I survived! Well – all right – weeks back at my old school, at my old job as a Primary Visual Arts Educator isn’t really pushing the limits of survival (and the Commonwealth Games gave Victoria a short term for me to settle back into paid teaching!), but there’s been so many changes for Victorian government teachers during the almost ten years I've spent pursuing my writing dream.

I am still pursuing my dream and getting closer to the completed manuscript of my new work, the first novel of a planned trilogy about Katherine of Aragon, but family priorities must be considered first here. Ten years as a mostly singled income family has left our mortgage at a standstill – and it is time to either change that or think about moving elsewhere.

I really, really love where I live – so back to school I go.

I remember when my husband told me he wanted to move our family here. "M_______?" I asked, and I looked out my kitchen window. The closeness of the fence separating our inner city home from our neighbour’s hedged me in. Daily, I grieved for the absence of trees and the morning chorus of birds. Suddenly, my husband’s suggestion filled me with a yearning to return to a place closer ‘home;’ to a place I remembered from my younger years. A place that nourished my spirit, gave me ‘space’ to breathe, think, and create.

I grew up less than one hour away from M________. I took for granted trees, as it journeyed kilometres to my parent’s property, in my morning walks I saw deep valleys turned into pale oceans of dawn-kissed mists, treading upon dirt tracks marked by the signs of wildlife; in summer, the earth showed passage of a slithering snake at my feet.

Going to High School, I travelled down Heidelberg-Kinglake Road- the twisting, stomach-turning and sometimes dangerous road transporting ‘Kinglake kids’ part of the lengthy journey to the now defunct Hurstbridge High. With wildlife abounding in my growing-up years, I took for granted the morning sight of kangaroos bounding in bushland cut through by the road conveying us to school. Mobs of kangaroos even grazed on the lush, green grass of the school’s oval.

For me, Hurstbridge High was just the perfect High school. I came out of it filled with lofty ambitions of the novels and paintings I would one day create. Hurstbridge High introduced me to Eltham friends and soon to greater intimacy with Eltham itself. Many of these friends were the offspring of people pursuing creative pursuits, as were many of our teachers- some of my friends were even part of artist colonies. Then, as now, M_______ seemed part of the Eltham’s environs; I remember school friends describing M________ as Eltham’s little sister.

Flooded with these memories of earlier days, my husband easily persuaded me to put our city house on the market. We became residents of M________ and I found myself returned to a greater sense of belonging, my feet set more firmly on the road to realising some of my teenage dreams. I only have to walk outside and I am in a leafy neighbourhood nourishing and inspiring my creativity, my spirit.

Seven years after moving to M________, my first novel became published. The longer I live here, the more entrenched I’ve become in my writing journey, my true art, and a well of joy overflows to every particle of my being. With my home abutting a small, heavily treed reserve, I again awake to the songs of birds.