Photobombed...

Here we are at the 1st day of September. Summer has ended (although it's rather sunshine-y at Gidday HQ today) and Autumn will start its annual pilgrimage across the northern hemisphere, creeping in with nippy mornings and shorter days. The leaves will...

...hang on. Stop right there. This is not meant to be a post about Autumn!

Take 2:

Here we are at the 1st day of September. And today is Father's Day in Australia.

So in honour of celebrating the man that is my Dad and warm the cockles of your hearts, I though it was time to do a little roasting....Gidday-style.

Let's start at...well, the start.  Here's where it all began for us...


 I think that there's a slight 'okay now what do I do with this?' look here.

But soon he got into the swing of things...blowing out candes (an important lifeskill even today)...

 

...and giving fatherly advice.

 

 

(Meanwhile, I am practising my 'whatever' look.) 

 

The decades flashed by and a few years ago, Dad swapped the city for a life roaming around the countryside.

Taken in New Zealand but I have seen many a similar picture of Dad-and-Stepmum in Down Under's very own great outdoors.

His days now consist of travelling to outback properties and national parks around Australia, 'homestead-sitting', painting, mending fences - generally lending a hand wherever needed - and visiting family and friends, whether they may be other itinerants or those of more fixed abode. Dad even put his new-found construction skills to work at Christmas, stepping up to the challenge of making this for our Christmas Day host...

 

 ...and seemed rather pleased to consider some liquid refreshment after the big unveiling.

 

Dad's also become quite the photographer and newsletters are often filled with amazing pictures of the local flora and fauna he finds on their travels. (Click here to see some of his work.)  But it's a dangerous job you know - not at all for the faint-hearted...

 

 

And nor has it been to have two rather independent and opinionated daughters living a few hours flight away for most of our lives. Which is why our recent frolicking about in old Melbourne Town last December was such a great testament to the passing of the years and the changes in our relationship.

 

 

Because growing up, I would never have credited Dad with photobombing!

 

(By the way, that's me on the left with Lil Chicky and the old man.)

 

So there's only one thing left to do and that is to say Happy Father's Day to my old man.

 

May you keep finding ways to surprise us all!