My Sunshine Coast Finale

After fourteen years, six months and twelve days... it seems that my time on the Sunshine Coast is now officially over. The big seachange of 2008 that was supposedly going to herald the makings of a full-time writing career after moving from Brisbane to Caloundra (picture above of one of many glorious sunrises over Caloundra's Happy Valley that have inspired me), has ultimately resulted in my being settled back in Brisbane once more.

Early morning wedding preparations are well underway in the Glasshouse Mountains for the wedding of our daughter Melody to Colin.

The finale for such an amazing milestone, was the recent marriage of our daughter Melody to our newly acquired son-in-law Colin. Walking my daughter down the aisle will be one of those moments that will stay with me forever, and I couldn't have hoped for a better man to be waiting for her at the end of that short but sweet walk. Despite having moved south to Brisbane a little over two months ago, the long-planned wedding in the heart of the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland's Sunshine Coast Hinterland, was the one lingering emotion that left me still feeling connected to the Coast. Only instead of driving the short distance from the Coast to the Hinterland for the occassion, we rented a house for a weekend that will go down as one of the highlights of my life. Like all weddings however, a year of meticulous planning is over in an afternoon/evening, and before you know it everybody checks out the next morning and goes their separate ways home. It's that word home that I'll get to in a moment.

My love of doing Dad things saw me volunteer to drive them to the airport once the weekend was over, so they could catch their early morning flight for their honeymoon. But as I weaved my way into the passenger drop-off zone at Brisbane Airport, the sky was lit up magnificently in the orange glow of a new dawn, and I remember thinking... that's it. It's over. The wedding, and my life on the Sunshine Coast already felt like yesterday. The weekend was certainly a lot to mull over on that quiet, solitary drive back home... to our apartment in the city.

While life might not always be pineapples and palm trees, the heartwarming part is that our children have both found love and married wonderful partners. Whatever challenges life throws at them, I at least know my daughter Melody, and son Brandon are both equipped to handle it with the amazing people at their side. My job as a Father now seems complete.

Our first brunch by the Brisbane River as empty-nesters... and we spend it planning when we can invite our kids and their partners to join us!

I guess that's what the move back to Brisbane signifies. Our time of raising children, and having watched them grow into adults during the years we lived on the Coast, is now over. Sure there have been some happy tears that have caught me off gaurd these past 48 hours, just as my son's wedding had 18 months earlier, but I'm ready to embrace this new beginning.

In the fourteen years we lived in Caloundra, Denise and I had negotiated the pitfalls of building a large family home, sold said home when it later became a bit too much for us, taught two children how to drive, helped them with their first car and guided them into University study. We then started a small business from scratch, worked alongside each other for over six years and ultimately moved-on after a back injury, depleted business and spiralling rent on the Sunshine Coast sucked the last bit of fun out of living there. We may have left the Coast with less money than when we arrived, but we left all the more richer from it. I'll always have memories from those years of some of the best holidays with our kids that we could ever have wished for. We also got to enjoy having our son Brandon and his wife Riley live with us for the past 3 years while they saved for a place of their own. I'll always be ready to go back to visit them, but its their town now. Our time is over.

Brisbane City by night... looking towards Roma Street Station. It sure has grown in the past 32 years!

Which brings me back to Brisbane, the city to which I first moved almost 32 years ago when I left home as an innocent-eyed young bloke. The things I know now, and the knowledge of where I would have invested if I was young man again, are as useless to me now as a tray of expired meat! However, all these years later I find myself better equipped at recognising the other things in life that matter more than the size of a mortgage. I've also somehow landed in the position of being a full-time writer-come-modeller, thanks largely to having persevered for so long in the face of all of the above. My 18th book release is on its way from the publisher, which in itself is a testament to bouncing around from novelist, to railway adventurer, to poet, photographer and model railway how-to author, purely because it is what I've always wanted to do.

Ready for a new chapter back in Brisbane... almost 32 years after I moved here to be with Denise.

So the challenge is now to recognise this moment for what it is. It's like I've always told my kids; "it's not forever, it's just for now." That applies to the good in life as well as the bad. I'm just so mindful to not be the sort of person who is that hung up about what may have gone wrong in the past, that they don't recognise when the good moments finally arrive. For us, that moment is here, and I just want to be able to enjoy it, and still be productive through it with my time. The same time that I've found so hard to come by in the past. There's going to be more highlights that will follow. More moments that I'm sure I will mull over and ultimately gain an even deeper perspective on this ride called life. For now I'm still basking in the early morning light of that new day, and so glad that love is alive and flourishing in the honeymoon of a new story.