Musings about life in retirement from academe
That must be mission impossible. If I waited to complete this task I would never be able to tick it off on my bucket list because so long as I continue to take photos more organising will be required, to say nothing of the backlog of older photos awaiting organising. In the interest of getting through my list I decided...
To Australians who have lived more than a few decades and travelled even occasionally outside major cities it must be apparent that the countryside has degenerated. Most obvious to us is the reduction in even ponded water, let alone flow, in the Lockyer Creek which we cross at Helidon and near Gatton on our way East to Brisbane or the...
It’s hardly surprising that, as we approach and enter retirement, we take a more active interest in retirement incomes and how they are generated. Interest rates are too low to preserve the value of savings against inflation let alone do that while generating an income stream that will support any reasonable lifestyle. Hence superannuation and other savings, or at least...
I find it difficult to avoid increasing awareness of economics nowadays. That’s especially true since I retired and our superannuation savings were flipped into income phase leaving us exposed to the vagaries of the financial markets. Being in the markets didn’t seem so bad while I was working and had an income stream adding to superannuation. Now things are running...
We don’t often get to the beach. Toowoomba is a couple of hours drive from the nearest beaches and when we do go there it is mostly to visit family and friends rather than frolic on the beach. In any case, for some reason I’m not a great fan of sand in my bodily crevices or salt crust on my...
Another of the items I pulled out in the draw for my ‘bucket list‘ was “Walk in a rainforest”. I didn’t think that was likely to happen in Europe, though now that I’ve taken a moment to check it seems there are some fragments of temperate rainforest in Europe, including around Loch Maree which we passed by on our drive...
The activity that generated my ‘bucket list‘ was driven by Majella, perhaps with some assistance from the other wives, so it was no real surprise that one of the items was ‘take your beautiful wife out to dinner’. That seemed like an easy inclusion for me, especially since we were planning to travel for 3 months and would need to...
Another of the items on my ‘bucket list‘ was to ‘visit a waterfall’. I didn’t expect that to be a major challenge because we have always enjoyed short walks in the forest to visit waterfalls. At the same time we were going to be away for 12 weeks and had no specific plans for waterfall visits in that time unlike...
Reading a novel was one of the 10 items on my ‘bucket list’ that I expected should not be challenging in retirement. Thus it was one that I decided to tackle early. The lucky break I had with Emily’s quinoa cake took care of trying a new food so I had already ticked off the first item on my list....
As of Monday, 1 January, I am officially retired. My retirement arrangement with USQ specified 31 December, 2017, as my retirement date with all leave to be taken prior to that date. It is 6 months since I did my last day of work at USQ and went on extended leave from 4 July.