Dear Reader,

It’s been a year since I began writing Victoria in the Country. This seems a good time to call a halt. I might return one day, feeling refreshed and raring to go again, but for the time being family matters need my attention. I also plan to see a little more of Australia before I reach my dotage.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my daily ramblings.

I started the blog with the idea that readers could find it informative, and perhaps entertaining, to follow a blog about seasonal life in country Victoria.

While I’m not sure I achieved that, I’ve had enough feedback to suggest that Victoria in the Country has been visited by at least three other readers, apart from yourself, and a shirtload of spambots.

Occasionally I’ve dragged out the soapbox to air my preoccupations with issues – such as climate change and the genetic modification of food plants – both of which threaten life as we know it. At the risk of leaving you feeling bashed about the head, I wrote those posts because I believe our children face enough challenges without inheriting the results of our apathy.

You might remember my 2008 Christmas wish for an ‘annus mirabilis’. Since then we’ve weathered more storms than we could possibly have imagined. Before the new year even began, a ship jam-packed with greedy fools looked certain to founder on the rocks. Had it not been for bailout action by tax payers, that ship would have sunk. It still might.

The February bushfires will forever stay in memory as one of the darkest times in our lives. If you were caught up in that inferno, our thoughts are with you still. Much has been done, and needs to be done, to assist you who have lost so much. If you’re still waiting for help, demand it; shout and scream for it if you must.

Those terrible events coloured our view of life among the gum trees. We’re now less complacent about what we know of bushfires and what we need to do to survive them.

With family and friends so far away, I can’t deny that our tree change took some adjustment. But once I’d recovered from the initial shock and began to make an effort, it was quite easy to find like-minded people. As the song says: ‘The love you take is equal to the love you make.’

Rather than writing about the nitty-gritty of my happy but mundane life (guaranteed to bore you rigid within seconds), it was the glimpses of this area’s beauty that I hoped would interest you: its indigenous past, its gold-rush history, its swathes of bushland, its animals, plants and prosperous farmland.

Why write about me when, compared to the miracle of a star-laden sky, what am I, what is any of us, but the tiniest speck in the scheme of things? (Bloody hell, I hear you mutter, who tripped her philosopho-meter.)

Throughout my travels in cyberspace, my partner has been his usual generous self, never worrying that I wore my blog suit till lunch time, or sat at the computer for hours, or ambled around the garden taking snapshots while the laundry piled up, the dust bunnies drifted and the dishes went unwashed. (It’s true… computers eat your life.)

There are others who encouraged me on the way (it’s okay, I’m not about to turn this into a Gwyneth Paltrowesque acceptance speech).

Step at GreenGraphics did a splendid job of designing the site and of patiently instructing me in the mysteries of the blogosphere. If you need a good-looking, visitor-friendly website, he’s your go-to man.

Thanks, too, to our dear friend John Mayger who generously allowed me to use some of his photographs, and to Mary Goodall for her insightful comments and friendship. And to my sister Cath and brother Bill, who’ve always encouraged me. And thank you Sophie and Tyrone for tirelessly keeping an eye on what we’re up to. I love youse all.

Thank you for visiting Victoria in the Country. Until next time…