A Road Trip in New South Wales

Starting off, heading north.

We were all packed and ready to go. Early. We'd got ourselves organised so the last day or two could be to complete work. On the Thursday before our planned Saturday departure I went to my obstetrician for a routine check-up. She'd given me the go-ahead to travel. However, things had changed since I last saw her, and the H1N1 threat had worsened. A locked cabin for a few hours on the way to Vanuatu was not her idea of a worthwhile risk for a 5 and a half month pregnant woman.

Some heavy decision-making followed. I had a deadline for the Friday and didn't have time to change tack.... Francis stepped in. We agreed to let the Vanuatu holiday go for now, and take a road trip north. He contacted the insurance people, and I got back to work.

Less than 48 hours later our suitcases had been re-packed with warm clothes, we'd thrown in some food and we set out on our Northern NSW road trip. It wasn't Vanuatu, but it was Australia, and we were to discover some of the lovelier places within a seven hour drive of our home.

For those not in the know, New South Wales is not a small place. It covers and area of 801,600 square kilometers (about two thirds of the size of South Africa or nearly four times the size of Great Britain) and has 780 national parks. The Great Dividing Range runs the length of the State from Victoria in the south to Queensland in the north, with the highest mountains reaching above 1000m. Most Australians live within 50km of the coast and in areas outside of cities, most Australians live even closer to the coast. The vast hinterland is not an area I am at all familiar with, but I hear that people manage the harsh lifestyle and the vast distances.

We set off North on Saturday morning the 1st of August. The short version is that we shuffled back and forth up and down the Great Dividing Range and the coast for just over a week. We saw some fantastic scenery. Lots of what I was seeking and what I like to call Bluery and Greenery. And animals - my first koala in the wild, whales (including getting involved in an exciting binocular search with national parks staff to find a whale that had become entangled in some fishing line and a bouy), porpoises, dolphins, black cockatoos, domestic dogs, a wallaby, some fenced-in kangaroos, a dead wombat or two, and a lot of non-city folk.

We stayed in some funky accommodations, most of which I can recommend and which I have a list of if anyone needs it:

• Saturday and Sunday: Bellingen (a great mountain town on the gorgeous Belliger river, and home of a great music festival, headlined this year by the famous South African musician Hugh Masekela who I am going to see in October)
• Monday and Tuesday: Woolgoolga (yes, all the t-shirts say 'where on earth is Woolgoolga', and most people just fondly call it Whoopi. It's just north of Coff's Harbour and has a good whale watching headland)
• Wednesday: Dorrigo (a mountain town, at almost 1000m altitude)
• Thursday: Armidale (a University town reminiscent of Pretoria)
• Friday and Saturday: Tea Gardens (the twin town of Hawks Nest on the Myall waterways just north of Nelsons Bay, and my idea of heaven - I'd be happy to go back holiday after holiday after holiday)
• Sunday: back home.

We traveled 1850km. The highlight was in Tea Gardens. We'd read a local book that said that if we went to the top of the bridge between Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest at 9.30pm we'd see dolphins playing in below. This seemed a bit too specific, and perhaps a touch implausible. But we dutifully drove to the bridge (embarrassing as we realised it was just 200 m away, but it was cold out!) and walked up to the top. It was freezing. We heard a large splash, and could not quite place it as the river is way too far upstream for waves. There, in the disturbed water, was a large dolphin surfing on it's back. It was fantastic - fully visible in the street light from the bridge. Then, after a cold wait, we saw two more dolphins, and another. We shivered and watched, and they came and went in through the light and the bridge shallows. We headed for our accommodation to to rug up some more, but it was too cold to get back out.

The next night we thought we might be a bit late. We put on loads on clothes and in our best imitation of Michelin Men walked to the bridge and took up our vantage points, Francis on one pavement and me on the other. And there they were - three dolphins. A very large mum and her juvenile (we later heard it was probably Nicky, a well known matriarch in the area). She was teaching her young one to fish. They dashed in and out of the well lit shallow waters, and disappeared for up to ten minutes at a time. It was magical, just magical. When the dolphins wer elsewhere we entertained ourselves watching silent pelicans paddling by on the nightly fishing expedition, and some rather haunting black swans whose red beaks gave them away against the shadows.

It was a great nine days, and an incredible realisation that there are places just three hours from Sydney that are at least as gorgeous as Knysna in South Africa, my usual holiday haunt (which is five hours from Cape Town). I can imagine us taking our little Spud there, to the Myall lakes area at Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest, many times in the future. And nine days with Francis was just the best start to August - good company, good conversation and spontaneous travel decisions.

For pics of the trip on Picasa, click here

Aussie Women continue to earn less than men

Last year in October I wrote about women earning less than men in Australia. I just came across an update at Women's Forum where Robert Tanton of the University of Canberra writes that women are catching up but the progress is slow.

I am amazed by the anecdotal evidence I see around me every day. Of all the women I know, almost none earn more than their men. That's a simple fact, and one that needs stating. There are plenty of reasons for this, and Robert Tanton touches on a number of these, but even not taking into account the times that women don't work full time (babies and the like), women's salaries start to lag behind men's in their early years, and generally lag far behind men's salaries in their later years.

I work with social entrepreneurs and small business people, and a great deal with people in the non-profit sector. And here the trend is emphasised. While some social entrepreneurs who are men tend to take on the social justice ethos, which in this country seems to involve not earning much, it is women that I see earning erratically and only for particular hours that they count as "really working". Robert Stanton makes the point that in salaried positions, and he is not distinguishing in which kinds of salaried positions, women tend to take unpaid hours to do child and family care and men mostly slot in those times to flexible paid hours. This is a difference in perception between the way men and women see their roles, in my opinion.

But back to those working in the social justice arena - I have heard, again and again in Australia, that people "should either work for love OR money". I don't get it. Why can't people work for love AND money? It makes sense to me. Love what you do, and earn while you do it. Why not?

One interviewee in a piece of social research I have just finished said: "you can just TELL who is doing it for love and who is doing it for money". For her, there was no way the two go together.

This is my challenge. Do your work for love AND money. Do what you love doing, and get paid for it. As I encourage my coaching clients to do, check how much of your time goes into each paid hour. And if you are anything like the people I coach, teach and facilitate, you will find that between two and four hours go into every hour that is an earning hour. So account for it. And if you are a woman, check if you are telling yourself that some hours are not worth being paid for (and some men need this check too).

Closing the gap between men and women's earnings is a lot to do with closing the gap between men and women's worth. And I include myself in the audience to this advice - since coming to Australia I have had to take my own advice and really put a stop to people wanting to use my ideas, my skills and my time free because I am doing "good work", and since putting a stop to that my work has grown and developed. However, it remains in that category that needs constant maintenance and a constant check that I am not putting in hours and hours before the first dollar comes back to me.

In my holistic coaching course I work with the participants to motivate their people and to free them to be the best they can be. For that they need to earn well. And to remove the word "just" as one of the participants reminds us as in "I am just a coach", "I am just a mother", "I was just thinking that it might be a good idea"....

It might just be a good idea to rethink the earning gap and be a bit more proactive in closing it.