of Victoria Parade, anywhere.”

So we parked across the footpath at the front steps of the hospital, after erratically turning in front of, and cutting off, homeward bound peak hour traffic on Victoria Parade. The long honks and toots from irritated motorists seemed far off and remote. Hospital staff were waiting in numbers on the steps outside the front door and quickly rushed us inside.

The hospital “machine” took over; everyone knew what had to be done. We found ourselves in a room up on the third floor, smothered by staff, waivers, and technology. It started to sink in that Susie was going to have the baby NOW, and not in 7.5 weeks as scheduled. We were both dazed. Whilst the nurses and midwives hooked Susie up to monitoring machines, drips, and took blood samples, I gazed out the window from the third floor out across the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne, wondering how such a gloriously sunny day could so rapidly dissolve into a nightmare. The deep blue late afternoon sky was cloudless, and the shadows of the outer city buildings were now starting to stretch out far across the rooftops, shading the homeward “tooters” as they bustled their way through the congested side streets below.

This moment was wonderfully captured by photographer Greg Elms, documenting Melbourne’s cloudless skyline during the deep blue dusk of August 24th 1994. One of his shots, taken at 6.17pm found its way into the centre-fold page of “The Age – Good Weekend” weekly magazine a month or so later. This beautiful photo was taken an hour before our baby was born. I can still see that sunset from the hospital window, but this photograph has allowed us to remember that moment forever.

Photograph courtesy of Greg Elms – Wednesday 24th August 1994 6.17pm, as it appeared in The Age – Good Weekend Magazine.

I tried to distract myself by calling people to let them know what was going on. I found my voice choking whilst trying to make sense of the whole ordeal, and looking at Susie being taped up, tapped, and torn. One of the nurses cleaned Susie’s fingernails with nail polish remover. Apparently the color of your fingernails is an indicator of your well-being during an operation. When her fingernails were clean, the nurse looked puzzled. Susie had only put fake fingernails on that day, and although her fingernails looked nicely shaped and rounded, there would be no well-being analysis conducted on those fingers. They’d have to operate on her fingernails first to find out!

Suddenly my gazing moment was over and I was alone in the preparation room. I wandered out into the hallway and was rescued by one of the midwives who directed me to the men’s change-rooms. After covering myself in white robes and plastic shoes and headgear, I was moved to a small surgeon’s waiting area, where I met up with David Francis again who would perform the operation. This was when he fixed me with that deep stare and explained about how we were going to roll the dice.

The birth was a very quick blur. I was positioned directly behind Susie’s head at the operating table. We held hands tightly. Susie was remarkably calm with sedation. There was a sheet obscuring our vision of the incision and all the activity. It seemed like only seconds later that it was announced that our baby had arrived, and it was a “girl flavour”. I saw a tiny little body being lifted above the screen. To be honest, neither of us had had time to even ponder our baby’s sex, and when she arrived, I can remember being genuinely taken by surprise. After she had been weighed and wrapped up for warmth, I held her in my arms. She was buried in a white bunny rug, so very small and petite. I cautiously carried her across the room to meet her mother, who was only allowed to briefly introduce herself to her little girl.

Then I watched everyone suddenly evacuate the operating room, carting out equipment and trolleys and my two girls with them. One gurney turned left, the other to the right.

Suddenly I was left alone again, wondering which cart I should have followed. Where should I be, with mother or baby? I understood why I was left behind – every available resource had been allocated to saving lives. I asked someone in the hallway where everyone had gone, but they couldn’t help me, so I took the lift down to the ground floor reception to get directions back up to the intensive care units.

Susie looked yellow, Jaundice, but still surprisingly calm. Our baby had immature lungs and was breathing hard to keep herself alive. She was laid out in a humidity crib with oxygen being pumped down her throat via a tube.

The waiting rooms filled up with family and friends. Jacqui and Geoff Larkin quickly grabbed some clothes for Susie from our house, and Anna Marsh and Caroline Mews sat with me outside intensive care, making calls and looking after everything.

At midnight it was recommended that I go home and try to get some sleep, because I was going to need it in the days ahead. Anna and Mews came back to our house and pumped a few quick strong brandy and dry’s into me. We tried to celebrate the birth but I found it difficult to feel anything yet. I was just hoping the next 24 hours would not bring any unwanted news. I was wrong.

At roughly 2am, shortly after Anna and Mews had left, a call came through from a very curt doctor. “You need to come back in straight away”, he said. “Your baby is experiencing a lot of difficulty in breathing. We need to transfer her to the Royal Children’s Hospital where the facilities can maintain oxygen support above 50%.” As it turned out, our baby would require 90%.

Thank god for the Royal Children’s Hospital, and it’s world-renowned Neo Natal Unit. It saved our little girl’s life.

I reversed my car along the curb for about ten feet, but then could not physically move to change gears into drive. I sat motionless, sobbing, in the driver’s seat, in shock, not able to function, for about 5 minutes. I retreated back to the house and called Anna Marsh. Her car pulled up abruptly outside the house instantly, bless her soul. She must have driven like a lunatic. Anna always drove like a lunatic. I remember thinking when I landed in her front passenger seat that Anna really needed to do something about cleaning out her car. There were empty soft drink cans and lollie/chocolate wrappers lapping at my shoes. Every time we lurched around a corner, a wave of cans would swirl around my ankles. I tried to make a smart remark about the mess (something about drowning in stale Coca-Cola) but I don’t think Anna heard me – she was too busy planting the pedal and driving like a lunatic. I told Anna that I didn’t care which Australian rules football team my daughter chose to support (even Collingwood); as long as she would live long enough to see them play. In hindsight, that was a ridiculous statement, one that I have since tried to distance myself from having ever said. As we flew into the hospital, Anna frantically asked me for directions – “Quickly, are we turning left or turning right?!” Each time she asked, I stuttered for so long with the answer that we were already halfway around the corner before I could finish. “R, Ri, Righ … oh, okay, we’ve already done it!” These days, with a few wines, we often sit around and laugh about that crazy car trip. Even when things are dire, there is still somehow room for a little bit of comedy.

We arrived at Susie’s bedside just as the mobile humidity crib unit arrived with out little girl to say goodbye and then be transported to the Royal Children’s. A Polaroid snapshot was taken so Susie at least had an image of her still un-named daughter to look at. Our daughter was transported in a NETS capsule (Neo Natal Emergency Transport service), which looked like Superman’s Krypton escape pod. She was wired up to all the machines, and looked so tiny. We didn’t fully understand that mother and child would then be separated for 3 days, in separate hospitals, Susie consigned to looking at only a Polaroid snapshot memory. I can’t imagine how that must have been for Susie.

An old friend Mathew Collopy arrived on our doorstep at 8am the next morning, holding out application forms for the Melbourne Cricket Club (M.C.C.) to be filled out and signed. We had a major problem. We still didn’t have a name for our daughter. So I drove back into the hospital to see Susie and we settled on Emily Louise, named after Susie’s great-grandmother. Emily was formally registered by a cricket club a week before she was formally registered as a person.

Thankfully, 24 hours after the birth it looked as though Susie was going to be okay, and Emily was stable at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Susie would need to undergo further tests on her liver, but the doctors were confident there would not be any permanent damage. They said she had “more chance of growing a second head” than having the disease again.

We had rolled the dice and won.

I then happily became the meat in the sandwich, ferrying expressed milk between two hospitals. The level of support from family and friends was overwhelming. Our doorstep was thick with casseroles and Susie’s room was like a florist shop.

When she was well enough, after 2-3 days, We were able to mobilize Susie in a wheelchair, and drive her over to the visit Emily in the Neo-Natal unit to finally properly meet her daughter. My sister Rachel later also arrived and brought with her a fluffy pink teddy bear. She peered into the humidity crib at our tiny baby, hooked up to all the electronic equipment, and burst into tears, sobbing. At just 3 kilos, Emily’s whole hand could wrap around the tip of my index finger. I will never forget seeing my sister’s reaction. She had already produced 4 children of her own, and what she saw really emotionally affected her. At that moment, I wish that someone could have walked up to us and reassured us that everything would be OK, and then had whipped out some before and after photos to prove it.

Emily owned a lot of soft toys in her early years, but this fluffy pink bear, from her sobbing Aunty, has always been her absolute favorite. When she was old enough to talk, Emily proudly named this pink teddy bear “Bob”. Today Bob still sits next to her pillow. Bob has been threaded and stitched, machine washed and spun dry more times than most other teddy bears would surely be comfortable with. Bob will be with Emily forever. A silent witness and guardian angel, all rolled into one dearly loved fluffy pink little fellow.

The first six months of Emily’s life were loud and dramatic, as she had a lot of catching up to do. She screamed continuously for the first few months because she was constantly needing more food, and on top of everything she also endured a double Hernia. We were all sleep deprived in our household, rotating feeding and screaming shifts. During those months I nodded off at the wheel at a traffic intersection (my head hitting the side window to wake me up); I changed lanes on a highway without knowing, and I drove off from a service station without paying for petrol, prompting a visit at work from the local constabulary. Emily’s two grandmother’s (both nurses) helped guide us through Emily’s early stages, as we had no idea what we were doing.

It is amazing, however, just how quickly she transformed into a normal sized infant. Within 6 months Emily had completely caught up. Life for us, as parents, also returned to a filtered kind of normal; a shade of constancy that is reserved for parents “pin-balling” their way through uncharted waters, and enjoying a new chapter in life that is slightly compromised but non trade-able.

The rest of Emily’s life to date has also been loud and dramatic. She is feisty, outspoken, strong, sharp, and in your face. You get the sense that she is still fighting to catch up to her future. I think that if Emily stands still, she feels that she is going backwards, because the world keeps marching forward, and she wants to get ahead of it.

Emily doesn’t walk into a room. She explodes into it. Regional seismologists are often left scratching their heads, baffled. Her personality is infectious; there is so much going on. She spends every moment of her day immersed in fashion, is time poor in every sense, and like the rest of her generation, wants to do everything now.

Emily’s laughter (more like a shriek) is unmistakably hers. In a darkened cinema, people have been known to yell out from the other side of the room,”Emily Nolan! you are here somewhere, that laugh has to be you!” Susie and I have been shopping, deep in the busy supermarket aisles, and have suddenly become aware that Emily is also in the building. “Listen, Em’s here … somewhere!”

Now that Emily is soon to turn 21, It seemed like the right time to revisit and tell the story of her beginnings.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, we have the opportunity to catch the future, and bring it back with us.

I would very much like to go back to the Neo Natal ward at the Royal Children’s hospital, and introduce Emily to the parents of other premature babies, so they can physically experience the before and after, and take comfort in knowing that everything really will be OK, and that they don’t have to wait and see. If they could witness what the future promises, it might ease their passage through what is a very traumatic period of their lives.

And maybe we could give these parents a new fluffy pink “Bobbie” as a reminder – to hold in waiting – just while their tiny babies catch up to their own futures.

Emily Nolan, 2014, (Picture courtesy of “Oscillate” by Zoe Blow).

I recently started walking our 8 month old black Labrador “Rosie” in the mornings before work. She enjoys it so much, and I now cannot deny her these special moments.

I’m not a morning person, let’s be upfront about that. The day usually only dawns for me through a fog of rapid-fire coffee jolts. Conversation before 8 am is not recommended. If you move to stand in front of me I will lethargically bump into you, bounce off weakly, and then keep bumping into you again until you move out-of-the-way.

Rosie is now nearly fully grown (the picture above was taken 3 months ago), and she wasn’t getting enough walk time, as it is currently the dead of winter in Melbourne, being pitch dark when the family gets home from work or school, and pre-dawn when we wake up in the mornings. And it is freezing cold, apparently our coldest June in living memory. There is too much going on when we get home At night with getting dinner prepared, so realistically the early morning option was the only fair alternative available. I wasn’t very optimistic about being able to drag myself out of bed 30 minutes earlier each day, but thought I’d give it a try.

Dogs can detect a routine a mile off, particularly if it is one they like. The Day 1 walk was a pleasant surprise, day 2 a sequence that might hopefully lead to a trend, and day 3 for Rosie was absolute confirmation that she would be walked at 6.30 every morning for the rest of her life. Dogs have very accurate watches. She appears outside the back door at 6.30am sharp with 2 promises firmly in hand; the first, in order of importance, is that food is imminent. The sound of her tin bowl scraping across the courtyard as she inhales breakfast and chases the bowl across the bricks must surely awaken the entire neighbourhood. Secondly, she has a rock solid belief that I will immediately reach for the leash and overcoat and follow her out the front door.

So try to picture a wildly exuberant pup doing backflips at the front gate whilst I’m trying to lasoo her with a lead, and then see me practically skiing down the street behind her, as she drags me toward the park at the bottom of our street. Once off the lead at the park, Rosie melts into the darkness. There is a jogger doing laps around the park perimeter a few mornings a week and I make sure I yell out that Rosie is on her way, so he can turn sideways and deflect the impending full hit to the stomach. Rosie launches and hurls her whole body at joggers and slow-moving old folk. If I see anyone at the park I try to put Rosie back on her leash, as she is still too young to realise that being a foolishly youthful and overly friendly Labrador doesn’t include ripping clothing and decking the elderly.

The dawn breaks while we walk a path through wetlands, and ducks skim across the water in the half-light, and unseen water life move about in reeds at the water’s edge. The frost covers the park and our footprints mark our travels, with Rosie’s prints erratically crisscrossing mine, occasionally darting off to track a scent. It is quiet with human interaction but delightfully noisy with birdsong. These are things that I haven’t experienced, in relaxation, for very long time.

I walked our previous, eternally adored and sadly missed, black lab “Daisy” for 10 years during daylight evenings, and although totally different dogs, I am constantly reminded of their canine similarities; the way they stop and smell the flowers, zero in on scents and trails, hopelessly chase ducks and birds, and never moving more than 10 metres away from you, checking all the time to make sure you are ok. Each time I walk Rosie I see, remember, and reflect on some small part of Daisy. I like that.

Each morning as we walk back up the street toward the house it suddenly occurs to me that I am wide awake, refreshed, and ready for the day ahead. No coffee (yet). I have been exercised, entertained, and I have strengthened my friendship with our dog. I say that it suddenly occurs to me that I am awake because I make the startling realisation each day as if it is an original thought – such is the density of my mental morning fog.

I release Rosie from her leash once inside the front gate, and she ritually licks my hand and wags her tail to say thankyou. Once inside the house, Rosie races off the jump on beds and lick faces and I head directly to the kitchen to crank up the espresso machine.

It’s not until the third so-strong-you-can-stand-the-spoon-up-in-it cup of coffee at work that it dawns for me a second time each day. This is the moment that I realise that Rosie is doing far more for me, than I for her, during our new morning ritual.

And we enjoy it so much, we now cannot deny us these special moments.

Aberfeldy by Mark Nolan 1980

My father drove my younger brother Barney and I to Aberfeldy, an old gold mining town in Victoria’s Gippsland ranges, 2.5 hours east Melbourne, back in 1980. Dad had a part share in an inactive mining lease up in the hills there, which, at the time that gold was discovered back in the 1860’s, had a population numbering in the 1,000’s, and was thick with of gritty prospectors, living in tents and lean-to’s, frequenting dozens of pubs, and pinning their hopes and dreams on the unearthing of precious metal trapped in quartz deep beneath their feet. High up in the hills, this area was now riddled with old abandoned mine shafts and tunnels, cut deep into rock, following seams in search of the mother lode, and finally left as dark, silent reminders of a bygone era. Whilst the tunnels had been long boarded up, many of the deep vertical shafts had been left unsealed, covered now by dense scrub and bracken. Fumbling around up there in the hills after dark on your own was not a such good idea.

I was under pressure to produce an oil painting that weekend, to complete my year 12 art folio. We were staying in an old mining hut, perched at the end of a long and winding gravel road. It was a warm November day (30 celcius, 90 degrees) and whilst my father and brother went for a long walk, I set up my easel and canvas on that road and went to work on my folio piece. It was so quiet there, I was completely alone. Except for the blowflies. These agitated airborne missiles had mutated to the size of small birds, and were totally ambivalent to insect repellant. In fact, repellant just made them angry. I sat there in the brilliant sunshine, in a T-shirt, shorts, and thongs (flip-flops), painting and swatting. Three brush strokes, one swat. Incoming assailants, outgoing mortar fire. My air defence campaign became intrinsically woven into my brush stroke technique. Get some paint on the brush, dab it on the canvas a few times, then slap my face and arms to ward off the incoming attacks. It was like a war dance.

Despite the annoying blowflies, I still managed to lose myself in the moment and drift away. Painting does that to you. I thought about what it must have been like back when gold was discovered in the area, and how the prospectors must have lived. I thought about the hut and how it had weathered the years, with its rusted roof and awkward timber structure. My mind meandered through dozens of other subjects that seemed important to a 17-year-old.

I woke up from my drift when the painting was finished, feeling completely refreshed, sun-burnt, with sore arms, and with a discovery.

I had completed two paintings instead of one. The second one was a self-portrait.

There was nearly as much paint on me as there was on the canvas. And with the earthy colors I was painting with, I was practically camouflaged. I looked like something out of Rambo. My face was spattered, my shirt and shorts streaked, and my bare arms were crisscrossed with streaks of color.

I felt a bit silly at the time, if the truth be known, with all that paint on me – but what I was about to do next would plumb new depths of personal stupidity.

It was now late afternoon and my father and brother Barney emerged from a trek up the steep hills that rose up next to the hut. Once they saw through my camouflage and realized that I wasn’t a tree, they told me about the abandoned but uncovered mine shafts up there in the hills. I decided that once I’d cleaned the paint off, I would take a walk up the steep hill through the dense scrub and check it out for myself.

Dressed for the beach, late afternoon, on my own, no provisions, totally isolated terrain, and wandering off aimlessly into the hills.

Really clever.

I initially followed a path up the hill that was so steep that it was hard to keep your footing without sliding backwards in the gravel and leaves. My brother Barney was chopping wood next to the hut, and the sound carried up the hill through the bracken and echoed through the trees. I decided to make it to the top of the hill, which was a good 30 minute climb. I didn’t see any abandoned mine tunnels or shafts along the way. At the top of the hill I found what appeared to be a fire track, a winding road that ran long the mountain ridge. I decided to walk along this road for a while, but I was conscious that I needed to re-enter the scrub at the same place that I came out of it. I could still hear Barney chopping wood way down below in the valley. The walk along the windy ridge road was very pleasant but probably took a bit longer than expected. It was very late in the afternoon now, and I figured that it was time to return to the hut. The heat had gone out of the day and there was now a breeze freshening in the air. Retracing my steps along the fire track, I followed the sound of chopping wood. Yes, Barney was still chopping. It was not uncommon for him to cut him to cut wood relentlessly for hours. He was a very fit and strong young human being. I kept following the sound until it was suddenly behind me. I turned around, took several steps backward, and looked up in horror. The sound I was following was not Barney chopping wood, it was a large piece of stringy bark, hanging off a gum tree branch, tapping against the tree’s trunk. This was not good. I had walked along the winding mountain ridge for a few hundred metres using a false guide, and I now no longer recognized my original point of exit from the scrub. There was no other human settlement on this mountain range, and with the road being so windy, I knew that if I commenced my descent at the wrong point, I could be heading back down on the wrong side of the mountain. I walked up and back along the track trying to make sure of my bearings. The light was starting to fade. I figured I had roughly 20 minutes before nightfall, and the descent may take 20-30 minutes given how steep and dense the forest was. That was, of course, if I was on the correct side of the mountain.

I eventually had to make a decision. I settled on a point of re-entry that felt correct but really was only marginally better than a complete guess. The descent was steep and tough going, given the density of the bush vegetation. It was hard to keep my footing and I slipped a few times, falling backwards. After about 10 minutes I found myself on a small clearing with a shallow dug out pit with side walls about 3 feet high. Dusk was maturing to darkness. I was seriously worried by this point because I had not seen this clearing on my way up the hill. I noted that the wall of this pit would provide some degree of shelter should I need it. I decided to press on for another 5 minutes and then, if I was not confident I was heading in the right direction, I would retreat back to this clearing and stay put for the night, and then return back to the top of the hill to the ridge road in the morning and stay there until someone found me.

The final 5 minute descent did not bring any joy. I was now calling out, trying to get some validation that I was going the right way, but my calls went unanswered. The temperature was dropping at a rate commensurate with my self-confidence. With a cloudless sky, the temperature was likely to get as low as 2-3 Celsius (32-33 degrees overnight), and I was dressed for the beach. If I was to spend the night up in the hills, I would survive, but it wasn’t going to be a lot of fun, and it would be worse for my father and brother, left to wonder if I had fallen down a mine shaft.

I had no choice but to retreat back to the pit for shelter. It would offer at least limited protection from the wind. This was not looking good at all. I started the slow ascent back up the steep incline through the bracken to make it back to the clearing before total darkness finally fell. I kept calling out, in hope that someone would respond. There was no moon that night in the hills of Aberfeldy, and it was now cold, and getting colder. I prepared myself for a long and difficult night on my own.

Then I heard my father’s call.

It was very distant, and with it came an overwhelming sense of relief. I was on the correct side of the mountain. I called back and established a connection.

It took another 15 minutes to reunite. I saw a torchlight occasionally bouncing off the tops of tree trunks, but the scrub was so dense the light did not find its way through to me directly. We kept calling so dad could track me. It took a long time for him to navigate his way through the last 20 metres (60 feet) because the undergrowth was so thick, and because dad was physically exhausted. He had grabbed a torch taken off up that steep hill in a mad panic to find me, and, for him, it was the second climb for that day.

We took our time carefully making our way back down to the hut, using the torchlight to guide our footings and to find branches to hang onto.

Poor old Barney was very pleased to see us when we got back to the hut. We ate dinner in front of the best open fire I have even seen. I described to Dad and Barney the pit that I was going back toward, to shelter for the night. They knew about this clearing, because they had seen it during their climb that day. There was an unblocked vertical mine shaft at that site. I hadn’t spotted it as I went past on the way down, but in the near total darkness, on the way back, it may have found me.

I slept that night, fully clothed in a sleeping bag covered in blankets, and I was still cold, but I didn’t care. I have never been so grateful to be a little bit cold.

My painting of the old rusty roofed hut on the winding gravel road sits on a wall at my parent’s place, and whenever I visit them I look at that painting and return vividly to the events of that weekend. I remember the blowflies and waking up with paint all over myself, and I remember what it felt like to be briefly lost in the dark up in the hills of Aberfeldy. I remember how relieved I was to be warm with food, fire, and family, and that dad had exhausted himself, racing up that hill, to find me.

My clever mother spun me a yarn when I was 14 that, apart from scaring the living wits out of me, thankfully also gave me the incentive to give up smoking.

There was a short but opportune window in time that was too good for her to ignore. It’s all timing, isn’t it? I revived this story with her on Mother’s Day recently, and curiously, she now has no recollection of having said anything at all on the subject, and has satisfied herself that I might have simply manufactured the story in its entirety. There is a very slight mischievous sparkle in her eyes when she feigns ignorance.

I started smoking a year earlier at 13, and, I have to say, we smoked a lot for such young folk. I use the collective “we”, as everyone I knew smoked as well. It wasn’t too long before my parents found out. They both smoked a lot at that time too. They were cool parents, but did not want to see their kids following in their footsteps, particularly since the data was now clear on the harm that smoking caused. But the “do as we say, not as we do” routine just wasn’t cutting it, and fell largely on deaf ears.

I had just started summer break after my last year of junior secondary school and in the following February I was to elevate to the senior campus for my last 4 years. Despite all being a part of the same school, the senior campus was this enormous awe-inspiring place sitting up on a massive hill kilometres away, and it was like a whole new world. I didn’t really know much about this new place, and my mother was fully aware of this. It was too good an opportunity for her to pass up. She could tell me anything and I would not be able to check its validity. She could have said that The Beatles had reformed and were playing in the senior school hall, and I would have believed her. And that Martians had landed on the main oval and were hiding themselves in the maintenance shed, and plucking out stray students and beaming them back to Mars for research.

Anyway, my mother waited for me to come home from school one afternoon. “Have you heard the big news about the senior school?” she quizzed, as I flew past her in the kitchen and beyond into the hallway, hurling my schoolbag purposely toward the stairwell but missing and grazing the delightful mustard coloured velvet “flocked” wallpaper that covered every square inch of our household. I honestly don’t know what decorators were all thinking back in the 70’s. I shrugged off my school jacket and hoisted it toward the the newel post at the foot of the staircase banister. It missed, but I wasn’t going back for it – I had more important things on my mind. My stomach. Mum waited patiently back in the kitchen. She knew I’d heard her, and that I would be coming back, because that’s where the fridge was.

No, I hadn’t heard the big news from the senior school…

“They’re weeding out the smokers from year 9!” she announced firmly as I re-appeared and levered the fridge door open to start grazing. I figured I would start with a bowl of Weeties (purchased in a bulk single 20 kilo box that was lowered and stored in a cupboard via the roof by crane), followed by ice-cream with chocolate topping, and then maybe a milkshake if my younger brother Barney hadn’t already drunk all the milk. He was the “milk bandit”. We were able to “unmask” him through fine-tuned statistical consumption analysis based on milk volume accumulated when he was not there. Our household consumed 4 litres a day, but If Barney was away for the weekend we would have to start freezing it or giving it to our neighbours. If you wanted a milkshake, you had to make it before Barney got home.

I considered what mum had said about the smokers. “Weeding them out? Really?” I replied, “I haven’t heard anything about weeding out smokers!”

My head was head deep in the fridge, starting to take on an Antarctic glow, with hands rifling through the shelves, checking behind the 4 litre Riesling wine cask that lived in one corner, and excavating through to the known hiding spots, hoping to find something that may have magically appeared since the last time I checked. The items toward the back of the top shelf had been disturbed since my previous foray, so I knew then that my secret stash had been scavenged and polished off. I had a rock solid list of known suspects.

“They’ve decided that anyone who smokes in senior school will be well and truly booted out by year 10…the trouble-makers and the smokers … all gone!” There was a brief theatrical moment, where she mimicked a puff of smoke escaping from a magician’s hand. “What do you think about that?”

I closed the fridge door and asked if Barney was going to be home anytime soon. There was still a few litres of milk left and I wanted to get in early. If he was getting home soon, I might have to work in a milkshake before the Weeties. I stopped and looked at my mother. I could see that she was actually serious about the booting out thing. “No! … Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yes I’m bloody serious!” she warned, “The headmaster briefed parents at a school meeting a few days ago. This is real. They know all the hideouts, they know where to look. They will be doing locker checks and they are going to come down on all smokers like a tonne of bricks. They are treating smokers the same as chronic waggers, thieves, vandals, and violent bullies, and If you’re still smoking when you start there next year, you will be expelled by the end of year 10.”

It did sound serious.

I was about to say something but my elder brother Red suddenly appeared in the kitchen, also wanting to know if Barney was home yet, and he then jostled me out-of-the-way so he could stick his head in the fridge. From there the conversation shifted to what we were going to have for dinner. We knew it was going to be something good, and dinner was a far more important subject than that of expulsion from school.

After that smoking topic did not ever surface again, but my mother’s stern words stayed with me, as they often did.

We were about to spend 7 weeks over summer down at Sorrento, a popular coastal town on the Mornington Peninsula (90 minutes from Melbourne), and everyone I knew was looking forward to smoking themselves senseless on the beach for their whole vacation.

So I set myself a challenge. If I could resist the temptation and peer group pressure for 7 weeks, when everyone else was puffing around me, then I knew I would never smoke again. Rather than removing myself from situations where I would be tempted, I figured it would be far better to confront it head on.

It worked.

I can vividly remember sitting in the middle of our large teenage group on the front beach at Portsea that summer, clad in “Golden Breed” T-shirts, with ridiculously long board shorts, and shedding our second layer of summer sun-burned skin. We were almost totally invisible from the outside world because of the constant Marlboro/Winfield curtain of cancer that enveloped us. I remember thinking that there could be no bigger test of my intestinal fortitude. In terms of passive smoking – sitting there amongst the group day after day – I may as well have had a carton myself.

Many of those friends from back then, upon reflection, now wish that they had joined in on the challenge. Although some have successfully given up smoking in recent years, many are still madly puffing away. Some have questioned me on my motivation in giving up smoking at that particular moment in time, and more importantly, before I was seriously hooked. My answer to that question has always been simple.

“My clever mother spun me a yarn.”

The freshly whipped cream, with a hint of vanilla, oozed just slightly out of one side of the cake before my mother, Jill, swiftly trowelled it flush, and then applied the broad knife to the sponge’s multi layered sides to correct it’s towering lean. All it needed now was a single candle on top. After all dad was 82, and he neither had the lung capacity, nor the inclination to tackle too many candles, and in the absence of roman numeral shaped sparklers, we were going to have to abbreviate his age into a far more manageable quantity. So 1 candle was just fine. There is something magnetic about a lone lit candle standing proudly in the centre of a deliciously sweet glaze of passion-fruit icing. A miniature plume of smoke was still rising from the extinguished waxen monument when the grandchildren jostled for “front of the line” serving honours. They all knew what was coming. Nothing in our solar system tasted as good as grandma’s sponge cake. And they reappeared, applying heat for seconds, before the grownups could even be served their first slice.

It is no secret that all mums make good sponge cakes, but there must be a secret to my mum’s sponges, because no-one I have ever met has been able to produce anything that tastes as good. Mum is a bit younger than dad (a lot younger by her own reckoning), and we tell her that she shouldn’t continue to go to all the trouble of baking cakes and preparing feasts for us, and that we can go out for dinner instead or help with the preparation, but to be selfishly truthful, I just don’t want her culinary triumphs to end!

So what is it that makes our mum’s or grandma’s food taste so good? What is the miracle ingredient?

It’s the comfort that they add to it.

You will not find this ingredient in any recipe book, and it is not something you will spot on a supermarket shelf. Fittingly, it is only made available to all loving and caring mum’s and grandma’s, who surreptitiously add it to mixing bowls in oven-warmed (and often outdated) kitchens around the world every day. Whether it is baked, roasted, fried, or sautéed, they stealthily add comfort in liberal measures to everything they create, whilst all grateful beneficiaries invariably emit unashamed food noises like “Oooh!” and “Mmmm!” and rub their bellies with delight, and talk about it for a long time after, just like I am doing now.

Having said all that, I still think that mum’s sponges are the best in the world. At our large family events, wizened relatives walk in the door and the first thing they say before they undertake a search is “We’ve heard that Jill has baked a sponge! Quick, let me see it!” One of my aunts once informed me, at such a gathering, that she was prepared to fight me for the last slice of an all but demolished sponge cake that was resting, exhausted and nervous, on a nearby dessert table. “That’s mine,” she announced, “I saw it first!” Of course I informed my aunt that I had been to the table earlier, when she wasn’t looking, and had already laid claim to that slice, but she wasn’t having any of it. “I’ve been standing here since you walked in,” she countered, “And you haven’t been anywhere near that table. The best I can do is go halves with you. That’s my final offer!” It was a big slice and a fair deal, but secretly I still selfishly wanted all of it. Mum’s sponges can do that to you. I considered a diversionary tactic or a distraction, but my aunt was way too sharp for that. She quickly seized a knife and cut the piece of cake in two. We both stood there, “Oooing” and “Mmming” and rolling our eyes and grinning as we ate. Comfort is achieved far more powerfully in allied numbers.

Not entirely on topic, but worth mentioning, is that my mother Jill has also been known to commission a sponge for the purpose of entertainment. When she was working as a mothercraft nurse back in the 80’s, she produced a fabulous birthday sponge cake for one of her nursing friends at the Royal Women’s hospital in Melbourne. All the staff gathered to watch as the birthday girl inserted a large knife into the cake, only to find it impenetrable. The knife kept bouncing back at her, time and time again. It became quite an awkward moment. Jill appeared all the while to be both dumbfounded and profoundly offended, but had, in preparing the cake, devilishly substituted the baked sponge sections with the foam rubber padding found in a round stool seat. Once the laughter subsided, I’m sure they would have all leaned forward and picked away at the icing just the same, and perhaps poked a finger or two into the whipped cream sandwiched between the perfectly cut rubber foam layers. No point in letting the edible bits go to waste.

Now that we have correctly isolated Comfort as being the key mystery ingredient for successful cooking, let us debunk a myth or two, starting with “The great chocolate addiction” myth. Scientists will insist that addiction to chocolate is due to the ingredient cocoa stimulating the secretion of endorphins in the brain, triggering off a heightened sense of “well-being”. Well, I can tell you that this feeling of euphoria is more likely due to chocolate being produced by a bunch of certified bona-fide mum’s and grandma’s, secretly co-opted by the chocolate giants (under the cover of darkness), to add their comfort touch – along with full cream dairy milk – to each production batch! Another myth is that “School tuck-shops don’t sell healthy food”. School tuck-shops the world over are manned by school mothers, who, by merely being there and presiding over the food, are able to make it taste better and can magically extract any additive and calorie nasties that may have attached themselves along the way. A sandwich prepared by yourself at home does not taste nearly as good as the same one handed to you by a tuck-shop mother, because it is served with a warm smile and kind regards to be passed on to your family, and a tongue-in-cheek inquiry as to where you think her offspring might be lurking, in order to avoid the embarrassment of being seen with her.

Some readers may assert that this post is no more than a cunning plan to encourage my mother to continue making sponge cakes. And Anzac cookies. And roasts with Yorkshire pudding, and crumbed cutlets with mashed potato and peas, salmon patties, coleslaw, and sausage rolls.

Okay. I might be “bustable” on that assertion. So charge me with “seeking comfort by improper means”.

Mum’s sponges can do that to you.

[Mum’s Anzac cookies, not quite as good as grandma’s were, but pretty damned good all the same. We are splitting hairs there. Gone in seconds.]

There are many ways to hide in the midst of a choir during an end of year school concert. Stand at the back, move your mouth in sync with others around you, but be careful not to make any audible sound. Let the others do the heavy lifting. And should you find yourself playing the recorder in a large group on stage, let your fingers dance confidently over the air holes, and lift and tilt the recorder on the high notes, but resist any temptation to blow into the instrument. No exertion, no pressure; you are not really there at all. No-one, except your parents, will find you dissolved in there among the contributors. Performing solo, on the other hand, is a different ballgame. You’re out there under the spotlight with nowhere to hide. Exposed and alone. A sitting duck.

So imagine someone lowering the largest brass musical instrument in the orchestral family into the arms of the smallest 10 year old boy in my year level, and then pushing him out onto center stage for a solo performance at our end of year concert, way back in 1975. It was terrifying enough to watch from the audience, but through the eyes of such a young and inexperienced musician, the landscape ahead appeared to be very bleak indeed.

The tuba, from most accounts, is played as a background instrument, and has been described by at least one observer as an Orchestra’s “central heating”, as it provides an earthy warmth to the overall harmony. As you can imagine, the tuba is a very difficult instrument to master and an exhausting one to play.

It’s a lung buster. Spirit crusher.

The audience of roughly 500 parents and students were hot, tired, restless, and without humor. They appeared to be thoroughly underwhelmed by the night’s proceedings. Wedged into the large civic hall like sardines and suffering in the sweltering December evening heat, people fanned themselves with their programmes and mathematically calculated how many minutes were left before they could escape. “Let’s see, there are 6 items left, with each lasting roughly 4 minutes, and allowing for people to round up their limp children and evacuate, we could see ourselves in the car park in under 30 minutes.” Other thoughts may have included “I love my son dearly but I’m definitely going to be out of town this time next year”, and perhaps even “I’m going to get myself elected onto the school council and work feverishly to cut the duration of this thing in half!”

Then he came out, and the room suddenly fell silent.

This tiny, skinny, red-headed young boy appeared hesitantly from behind the massive red floor to ceiling curtain, and peered out at the audience, squinting to try and make sense of the mass of eyes that looked straight back at him and up at the monstrosity above him. The crowd gasped, because it looked as though the instrument might slip and pulverize the boy into the stage floor. As he staggered toward the lone stool that was placed at the very front of the stage, onlookers shifted sideways in their seats as if they were trying to remotely guide him safely to his seat. For one moment he appeared to have lost control of this massive brass flowering contraption, and he had to quicken his step to catch up with it. Bending his knees to sit at the stool, he stole a panicked glance at his unseen dispatcher behind the curtain, but what he saw there didn’t seem to reassure him much; in fact this distraction nearly had him missing the chair altogether. There was a moment where one of the stool legs levitated slightly under his uneven downward docking movement, and the crowd caught their breath and shifted sideways again until the stool righted itself and the young fellow was securely seated.

This little boy was petrified, haunted, and alone, under the single spotlight. People in the audience were not sure whether to keep looking at what was about to unfold, or to start studying their shoes.

He arranged the big brass monster on his lap, inserted the mouthpiece, wet his lips, and drew a deep breath. His cheeks ballooned out, and he played his first note.

Whales in the Southern Ocean paused and listened.

The sound that escaped was more like a slow, drawn out guttural yawn. It was followed shortly after by a loud squeak and then a series of flatulent blurts and gurgles. It sounded to me like he was just testing his equipment but it soon became apparent that this was, in fact, the start of his recital. I was now wondering how long it would take for the tow trucks to arrive.

Our little tubist hugged his massive brass flower arrangement; his fingers worked away at the three chubby valves, and his bright red cheeks ballooned and deflated like those of a hyperactive swamp frog. What we heard was not unlike the sounds emitted from hopelessly lost barges in a heavy fog.

But the audience stopped calculating their exits times, and the kids stopped itching and fidgeting.

The young boy stopped playing for a moment, to summon more air, and perhaps to decide whether he should continue, before pressing on once again with more deep groans and high piercing squeaks. Each note must have surprised him, because none of them came out as he intended. The deep ones, however, rumbled along the floorboards and rolled off the end off the stage, triggering vibrations that were felt up the aisle-ways, all the way to the back wall of the room. A small ruddy-faced boy, with a big but peculiar sound.

Next there was a sequence of notes that appeared to form some sort of scale, and the crowd moved with him up the register and then swooned when he missed the top note. But at least now there was something vaguely musical about his arrangement. The audience finally had something to hang on to.

It was the longest and most drawn out recital that you could imagine, but our young tuba player braved it out. His tiny lungs heaved and sagged, his head drooped and then rose again with each note. He was exhausted and excruciatingly embarrassed when he finally finished. His shoulders slumped low after the Tuba’s final trembling utterance.

He was certain that the crowd hated his performance as much as he had.

The applause nearly blew him, and his tuba off the stool. The crowd leapt to their feet and roared. He looked up suddenly, taken aback, and both startled and shocked at the response; he looked around in case the audience was applauding someone else. Maybe Elton John had just walked on stage and everyone was applauding him instead. He couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Complete bewilderment. The standing ovation went on forever, and when the clapping finally died down, the room continued to buzz for a long time afterwards.

When the tubist walked offstage, he left his instrument on the ground next to the stool. He was so overwhelmed by the crowd’s reaction that he had simply forgotten to take it with him. The Tuba sat there under that single spotlight, inert, a Goliath not tamed, but now respectful. It would have been only fitting if a little white flag had risen up and unfurled itself from within the instrument’s enormous flared bell.

And from the deep Southern Ocean, the whales smiled, gave a silent nod of respect, swished their massive tails, and continued happily on their way.

Just so we are clear, I’m neither particularly spiritual, nor overly drawn to mysticism. The supernatural, and beckoning from worlds beyond are, for me, generally restricted to the scriptures of Stephen King. It’s very unlikely that you will find me hunched under a crimson shroud, gazing into a crystal ball in a dimly lit carnival tent on Halloween night. No seances, tarot card readings, or horoscopes for me, thankyou. Wizards, oracles, and witchcraft, I don’t think so.

There have been, however, a seemingly linked string of personal events spanning decades that I have never been able to reconcile with. I am now going to try and unravel those events here, at the risk of appearing completely unhinged, off my trolley, and barking mad. I can honestly say that I have not made any of this up, but can equally understand why people might choose to discount this story’s authenticity. I’m pretty sure I would.

It all started when I was 16 years old (34 years ago). My late uncle Paddy Nolan was dining at our house, and whilst we were all busily shovelling down one of mum’s famous roasts (with Yorkshire pudding), Paddy was recounting details of his recent travels to Ireland, where he had researched our ancestral roots to, I believe, a little hamlet called Moyvane, near Listowel, in County Kerry.

It all sounded fascinating until he drew attention to the dwelling that he had traced our roots back to. The place he then described was something I had seen vividly several times in a series of tragic recurring dreams.

“It was a very large round tower”, Paddy began, “about the height of a four of five storey building, with no windows.” A chill went up my spine. I had been dreaming of such unusual dwellings only a few weeks earlier. He said “there was an internal staircase that wound around the inside walls, and they kept livestock in there as well.”

I asked him if the entrance door was elevated above the ground by 3-4 metres (10-12 feet), and Paddy immediately agreed, saying that a ladder was used to access the door and was then pulled up and into the tower. I knew about this. In my recurring dreams I was always waiting by a small bridge for someone to return, but when I could wait no longer, I would run to the round tower, hurriedly climb the ladder and pull it up after me, sadly locking out the person I was waiting for. In another recurring dream I was climbing the ladder at night in a panic, and upon entering the tower, was greeted with a bright red fireball on the inside of the dwelling.

The round towers of Ireland were built between the 9th and 12th centuries as protection against the waves of invading vikings. There were roughly 120 of these towers built, most of which are now in ruins, and with 18-20 that have been kept in perfect condition. They were as high as 40 metres (130 feet), and were designed to house people and food/livestock in isolation for significant periods of time. The doorway was deliberately only large enough for one person to squeeze through at a time, so that intruders could be dealt with as they entered. Starting a fire somehow on the inside was the only way to effectively penetrate the building.

I had other recurring dreams where a dusk medieval type battle was being waged, running down a steep slope beside a round tower, to a bend in a river. I would always wake up in a cold sweat, as the dreams were so vivid and emotional.

I never really knew what it all meant, being young at the time, and didn’t dwell too much on it. When I asked my father once what he thought about it all, he off-handedly offered the theory that perhaps we all retain some embedded memories in our genes that get passed down from one generation to another, and that maybe these memories can sometimes resurface in our dreams. A bit like a DNA imprint of some kind. Dad was happy to dismiss his own theory, but I liked it. Animals are born with “instinct” which, in theory, could be embedded “what to do” memories that have been somehow retained and stored in a “black box” deep inside their brains. I don’t know much about all that stuff so I might be talking out of school, so please don’t quote me on any of this!

The story continues on, however. Three decades later, around 2010, good friends of ours, The Collopys, visited some old churches and round towers in Ireland during a family holiday. We were at their place soon after they returned and they showed us some travel snaps. I froze when I saw one particular photo of St Canice’s Cathedral, with detail of the side cathedral window frames. Matt and Clare Collopy thought I had just seen a ghost! I was briefly in a state of shock. I was drawn instantly to the detail of the window frames on this church because I had seen them in vivid detail over and over in my dreams. Not the stained glass, just the shape and design of the external window mouldings themselves. I remember a dream where I was hovering way above the ground, at eye level to the outside windows, studying the same detail of the frames. It always struck me as a weird dream, I could never understand where it had any relevance. I have had other dreams where I have carried a body in the middle of the night up a town roadway, and looking up, the silhouette form of a large cathedral towered above me on a hill. At the end of this recurring dream I rest the body in a graveyard at the front of the church. These dreams are very traumatic.

Seeing the picture of the church and feeling the impact it had on me, I went home and later googled my Irish family name origins of Nolan, Fay, and Delaney, to see where they led me. The origin of the name Delaney (my mother’s Maiden name) was from the earlier anglicized form of O’Delany or O’Duluny, with apparently the earliest known reference dating back to Felix O’Duluny, Bishop of Ossory from 1178 to 1202. Now, apart from all the other wonderful things that he did, he was credited as being the guy who built St. Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny, the very same church that I saw in the picture!

And guess what?

There is a round tower sitting about 5 metres away from the church.

.

I’m sure it can all be explained away, and over the years I have done a good job of doing that myself. I cannot, however, explain away having the dreams, and then having other people connect the dots for me after returning from visits to Ireland. It is a bit bizarre really.

For those who only deal in certainty, I can give you one right now. Visiting Ireland and taking a look around a bunch of old round towers and churches may not be something that excites a lot of people (and I may have trouble

Our family was seated for an impromptu dinner at a very popular and busy Thai restaurant in Melbourne late last year. The place was packed with people, and the tables and chairs were overpopulated given the space available. It was difficult to hear anything above the loud clatter of plates, glasses, and loud conversation. Our daughter Emily, 20, and our son James, 17, were their usual chatty selves; full of life and character, and just as we were devouring our entrees, Emily’s expression suddenly changed, and she announced that she had something VERY IMPORTANT to tell us.

My wife, Susie, and I nearly choked on our Thai fish cakes.

Jame’s chicken satay spiraled out of control and crash landed on his plate as he dug into his pocket for his iPhone. He definitely needed to film this.

What do you immediately think when your 20-year-old daughter makes a serious family announcement?

Susie and I looked at each other and then motioned for Emily to wait until we had swallowed what was left in our mouths, in case the news sent us into cardiac arrest. Emily waited for the moment. “Are you ready?” she asked?

Jim knew the film footage would be good. He was in perfect position, seated with a clear view of all the major players. This was going to be a YouTube sensation.

“OK”, we chimed together nervously, “What is it?”

“I’ve got a tattoo!”

Gold. This clip was definitely going viral. Jim adjusted the angle of his phone to fill the camera screen with our facial reactions. If he was quick, he might even be able to get the unedited footage online before his friends sat down for their own dinners.

We were trapped. We were in a room packed with people. And we were on film.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, the only word that either of us could manage was “Where?”

My mind raced. I was hoping the tattoo was located somewhere that could be hidden later if the novelty wore off before the ink. Please let it be somewhere that can be covered.

“On my wrist!” Emily said, “Here, take a look!”

Now, personally I’m not into tattoos, and will never get one. I know a lot of people who do have tattoos and depending on the person, and the size and the design that has been inked, the tattoo can suit them, their personality and their outlook on life; so in theory I have no objection to other people having tattoos. Some of them I actually really like. They are also easier to like when they are on someone else.

Emily had broadcast from her early teens that she was going to get one. At the time we were hoping that it was just a passing phase, or that she would at least wait until she was older and sensible enough to make a carefully considered decision. She did wait, and carefully designed her own artwork; and chose the moth as it symbolizes a lot in her life. Em’s world is all about design and fashion, and with her beautifully tapered hands and chunky rings and silver bracelets, the tattoo suits its surroundings. Moths are nocturnal, always striving to find the light, and represent optimism and achievement, with a desire to “spread one’s wings” to fly and be free.

I have to say that Jim was quite disappointed. Our reactions weren’t dramatic at all; no “out of body” experiences or seismic activity, nothing paparazzi worthy, no world war three, just a family sitting in a busy restaurant calmly examining a new tattoo, with two parents slightly hyperventilating. He stopped filming after he was confident that the moment had passed, and when the allure of the Pad Woon Sen stir fried noodles – that had just landed on the table – finally overtook his senses. He hadn’t noticed that I had just quickly drained half a tall glass of Asahi lager and was looking for a refill.

As an aside, last night we watched the latest episode of the reality show “Survivor” where one of the castaways had tattoos on her face, and where another contestant (who had tattoos all over his arms, legs, and back) complained in an interview about the other, saying “Who gets tattoos on their heads? What was she thinking!” The answer to that is “She was probably thinking the same thing as you, buddy, and you’ll probably finish up doing the same, when you run out of space in between your toes.” This departure from the story doesn’t really have any relevance other than to illustrate that everyone has their own perception of what extent is acceptable when irreversibly inking themselves. We don’t have a right to, but we’re hoping that Emily has satisfied her desire to get a tattoo and will leave it at that.

We like Em’s tattoo. We liked her bare wrist better beforehand, but now that it is done, we like the design and what it means to her. It is very much Emily.

So Em, now that you have your wings, and you have granted yourself permission to fly, don’t forget to wave as you flutter by!

I cannot believe that I am actually posting this story.

Caveat: If you secretly yearn for the zesty lemon fragrance of freshly Fabulon-ed sheets and towels, please do not read any further. However, if you have ever camped for a week in a desolate location without proper showering facilities, then continue with caution, but please accept my apology in advance for what is to come.

I was Backpacking around Europe at the age of 20 in 1983, and a friend in Germany kindly offered me the use of his vacant apartment in Paris for a week during the French tennis open. I took him up on his gesture, and life in the Parisian sunshine, for the first 4 days, was like something lifted directly out of a travel brochure. My luck ran out very early on the 5th day when some guy and his wife burst into the apartment, full of attitude and aggression, claiming to have made previous arrangements to stay in the same apartment for the next 7 days. There were a lot of rapid hand gestures, French exclamations through clenched teeth, personal space invasion, and severe doubt cast over my birth status, sexual preferences, and ancestral lineage; before I was suddenly cast out onto the street, reasonably insulted, with the mercury rising, and without the benefit of a shower. There may have even been a final shrill (but then muffled) insult directed at me as the door slammed shut.

Oddly enough, hotels aren’t exactly chasing you for business when the French Open is on.

After many hours of lobby shopping, the only place in Paris that would have me for the next two nights was a shabby little back street establishment that had been built before they discovered water. Seriously, my room was like a broom closet. In short, I went without a proper shower for three long hot summer sightseeing days. I tried sneaking into other hotels that had running water but they saw me a mile off; I was that unwashed guy that they are highly trained to look out for. I had to settle for limited splash washing in cafe powder-rooms, but of course you never get the same coverage. It was a record-breaking heat wave; I was chalking up the kilometers, and I was hygienically unhappy. Stray animals began following, at a safe distance, behind me. Large birds gathered, with an air of expectancy, in nearby trees. A Renault mowing down a nearby fire hydrant would have truly been a godsend.

I’m still learning to deal with the shame.

At the end of the week, I returned to the place where I was staying in Germany a little heavier. I walked differently; a bit like John Wayne after riding a horse for a month. My hair was oily and plastered to my skull, and my body odor had a pulse of its own. When I walked in the door, no-one seemed very interested in talking to me, so I headed straight for what was possibly the best, hottest, and longest shower I have ever had. I let the water cleanse away the indignity of the previous days, but I noticed when toweling off that some unwanted sweat rashes remained. My hosts had left an elaborate array of deodorants and body talc’s on the ledge above the wash basin, and a frenzy followed. I covered my body in talcum powder. I smelt great, looked clean, but still walked funny. The only option available to me now was to slide off to bed and pretend that the previous three days hadn’t happened.

Something woke me up in the middle of the night. I felt rigid, like I’d been immersed in a mud bath and had been laid out to dry. Mind racing, I “zomby walked” into the bathroom to take stock of the situation, and then hurriedly hunted down the bottle of talcum powder that stood, now mocking me, on the shelf above the basin.

I don’t know what they call it in Germany, but here we call it “Ajax”. I looked in the mirror, and my jaw had dropped so much I could see where my tonsils had been removed when I was six. I immediately swung into damage control, and moved to wash off the household cleaning agent. It wasn’t until I had the water running that I remembered the ad with “No Mess” Charlie; that jolly, oval-faced plumber that cleaned up his mess in a jiffy with the wonderful new formula Ajax. You may remember how the “Deep Action Cleanser” really worked hard (like Charlie) to get in and get the job done.

If water had met powder that night, my fathering future would have been napalmed before my eyes. Nevertheless, I had to act quickly, because I noticed that the sweaty areas had started turning blue. Again, I had memories of Charlie swishing out the vanity grime with Ajax’s magical blue rinse. I don’t know how long it took me to rub off the caked on powder, but I took my time. It was very abrasive stuff. When I had given myself the all clear, I retired again for the night.

The morning heralded a remarkable discovery. That German Ajax powder had “Nuked” the fungal bacteria, arrested the “Long March”, and restored peace and unity to the neighborhood. I felt like I’d been rid of a poltergeist. That is one wicked formula, our old Ajax. Charlie’s work was done, and I could almost see him grinning and flirting in the bathroom with that charmed 1960’s lady of the household, holding up the Ajax bottle so the camera could get the “money shot”.

Naturally I didn’t let on to my hosts about what had transpired. Something again to do with the shame.

Of course every little story has a moral, but this one has many.

Firstly, be sure to only stay in Hotels that have water!

Secondly, always travel with a bicycle lock so you can chain yourself to something large and heavy in the event of a pending eviction.

Thirdly, be careful using anything in foreign language bottles, especially in bathrooms where your host has recently sanitized it for your use. If you have foreigners staying at your house, clear away the cleaners and solvents.

And of course, lastly … if your overseas guests start itching and walking funny, just leave a bottle of Ajax on the vanity top next to the deodorant.

Some people are eternal dreamers, and spend most of their time visualising how they would ideally like their life to pan out. Some of these people put so much energy into their dreaming that they struggle to find the time or momentum to ever achieve their own vision for themselves. Some people are doers, and they spend their time working tirelessly at whatever is in front of them. Some of these people are so busy working that they forget to dream, and may wake up one day, exhausted, in a place vastly removed from where they want to be, and sometimes it will be too late, or they are too tired, to go back and change it. Some people find comfort in what has already been, and are constantly looking behind them, whilst others seek what is yet to come, hoping that the future will present them with something satisfactory. Some people have other people’s dreams thrust upon them, and are thereby chained to someone else’s sense of fulfillment, whilst others are left to fashion their own destiny without a rudder or a guiding hand.

Some people do not dare to dream. But sometimes another can teach them how.

My younger brother Michael met a dreamer once, about 20 years ago, in a camping ground in Nimbin, not far from Dunoon, up in the hinterland on New South Wale’s picturesque northern coast. Mick was a year or so out of secondary school, not particularly settled, and was travelling with a group of party happy, loud music playing friends, and they were camping in tents next to another, older, and quietly relaxed group of campers. The music and antics continued on late into the night, and a spokesman from the quiet group calmly approached Mick and politely asked if the noise might cease. Naturally my brother obliged, and then, as is his nature, he approached this man the next day to apologise for the inconvenience. My brother is a very amiable character and it wasn’t long before they both sat down together for a very long chat about all sorts of things. One of those things was this man’s dream for the planet, for, as it turned out, this man was the leader of the Greenpeace conservation movement in Australia. He was both a dreamer and a doer, respectful of the past, but looking to the future. They spoke together quietly for the best part of 3 days, exchanging ideas and theories. Michael walked away from that conversation with his own dream; an inspired vision that would dramatically change the direction of his life.

Mick has always been a friend of the environment and in his earlier years passively objected to the activities of the big polluters and environmental destroyers, but after getting passively battered and bruised in several protest rallies, and with the dreamer’s words still echoing in his ears, he decided that there was another way forward. The corporate way. The way of the suited environmental warrior.

Now you may be expecting a description from me of a suited Mick darting into an alleyway and reappearing in a superhero costume with a lightning strike emblazoned across it and wearing his undies on the outside, but in reality, Mick is very low-key about his work, and always undersells himself when people ask him what he does for a living. However, in order to make this story function properly, I will now need to severely blow his trumpet. It’s a little gut wrenching and he himself will be horrified when he reads this, but I’m going to do it anyway. I will plead “elder brother’s privilege” on this one.

To begin with, Mick went back to study environmental science at La Trobe University in Melbourne and, whilst a student there, he became the national environment officer for all the universities. He worked out ways for the universities to radically reduce their waste but also to harness energy with natural, sustainable, using energy sources such as water movement (sewerage turbines, waterfalls on the sides of buildings, etc) to the point that the Universities were selling power back to the grid and saving money. Mick then figured that he could apply this theory on a much larger scale. He was confident that corporations (and governments) could not ignore a compelling savings case that has a positive and sustainable impact on the environment.

Now fast-forward 19 years or so, and Michael is Global Technical Leader – Climate Adaptation, at AECOM, which I believe is the second largest structural engineering company in the world. Michael has led over 100 climate change impact, risk assessment and adaptation projects relating to local government, power, mining, ports, water, road, rail, buildings, facilities, coasts, states and cities in Australia, USA, China, India and New Zealand. Last year Michael addressed the United Nations climate convention in Geneva, and has previously addressed U.S. foreign aid Senate Committees in Washington. Michael often talks to global corporations about changing the way in which they conduct their businesses, to save money whilst helping the planet.

That’s enough! I’m worried I may have gone a bit overboard there, but I think you get the message. I found most of that information on-line, so I’m not talking out of school. Basically, if there is a better, cheaper yet more sustainable way of building an airport or a bridge or freeway, Michael is your guy. He is in his early forties, still young and energetic, and whilst he may not be wearing his undies on the outside, to me his is an environmental superhero.

But he didn’t get there on his own.

Up there in the hinterland, over several days, during a chance meeting in a camping ground, a wise man took the time out to teach and challenge my brother both to dare to dream, and then to do.

I have an overwhelming feeling that one day, perhaps when another chance meeting presents itself, my brother, as the seasoned dreamer and doer, will take the time out to teach someone else the same, and thereby complete the cycle.

Meet “Rosie”, the newest member of our family.

But before you can read about Rosie, you need to finish the story about Daisy.

I wrote a post a few months ago about “Daisy”, our 10-year-old black Labrador (“The sock mathematician”) and in the final paragraphs I noted that Daisy was coughing and gagging. We thought it was kennel cough.

Unfortunately the vet blood tests that I wrote about getting done showed that there was something more sinister going on in there, and subsequent x-rays the next day showed that fluid was flooding around her lungs. Daisy was still happy and cheerful but she was experiencing regular fits of gagging and coughing, and her energy levels were lowering. Daisy looked great; she was in perfect shape for a Labrador, and appeared to be in good health, but unfortunately she had advanced Lymphoma, and sadly her time was up.

The vet drained the reservoirs of fluid around her lungs and pumped her full of cortisone, which gave her a comfortable and pain-free 24 hour reprieve and allowed her to come home for a final night. I can only describe this gift as grateful torture. Looking at her and watching the clock tick down and knowing that we ultimately held her fate in our hands was indeed torture, but the love and attention that our family reciprocated both with Daisy and among ourselves was truly beautiful and we will be eternally grateful for that brief window in time.

Daisy hardly coughed at all during those 24 hours. She never complained or showed any pain. The kids slept on the floor with her during the night. Daisy would happily play with us for a few minutes at a time, but then would have to rest. In the morning it was like any other day from the previous 10 years. She barked at people walking down the street past our house as she always did (they chatted and children patted her over the fence). She barked as normal on her final day because, although sick, she was still on the payroll and had a job to do. An hour before we had to leave to go to the vet for the final time, Daisy gave me that “Let’s go to the park” look. I wasn’t expecting her to have the energy, but it was there. So the family (And Mitch from up the road, who also grew up with Daisy and is a part of our family anyway) all went to the park and enjoyed the sunny morning air. Daisy loved it, and on the way back to the house, a group of neighbours who chatting in the street got to say goodbye.

We were faced with the choice of putting her to sleep while she was still relatively comfortable and still very happy, or watch Daisy endure the pain and suffering that was definitely going to occur soon. In the end, we did the best thing for her. The vet was great, and the procedure was instantaneous and pain-free. She just put her head down and went to sleep. We all held her and let her go.

As a family, we all sobbed for a week.

For the days that followed, the silence in the house was deafening. We kept finding people in our house that didn’t know were there, as our four-legged alarm system was no longer active. Friends would suddenly appear in the kitchen and scare the living daylight out of us. Being able to walk to the back shed and not having to look for Daisy deposits made me sad. There was a massive void in our house. Walking in the gate after work to a silent, empty yard was devastating.

The house was filled with bunches of Daisies from friends and neighbours, because she belonged to everyone. Canine friends, “Molly”, and “Topsy”, kept searching the house when they visited but could not find their playmate. A few days after Daisy was gone, we moved emotionally from waves of sadness to that of gratitude. We were so lucky to have her for all of those 10 years, albeit a shorter than expected duration. We even feel a bit guilty that we got to have her instead of someone else, although we did happily share her with everyone we knew. Within a week of Daisy’s passing, it was clear to all of us at home that is was unsatisfactory to live without the constant unconditional love and companionship of a Labrador.

So we went back to well and got another one.

“Rosie” (we stuck with the flower theme) is a bouncy, endlessly energetic, 12 week old purebred female black lab, just like Daisy was, and she is the most beautiful creature we have ever seen. We wondered if it was wrong to try to replace perfection with the same breed, gender, and colouring, in case the comparison led to disappointment, but in the end we realised that we were not replacing Daisy, but honouring her and continuing her legacy.

Rosie is asleep with her head resting on my foot as I am writing this. I’m trying to stay still so she doesn’t fall off.

When she first arrived at home, after a very long car journey, we filled up Daisy’s large water bowl so Rosie could have a drink, as she looked a little hot. Instead of lapping at the edge of the bowl, she just climbed into the bowl and had a swim (pictured). Then she posed for photos. That was it for us; game, set, match.

That moment signalled the change.

Rosie has been with us for a month now and we have all fallen completely in love with her. We have said goodbye to our garden and anything that can be chewed, and I am thoroughly enjoying having to navigate the backyard minefield again. We laugh at the trails of toilet paper that we find unravelled down our hallway, and we walk wide-legged and in slow movements around the kitchen as Rosie buzzes around our legs and attaches herself to our shoe laces. She clamps her razor sharp little needles to anything loose and expensive. It takes us an extra 1o minutes just to leave the house because there is so much going on under our feet. We are now remembering and reliving what puppy training is all about and find ourselves respectfully reminiscing about things that Daisy did in her youth that were long forgotten. The memories have all come flooding back. Rosie is digging out old toys in the garden that we haven’t seen for years. We bought her one of those rubber “Kong” toys that you stuff food into to keep them occupied, but before we could give it to her, she had found an identical, weathered one, in the garden that had been buried a long time ago. Should we give her the new one or re-use the old one? We kept both.

At last we can now face walking to the park at the bottom of our street again. I had found myself standing on the footpath, gazing down toward the park the end of the street, but immediately dismissing any exercise. Now I look forward to it again.

We were worried that getting a new puppy was not such a good idea so soon after Daisy had passed away, but the best way to heal love, is with love. They will never be the same dogs, but they will be equally as rewarding in their unconditional love and companionship. And there is something about the constant noise and activity that they bring with them. I’ll never complain about barking again.

So thankyou forever Daisy, and welcome now Rosie … and that, folks, completes the changing of the guard.