By Tessa, 65. Somers, VIC I am slowing down. My lifestyle, not my brain or my body — though ageing does reduce the pace at which one can run! It’s been a gradual process I’ve been coming to, particularly as I (and others) have struggled through the last few years in a pandemic.  At one […]

By John, 72. Kangaroo Ground, VIC I can remember it so clearly, as if it only happened yesterday: As I walked very briskly from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan I rehearsed my precise instructions. The stranger I was to meet would be loitering close to Hibiya Park fountain, where he or she would be […]

By Carolyn, 75. Adelaide, SA Rose looked up at the sky. The weather was picture perfect. Damn, she muttered to herself. Normally she would have been delighted, but today, of all days, she wanted it to rain. Come to think of it, hail would be better. Anything to put people off coming. Right little sticky […]

By Lesley-Anne, 67. Christie Downs, SA It was our first day in Delhi. Visiting India had always been on my bucket list, and I was excited to leave the comfort of our hotel and get out into the streets and see the real India. We spent the first part of the morning wandering around the […]

By Ted, 73. Warnbro, WA After major surgery, I spent six weeks immobilised in bed. Before the days of motorised hospital beds, I was laid horizontal on a flat bed, drugged and weak, making it hard to move my own muscles. Every six hours, a team of six people would rotate my body 90 degrees: […]

By Cora, 77. Ravenshoe, QLD Any minute now, Roger would watch Tessa walk out the door for the last time. Oh, sure, he would see her again, might see her around town a few times before she flew halfway across the country. She wouldn’t be there with him every day, though, as she had for […]

By Paul Blanksby, 63. Helensburgh, NSW ‘You’re a sook, Miklas, a big sook.’It’s that Johnno again. Oh, I could just… They can’t have seen me sitting in my backyard, these boys, through the passionfruit vine and the wind-warped paling fence. An unwanted adult observer of their little drama. A smaller boy, wearing a blue jumper […]

By Beverley, 73. Melbourne, VIC From under lowered lashes I watched for him. I sat with a clear view of the entrance to his family’s tent — nothing could escape me. We’d only been at the beach for a short time when I noticed him outside the tent, which was near our caravan. We were […]

By Karen, 65. Sydney, NSW Don’t mean to brag, but I’m a Triathlete, of some repute. This happened on one of my first races as part of the Australian team, competing overseas in Honolulu. World Champs, Olympic distance race. Great course around parkland one end of the famous Waikiki strip. All race set, fit, jumping […]

By Wendy, 71. Landsdale, WA I remember when we lived at my father’s shop in Botany Road and my parents let me climb out the upstairs window onto the tin roof when the queen came along the road in 1954. Out the back of the shop, my mother had a copper, a washboard, a cane […]