Red Moon Rising

After watching the Red Moon Rising over the hills near Taggerty in Australia, on my 65th birthday, I realised that many people might consider that I was also “over the hill”. But then I thought back on what I had dome in the five years since turning sixty, and realised that there can be a new life after 60. After living through horrific bushfires in our region in 2009, my wife and I started a steel pan band as a music therapy project for survivors of the bushfires, and I started playing the six-bass in the band (my first musical foray since playing the trombone as a teenager). In 2010, we bought a canal barge and started cruising the canals and rivers of France in the northern summers. In 2012, I was involuntarily retired when an incoming State Government cancelled written contracts our company had for doing large-scale travel surveys in Queensland. This freed up more time to spend in France, and in 2013, we bought a house in Moissac, France, which we renovated in 2014. All these disparate threads came together in late 2014, when our steelband Pans on Fire came to France for a concert tour, stayed in our renovated house, and participated in a Barge Rally that we organised in Moissac. All of which demonstrated that there can be “a new life after 60”, providing you remain optimistic and keep looking to the future.