A journey begins

An ancient proverb suggests ‘a journey begins with a single step’ but actually our journey begins with an idea, a dream, a plan, considerable research and the purchase of airline tickets. So after almost five years, and with many COVID restricted events uncelebrated; leaving our full time jobs, our 60^th birthdays, our 40^th wedding anniversary and establishing a regenerative agriculture micro farm; we are travelling again for the next seven weeks. St Augustine’s  words remain extant ‘The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page.’

 

Now domiciled in the Apple Isle our journey begins with a couple of nights in Sydney to visit family and reduce the risk of delayed domestic flights. After living in Sydney for the best part of six decades it’s strange to enjoy the Emerald City as a tourist. We stay in the homely Macleay Hotel in the lively and interesting Potts Point, just up the road from Garden Island that featured heavily in Richard’s Navy career. Soon after our arrival the city skyline, Opera House and Harbour Bridge are all amplified with a short fireworks display. How quintessentially Sydney! How lovely to be welcomed back, perhaps we have not been forgotten after all.

 

Whether it’s your first visit to Sydney or your home since birth nothing beats a stroll around the harbour, past Mrs Macquarie’s chair, through the park to Government House and up to the NSW Art Gallery, we could have done without an unexpected drizzle of rain. On the first floor of the Art Gallery’s amazing new $344 million extension (yes Tasmanians, almost the same price as the derided proposed football stadium for Hobart) we visit three extraordinary handcrafted copper installations depicting the history of mosques in Australia. The work is beautiful, mystical and evocative but for us marks the intersection between our old and new life. We are in a gallery in the city of our birth enjoying, the craftsmanship, creativity and artistic imagination of Shireen Taweel, who with her family has been a guest at our farm stay holiday cottage at Penguin Hill Farm.

 

Today we board QF 1 to London. For security reasons (too long in Defence ) and anticipatory delight, we will not yet reveal our destinations in advance, enough to say "we will be traveling by trains, planes and automobiles….. and a ferry."