Eighty percent of my childhood family holidays were exactly the same. We’d pile into the 1985 Tarago and drive for an hour until the first of us shouted, “I see the trees,” shortly followed by “I see the sea.” Our Gran owned a beach shack where we’d spend a week every school holidays. Tall gums lined the only road in and out, and we’d crane our necks on the approach to be the first to spot the sign we were almost there.

The middle months of the year are often long. The cloudy, rainless days seem to drag on and on. The brilliant colours of summer are over and everything seems brown, grey, unexciting, dull. Daylight is short, and is filled with endless tasks, some that inspire, but many others that must simply be done. 

And yet, even in these gloomy days, there are moments of joy. Of discovery. Of creativity. Of wonder. Oh to wonder as a child does, with even the smallest of things inspiring great fascination and delight!

Have you seen the trees,

that stood before my time and yours

Have you walked among them

and felt a peace beyond tomorrow 

Have you placed your hand against their bark

And remembered how to breathe