In this Herald series,we asked prominent artists,comedians,authors and journalists to write about their “summer that changed everything”.
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I wanted to learn something new,something hard,and be gracious at sucking at it. And everyday I got on that skateboard,I fell. I fell several times each hour. I broke my wrist twice.
There was rain on her wedding day but the sun eventually came out for a tiptoe through the beachside park.
As the fires raged,we huddled in an evacuation centre with 100 other people:it was Armageddon-like.
My pregnancy was not an easy one,but there were some days of magic – including three glorious hours singing at the top of my lungs with some of my closest girlfriends (and 96,000 others) to Taylor Swift.
At the southern Italian port of Brindisi,I bought a map of Africa and set off on the trip of my life,which felt like a long-running Bob Dylan song.
What a week in Sydney that was:I caught the train home feeling like I had been dumped by a big,sweaty,wonderful wave.
With Eurail passes and no plans,these “serious girls who had studied hard” were ready to cut loose,and Greece was calling.
Returning to a very different city,I had a new job,an apartment,friends and was free to enjoy life for the first time in a long time:all solidified by an eerie beach experience.
From blue cheese and frog legs,to learning Latin in French:here’s how I fared being thrown into a French winter with the vocabulary of a two-year-old.
Outside,the city was baking,but my world had just narrowed and widened to just my boy.
On one hot summer morning 20 years ago,events on the other side of the planet intruded in the most shocking way.
When Niki Savva ended up in the nation’s capital she had the most exciting,dramatic and news-sodden time in her 50 years of political reporting.
Swinging alone in a hammock designed for two at an exotic beach resort I began to feel hopeless. Until I saw him.
The bride wafted by with a sly eye that was not for me but my later bride-to-be.
There was no dancing,so was my 40th birthday party a failure? Or was this a disguised farewell to both the times that had been and the people who had experienced them with me?
Beach fishing is akin to crossing the desert in search of an oasis. For one week in 1986,my grandfather and I took that trip together on the NSW South Coast.
It was a summer of wild adventure through Europe:dancing on rooftops,swimming in fountains and sneaking into Roman ruins at midnight.
The fatal felling of Phillip Hughes reinforced the fragility and preciousness of life for this cricket correspondent and first-time parent.
Emigrating is an exhausting summer pastime. To do it once is challenging,twice could be considered madness. No more ping-ponging for us.
Gen Z’s ability to romanticise even the most mundane situation,like an overnight Greyhound bus trip,is a useful skill that served Maggie Zhou well on her West Coast adventure.
She thought I was annoying;I can be. But our weekend getaways evolved into week-long adventures.
Robbed twice,bitten by a dog,pushed in front of a train and “hit” by a car:this comedian certainly arrived in London with a bang.
Despite a near-miss,Liz Hayes’ driving ambition won through.
A brutal,salt-ridden learning curve for the young Markus Zusak was well worth it.
I had always been faintly sniffy about bogan Australian tourists in trouble abroad. You’ve seen them on the news,right?
I should have felt like a freak,but I felt like a perfectly acceptable person. Until I didn’t.
Monte,a golden-haired cavoodle,was born in Orange one shimmering,hot January before he headed west – Sydney’s inner west,otherwise known as Cavoodle Country.
I was entrusted with carrying a baby on my shoulders across a murky estuary,ensuring we didn’t become lunch for crocodiles.
Deborah Snow worked as a Moscow correspondent at a time when the Soviet Union had just dissolved,Boris Yelstin was in power and tensions were high. It was also where she met her future husband on an unlikely helicopter day trip.
Richard Glover was reading live on ABC Radio the latest fire evacuation orders on January 4,2020. His property was on the list.
You know it’s bad when you opt for a Motorhead rock concert to get a bit of shoosh from the summer wildlife.