The New Year 2026

May it be a year of peace, contentment, exploration and adventure.

The New Year – 2026

May it be a year of peace, contentment, exploration and adventure.

What to write as 2025 ends and the new year begins? Something pithy, wise, uplifting, inspirational!

Or, maybe just the musings of a 76-year-old beachcomber/fossicker. As well as seeking those beach and bush finds, I seek to have a full and meaningful life. Robert Dessaix in ‘Chamelion’ talks of “amplifying all the pleasurable, life-giving things”, and focussing on “meaningful happiness” as he ages.

It’s a reflective time of the year so maybe I’ll comb and fossick my thoughts.

This year has been a shock. After years of good health and physical well-being, my body is showing signs of wear and tear. I ‘puff’ (‘Breathlessness’ is probably the correct medical term.), if I encounter the slightest hill, yet I’m a fit bushwalker. How can this be?

After a year of every heart and lung test available to modern medicine, and that’s a lot in Australia under our free government Medicare, there is no solution. I was thinking long Covid at the best, but maybe it’s ‘old age’ Well I can’t be deterred by that. My title is ‘Adventuring Lou’.

As well, my past outdoor life has come back to bite me -figuratively, in the form of a scalpel - as I have had numerous serious skin cancers removed this year. But as my cousin of a similar age tells me : ”If you get to 70 and there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.”

But a focus on health rather than travel and adventure has shaken me. Do I need to review and recalibrate my idea of self? Once we were defined by our job, our marital status, our hobbies. In ‘retirement’ ( I hate that word. We have not retired from life.), I am now a designated ‘beachcomber’ on all official forms. That title hints of hope, of movement, of discovery. How would you describe yourself? Something that defines you now? Something that gives you a kick of self-esteem, a secret smile to yourself, but doesn’t get you arrested in a passport queue.

A friend has recently given me a support sloth with the wording:

“ Positive sloth. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.”

That sums it up. The adventures continue. Maybe, they are just as simple as when walking through the dunes to the beach for my daily swim, I step over a blue-tongue lizard sunning itself on the path, or startle the pademelon in the Acacia sophore, or look up to see the fantails chirping in the Eucalypts. Maybe finding a pristine scallop shell nestled in the sand, or maybe just reacting with a smile when a two-year-old on the beach is chuckling as she frolics in the foreshore waves, her life adventures just beginning. Simple pleasures. Awareness and appreciation is ageless!

Before Christmas I had friends from Germany visiting. I loved showing off aspects of the Tasmania that I love. It is also a sure-fire way to reinvigorate your enthusiasm for the place you call home. We went out on the wilderness boat from Eaglehawk Neck, where I lived for so long. The weather was warm, the sea was calm, and as well as the towering mud-stone and dolerite cliffs, we were accosted by the area’s wild-life - hump-back whales still heading to Antarctica late in the season; dolphins diving under and around the boat; seals, flippers raised, lolling in the light swell; and albatross snatching up the fish brought to the surface by the whales wallowing.

I took the rock-climber friends to the base of the Organ Pipes that rise on kunanyi (Mt Wellington) above Hobart. They calculated the route they would climb if they had more time. That’s not for me though. I had enough of a problem ‘bouldering’ , or ‘rock-hopping’ as we say, with short legs and damaged knees. Still possible, but slowly.

Then to Hobart Rivulet platypus spotting, and spot we did. In my youth we would never have seen a platypus in the city but with the rivulet cleaned up and appreciated, the platypus have returned.

So many adventures just around my home, and in my home State of Tasmania.

A meaningful and full life to me, and we’re all different, is to be out in nature, to walk in the bush and along the beaches, to fight to protect the bush and the seas. To read, to understand what is happening in the world, to the environment, and to stand up to protect those beliefs whether it be stopping native forest logging, halting krill fishing in Antarctica, keeping our coastal bays free from rubbish and pollution, stopping inappropriate development or speaking out against war and poverty.

Ahhhhh - a ‘woke’, Green, socialist!

I look forward, in the year ahead, to new experiences, new places, exploration and adventure. I already have my map, on the table, of the ‘mainland’ of Australia to head once again in my Troopie, during Winter, to the dry, isolated Outback and all that it has to offer. I see I haven’t been to Karlamilyi National Park in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. There’s a destination; and in such contrast to forested, coastal, agricultural Tasmania.

Maybe I’ll do it more slowly than in the past - travel and life - less kilometres per day, more bird-watching, but it is not time to stop… yet!

And you… your vision for the new year?