It’s been over three months since I arrived home which is a lot longer than I expected to stay, but for whatever reason it just hasn’t felt right to leave until now. There’s been a lot happening on the home front and already 2025 seems to have been a year of change, both in the wider World and within our family.

I’m not sure how much my travels last year have influenced the rest of the family but we’ll all be heading in different directions this year which will be a new paradigm for us all. It’s taken a while for these plans to come together and there’ve be a number of iterations but we finally arrived at a plan that seems to work for everyone, including me. However, it means Act II will need to end in late June in Melbourne after I disembark from Tasmania.

Totally out of the blue it now transpires that Marianne and I will be travelling to Lima to rendezvous with the kids who will have both been travelling in Mexico and Central America and together we’ll celebrate Lucy’s 21st! As you might imagine trying to coordinate this was a bit like herding cats and despite our different agendas we did manage to finally settle this plan and with it now resolved it was time for me to get back on the road and get Max pointed south!

I’m not sure why, but as opposed to last September when I set off on what became Act I it was with a sense of excitement and anticipation, this time it feels a bit different and strangely more apprehensive and uncertain.

Perhaps it’s because the kids will be on their own journeys and not knowing where they will be at any particular time will be a new experience, and with the kids and me away Marianne is making plans to do some interesting off-site courses and following her own path. So, I guess it’s all very well for me to be preoccupied with my own journey… but the reality is that life goes on and it’s noticeable that the rest of the family have become more independent in my absence. Up until now we’ve always be a tight knit family and it will be interesting to see how our divergent paths play out, hopefully it will be a year of adventure, growth, learning and fun for us all!

My melancholy might also be because I’ll be heading south into winter which has a very different aura, short days, cold nights…different on every level to a Queensland in summer!

So, as I start Act II I want to change it up, slow it down and take my time. Lighthouse will still set my course and I still be posting my “Lighthouse Stories” but I’ll hope to make them less structured and hopefully more interesting, “Travellers Tales” will continue to be document my day to day travels but I intend to wander off the beaten track more and tell a couple of interesting stories along the way, but it will be “Thoughts of the Solo Traveller” where I hope to be able to express the unravelling of my soul and overcome the fear of hanging out my laundry that I hope will be the theme of this next stage of my journey. Maybe it some sort of vanity play to think anyone else might be interested, and maybe they won’t, but we all have choices, and at the end of the day this is my story and I’m doing this for me.

If you are still with following me I hope you find something that interests you and appreciate the support and encouragement I’ve received from friends and strangers alike, thank you, and as noted intend to change the narrative in Act II!

Let’s see how it goes!