Bush Christmas took me back, New Year has me looking forward

New beginnings entice us to look back as well as to turn our minds to the future.

As New Year messages from friends and connections have flowed out across social media in the past 24 hours, it’s easy to see that pattern.

People want to recap what they’ve accomplished and experienced in the year they’ve just had, as they share their hopes and goals for the year ahead.

Such milestones are a chance to take stock, reflect on what we’ve learned and find clarity about the way forward. What should we keep, what to let go, what to pursue?

My career break in 2013 gave me more motive and opportunity all year to reflect on work and life.

Perhaps that’s why I felt so compelled during these Christmas holidays to revisit places from my early career?

Christmas at home with my family is always filled with memories – mostly happy, some sad, some difficult – and this year felt particularly nostalgic.

Most of the family gathered out in the bush in Western Australia, on my sister’s farm.

The landscape there mirrors farms where my siblings and I ran free as kids for Christmases in the late 1970s and 80s.

Acres of crunchy stubble from the recent harvest, golden hay bales lining the horizon, bunches of gum nuts, parched paddocks and heat hazes. Grazing sheep, kangaroos and blue tongue lizards.

If that wasn’t enough to make me reflect on how far I’ve come from the little girl who grew up running barefoot through the bush, I also revisited a couple of places from my early working life.

The roadhouse where I waitressed to put myself through university and the regional newspaper where, my arts degree freshly minted, I started my cadetship in journalism.

It was my first time back in that newsroom in almost two decades. Much had changed, but so much remained just the same – including a couple of journalists with whom I had worked all of those years ago as a young reporter learning my craft.

It didn’t matter to them, nor me, that I was returning to them during a pause in my career.

We enjoyed a joke about that which went something along these lines: “This is where her career began, all those years ago, and look at her now … out of work!”

I drove away from my surprise visit feeling happy and grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given, and the people I’ve met along the way.

Rural Australia, with its farms and small towns, is no longer where I live – but it’s so much a part of who I am. It still feels like home.

I step back into it like pulling on a favourite pair of well-worn old jeans. I’m proud of my country upbringing and the community values that come with that.

While there’s comfort in the familiar, the place to go for growth is outside your comfort zone.

That’s a place where I’ve ventured in so many different ways in the past year. From embracing uncertainty post-redundancy, to writing this blog, my experiences overseas as a traveller and volunteer, and pushing some familiar pursuits into unfamiliar territory – like singing and writing.

As I turn my mind to the year ahead, I’m ready to go back to work. That wasn’t always the case during 2013, but things shifted through December as I started to focus on my goals for the year ahead.

Looking back on my resolutions for 2013 – more creativity, fitness, travel, giving back to the community – I’m happy with what I did with my year and what it has let me contribute. Sometimes great opportunities come from unexpected, even unwanted forks in the road.

I’m perhaps most grateful for the opportunity to rediscover parts of myself and explore a more creative life. These are things that I will take with me as I look forward to the road ahead.

Wishing you happiness, health and success with whatever you’re dreaming about for 2014. Happy New Year!

M

This gallery has images taken in rural Western Australia over the Christmas period. Nothing says farm yard quite as strongly as a stack of old fencing wire and left over sheets of tin. Oh, and wild oats that bend in the breeze and shimmer in the setting sun. Mum tells me she’s had someone in to whipper snipper the yard so that it’s all neat and tidy for the start of the New Year, so I got this shot just in time!

The view down the paddock from the work bench in Dad’s shed. The cobwebs are gathering now from several years without use.

A blue tongue lizard on the farm in WA. He’s flashing his tongue as a warning, but they’re relatively peaceful unless provoked. As kids, we learned how to pick them up and move them out of harms way by holding them just behind the head. You would often find them eating the dry dog food on the back verandah, right beside the dog.

More sunset beauty around the farm.

The sun is shining and the farmers are making hay in WA, a lot of it destined to be compressed and exported to markets like Japan.

That’s an iconic piece of Australian history, right there – and it brings so many memories of childhood.

In the wheatbelt where I grew up, all the non-major roads in our district were gravel.

The Australian bush may not be as green as the forests in other countries, but there’s no shortage of colour, or beauty.

From old tin cans and tyres, to rusted pieces of equipment. Every piece of junk tells a story about the development of WA. This old piece of grate sits alongside the Perth to Kalgoorlie water pipeline and makes you wonder about the work and life that went on along its length as that iconic infrastructure was installed.

This section of hill that’s been cut through to form a track gives a cross section of what lies beneath the bush floor.

There’s beauty to be found everywhere in the bush. Don’t forget to look down at the ground beneath your feet.

This reflective picture seemed like the perfect image for a blog about reflecting on the year that’s just been and hopes for the year ahead. I love photos that cause you to do a double take about what you’re actually seeing. These are two timber marker poles in the Yarra River, which is reflecting a lovely blue sky with puffy white clouds. Once you see it, you will notice the ripples and leaves on the surface of the water. Magic. The pictures in this gallery were taken on New Year’s Eve in Melbourne.

This shot continues my obsession with reflection photos. The conditions were perfect on the Yarra for these sorts of shots first thing in the morning on New Year’s Eve.

Morning views of the MacRobertson Bridge on the Yarra River, Melbourne.

What struck me most about this one is that the main tree actually looks bolder and more defined in the reflection than it does in real life!