Many thanks to The Big Issue Australia, which has just published ‘Life span’ in edition #619.

As is always the case with my Big Issue stories, I’ll hold off running the whole story here on this little blog for a few weeks.

You can usually purchase The Big Issue from street vendors, though that’s not the case in Melbourne, Victoria at the moment.

In the meantime, a short extract:

My daughter Hannah and I take six-year-old Olive and three-year-old Jethro across their great-grandfather’s bridge and along the soft banks of the creek. No snakes in winter.

We bend under branches and wend our way until we cross the main road. No traffic at this time of the year.

A sandy track takes us to the beach, where the low-tide sand and the long wide waves open their arms to us.