As longstanding readers will know, I was one of the founders of Troppo along with Nicholas Gruen and several others including Mark Bahnisch and Don Arthur. The latter two moved on to other things (Don was a research at the Federal Parliamentary Library last time I heard, a role that prevents him from publishing material except on the most anodyne topics).
My blogging progressively slowed down after my wife Jen was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in early 2017 and given 6 months to live. I developed a series of melanomas at around the same time (a casualty of years spent as a professional lifeguard on Sydney’s northern beaches as I worked my way through uni in the 1970s).
In 2019 we moved to Melbourne so that Jen could participate in clinical trials at the world-leading Peter Maccallum Cancer Centre. It was the best decision we ever made because she is still alive 7.5 years later and has done more clinical trials than any other patient Peter Mac have ever had. She started her most recent one a fornight ago and we will find out next Monday whether it is working. I certainly hope it is because otherwise no other options are currently available and she really WILL have six months or so to live.
I didn’t do any blogging at all after we moved to Melbourne, partly through the need to support Jen and partily because we had to sell our Darwin properties. I had close down my private legal practice before we left Darwin and I retired from academia at CDU in 2022 (although I hadn’t taught or done anything else there after we moved to Melbourne. I existed on varous forms of accured leave between 2019 and 2022.
Eearlier this year we bought an apartment in St Kilda, which is now home.
Anyway, although I have found plenty to keep me occupied I am starting to get a bit bored. I am doing quite a bit of exercise and am fitter and slimmer than I have been for 35 years. I have also taken up playing piano again after a gap ofmore than two decades, and am gradually improving.
But it’s time to resume blogging. Writing is a habit and one I hope I can redevop. I am intending that my first article will be on the pros and cons of nuclear power for Australia, which the Coalition under Peter Dutton has embraced. You may have noticed it was the topic of last night’s Four Corners program, but I have been researching it for quite some time. I hope to publish the post in the next couple of days, so look out for it.