Lifelong Learning

22/10/2026

Yesterday, Helen Shanks and I joined the Walk for Reconciliation – Kaarta Koomba – Kings Park. What a wonderful morning of walking, listening and learning.

We began with a smoking ceremony, then made our way through Kings Park, stopping along the way to hear stories, learn more about reconciliation and enjoy traditional dancing and didgeridoo playing.

What stayed with me was the generosity of Australia's First Nations peoples in sharing their culture, stories and history. And the warmth with which we were welcomed.

I've long believed that listening is one of the most powerful ways we learn. Yesterday was a lovely reminder of that. There is so much we can discover when we're willing to listen, ask questions and understand experiences beyond our own.

And perhaps that's where reconciliation begins. With a willingness to listen and learn from one another.

A beautiful morning, followed by lunch and a good old yarn with Helen. Because learning happens everywhere, including over lunch. 😊❤️

06/10/2026

I got angry reading the news this morning. Really angry.

And somewhere between for f**k’s sake and hang on, that isn’t actually the question, this piece emerged.

It’s about grief, empathy, 7 October, 26 January and the contradiction of talking about social cohesion while deciding whose pain deserves to be heard.

Whose grief are we willing to hear?

I read the news today and got angry. Really angry. Australian political leaders were lining up to tell people they shouldn’t hold pro-Palestinian vigils on 7 October.

26/09/2026

I’ve been thinking about the difference between hearing someone and actually listening to them.

It’s easy enough when we agree. It gets much harder when something someone says has us blinking rapidly and preparing our rebuttal before they’ve finished the sentence.

So I’m curious.

When you strongly disagree with someone, do you keep listening? What makes you stop?

The first thing I read this morning was that Australia has an empathy problem.

31/08/2026

A glorious Djilba day in Perth. On our way to a show at the Ice Cream Factory.

Relationships, politics, the WA by-election, federal meekness and the state of the world were all thoroughly discussed. Nothing was resolved.

Maybe that’s the thing about a good conversation. You don’t have to solve the world. Just stay curious enough to keep talking — and listening.

The bubbles help. 🥂

20/07/2026

Curiosity, Conversation, Connection: The Pattern I Keep Finding

I hosted a kitchen table conversation recently—the kind where the only agenda is to talk. And somewhere in the middle of it, listening to people who'd normally never sit at the same table find their way toward each other, I felt something I recognised immediately. The familiarity of connection when the space is right for conversation and curiosity.

This is the thing I love. This is the thing I've always done, in whatever form it was willing to take.

Afterwards, I found myself tracing it all the way back. Conversations in my shed, where the real talking always seemed to happen once the tools came out. Long table lunches, where nobody left until every voice had been heard. Tea-table events. Every communications workshop I ever ran, dressed up as professional development but really just an excuse to get people curious about each other again.

I've realised there's a quiet thread running through almost everything I've ever done.

It begins with curiosity.

Curiosity asks questions before it reaches conclusions. It wonders rather than assumes. It leaves room for learning, for surprise, and for the possibility that someone else's experience might teach us something we don't yet know.

Curiosity naturally becomes conversation.

Just people sitting together, asking questions, listening well and thinking out loud. The kind of conversations where we don't have to have all the answers before we begin.

And from those conversations comes connection.

Connection isn't about everyone agreeing. It's about recognising our shared humanity even when we see the world differently. It's the moment someone feels heard. The moment a stranger becomes a neighbour. The moment an idea becomes something we can build together.

That afternoon at the kitchen table was all three, in miniature. Curious questions. Real conversation. And by the end, something like connection between people who'd arrived as strangers.

The more I write, the more I notice this pattern appearing—in every conversation, whatever form it takes, unbidden, unplanned, almost stubborn in its persistence.

Curiosity.
Conversations.
Connections.

Perhaps that's what lifelong learning has always been about. Not collecting more information. Becoming more connected—to ourselves, to each other and to the world we're trying to understand.

Retirement hasn't ended any of this—it's just changed the rooms it happens in. These days it's writing. It's every conversation that turns up uninvited. And with a new grand-baby in the world, it's train trips again too—new tracks, new adventures, and no doubt a whole new set of strangers to talk to along the way.

If there's a common thread through my life, I think this is it.

16/07/2026

Just published this morning's thought—on the heartbreak of watching leadership fail the test of consistency, across every government I've voted for and against.

It's not really about politics. It's about what happens to trust when kindness and fairness start depending on who's asking.

What does it mean to have your heart broken by leadership?

11/07/2026

The arrival of a grandchild has reminded me of something I already knew, but had somehow forgotten.

Love arrives without asking permission.

It doesn't matter how old you are. The first time you hold a new baby, something shifts. You find yourself imagining their future. Wondering who they'll become. Hoping they'll know kindness. Hoping they'll laugh often. Hoping they'll never have to experience the things that break hearts.

And then I realised something.

Every child arrives in the world surrounded by people who feel exactly the same.

Parents.
Grandparents.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Friends.

Love is universal.

No country has a monopoly on it.
No culture owns it.
No religion invented it.

Every baby is born into someone's whole world.

Which makes me wonder...

How do we become so accustomed to seeing children killed in wars that it begins to feel like background noise?

How do we reach a point where one family's grief matters more than another's?

How do politics, power, history and ideology become louder than the simple truth that every life is precious to someone?

I don't have easy answers.
I only know that holding my grandchild has made the headlines impossible to read in the same way.

Because somewhere, tonight, another grandmother is holding a baby just as tightly. Or wishing she still could.

Perhaps peace doesn't begin with agreeing about everything.
Perhaps it begins by remembering that before we are citizens, before we are voters, before we belong to nations, we all belong to someone.

And every child deserves the chance to grow up surrounded by the love that welcomed them into the world.

28/06/2026

She wants one flag. One culture. One story. But whose? And who decided she gets to tell it?

New piece—kindness as the sharpest tool in the room.

Link here: https://digranger.substack.com/p/the-thing-about-monoculture

22/06/2026

When Conflict Becomes the Story

I was reminded yesterday of group dynamics.

Whenever people come together around something they care about, there comes a moment when differences emerge.

Different ideas.
Different experiences.
Different visions of what should happen next.

It's uncomfortable.

Sometimes it feels like something has gone wrong.

Yet I found myself thinking about Bruce Tuckman's model of group development: Forming. Storming. Norming. Performing.

Most people love the idea of performing.

Few enjoy storming.

Storming is where we discover we don't all see the world the same way.

It can feel messy.
It can feel frustrating.
It can even feel like failure.

But perhaps it is simply evidence that something real is beginning.

As I reflected on the day, I kept coming back to two thoughts:

Conflict was trying to become the story.

Listening remained the purpose.

Whether in community groups, workplaces, families or friendships, perhaps the challenge isn't avoiding disagreement.

Perhaps it's remembering why we came together in the first place.

15/06/2026

Kindness has a branding problem. We've confused it with niceness, with agreement, with never making anyone uncomfortable. But real kindness is harder than that—and more interesting.

New piece on Substack—link below:

https://digranger.substack.com/p/kindness-has-a-branding-problem