Life-Style


North Yorkshire- A Picture Postcard Weekend

Can a place really be so green, lush and beautiful? I spent the weekend with friends in their converted barn near Skipton in North Yorshire. It was a fleeting visiting to a friend I had worked with in Australian before she married and moved to the UK 20 years ago….

21 May 2019 | Life-Style

Discovering Nottingham

It’s 7am and from my lovely apartment in Nottingham I look out on a landscape waking up to gentle sunshine. It’s going to be another glorious sunny day. I overlook a sea of new buildings and cranes scratching to take their place in the sky. It’s a struggle to house…

16 May 2019 | Life-Style

London Calling!

It’s 4.45am here in London and it’s dawn. The birds are practicing the Hallelujah chorus and there’s a distant hum of London traffic. I arrived yesterday and even in my jet-lagged state managed to walk 18 kilometres – not sure what that is in miles….10, 000 steps a day? Hah!…

9 May 2019 | Life-Style

UK Adventure- Creating & Revisiting Memories

On Tuesday I board a flight from Melbourne to London. Twenty two hours later I’ll land at Heathrow as I have done many times before. This time is different. It’s a month long holiday which for the last 20 years has been unheard of. Running a business and with the…

3 May 2019 | Life-Style

A Tree Change – Life Change Part 3 – Building work begins

We’ve been following Chris O’Connor and his family as they extend an 1860’s cottage and build another house for his parents on the same block. In the previous two articles Chris describes his decision to have a ” gap year” in later life and move to Victoria to pursue his…

28 April 2019 | Life-Style

Iconic Architecture- The Top 5?

When Notre Dame burned there was disbelief and a collective grief expressed from many corners of the world.  We know the images of iconic buildings as if we have been there. And if we have travelled there the experience of identity with that building is profound. Notre Dame was/is iconic…

25 April 2019 | Life-Style

Easter Memories

I love Easter!  In Melbourne it’s an autumn festival teetering on the edge on winter and with just the right amount of sunshine to encourage us outdoors. In the UK where I grew up, its spring and buds burst into life and a new energy is born. With 2.2billion Christians…

18 April 2019 | Life-Style

A Tree Change – Life Change (part 2) by Chris O’Connor

Last week we enjoyed the story of Chris O’Connor’s “Gap Year” and the life change that followed. Moving from New South Wales to Chatsworth Lodge, a Victorian heritage listed cottage with grand plans to restore the beautiful old home, sympathetically add to it and build a new cottage on the…

7 April 2019 | Life-Style

A Tree Change – Life Change by Chris O’Connor Part One

A recurring theme in the stories of our generation is the search for a new way of life. Recently, we read about  Inge Hatton’s inspirational journey from Montreal in Canada, finding a Buddhist path in Colorado which led her to establish a new way of life in Nova Scotia. The…

1 April 2019 | Life-Style