When I was around 9 years old, my family packed up and went off for a couple of weeks to Bateman’s Bay on the south coast of New South Wales for our summer holidays. We’d rented an old cottage across from the bay. We being my mother,

When we lived in Japan, I decided to send my three year old daughter, Lulu, to a local preschool just down the road. An American neighbor had sent her daughter there and said it was good for her child as there was no one who spoke English so her daughter learnt Japanese quickly.

I’ve spent my life surrounded by journalists. My mother was a journalist in the 1930s – on papers very few people remember or know about – Smith’s Weekly and the Labor Daily. She used to tell me great stories about her experiences. Later I married a journalist, Paul Dougherty who spent his working life in newspapers.

Children growing up today hardly know what a stamp is. Even the middle aged very rarely go into the local post office and buy some stamps to mail letters.

Growing up the western suburbs of Sydney, I knew there was a huge world out there but it seemed to be unobtainable.

Over the past week the radio and TV have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beetles amazing Sgt Peppers recording. Can it be 50 years?

Fifty years ago, I was travelling from Sydney to Hong Kong to meet my husband who had taken a job there.

Recently, I lost my friend, Robyn. She died in Bali after a suffering a very bad stroke. Although she had had a rather bad time recently with a few problems, they seemed under control, and I was looking forward to seeing her on my next trip.