Aircraft on approach

The first MC-55A Peregrine landed at RAAF Edinburgh this week - and isn’t it gorgeous?!

Having been involved with this capability since the requirements stage, it’s so good to finally see it in Australia and in 10 Squadron’s hands!

📸 Nathan Rundle

No sir. I still have senior leadership aspirations 🤣

I may have done a squat jump and said “froggy” once. I didn’t expect this level of uptake.

My new secret to fitness is the toddler shouting “froggy!” and expecting me to do a squat jump and then giggling wildly when I do.

Happy International Men’s Day!

Here’s to the wonderful men in my life and all the great men I have worked and served with over the years, who have been colleagues, mentors, role models and friends.

It’s been over a year since I left Twitter.

I occasionally miss what it was and lament what it could have been.

Then I remember that what it is now is worthy of neither sentiment. Good riddance.

The toddler has started saying “cuggle” when he wants a cuddle and a bit of me secretly hopes he never learns how to say it properly.

It was a great night - squadron hangar bash to farewell the P3!

Making history is beautiful and messy. I’m here for all of it.

But when I saw it today, all I could see were its beauty and importance. The setting, the amazing people pinning on those rank slides, the wonderful people I know are just out of shot cheering. And yes, the lampshade, because it proves how far we’ve come and what women can do.

I look like a lampshade in the maternity uniform and I used to hate this photo because of that.

This is not how I had imagined this important milestone would look.

This is me, at the end of my squadron command, 6 months pregnant and being promoted to Group Captain - the first female pilot in RAAF history to make that rank - by one of my mentors and my husband, in front of my beloved squadron and our magnificent aircraft, the P3 Orion.

Smiling pregnant woman in military uniform being promoted by another woman and a man, who are both putting new rank slides onto her shirt, in front of an aircraft.

They say a picture tells a thousand words - and this one definitely does.

I found it unexpectedly today while in search of another image and it stopped me in my tracks.

Sounds perfect - enjoy!

And our adversaries will rejoice.

Aussie Aussie Aussie! 🤣

I love 3 different things about this.

That’s awesome.

TV with Nirvana’s “Unplugged in NY” playing, surrounded by bookshelves and kids toys.

For my fellow geriatric millennials. A well spent Friday night after a loooong work week. The first album I ever bought with my own money. Still as good as ever.

Watching it from across the Pacific is… disquieting.

Yes! This is the perfect way to think about it!

Love it! It suits you so well!

As I lay there with him all soft and sleepy in my arms, I suddenly saw myself as a very old woman lying on a bed at the end of my life.

And I knew with full certainty that this would be the moment I will want to come back to over and over.

Yesterday I had one of those moments of cosmic clarity, the kind that lets you see through space and time.

I left work after 7 pm (for the second time this week), so by the time I got home all I could do was bathe the cranky, tired toddler and put him to bed.

Hard relate…

It is really hard, and sometimes impossible. I’m really just talking about doing whatever you need to do to protect your mind and soul.

I know everything is awful right now. But today my sweet little toddler said “hand” in his sweet little voice as he held out his sweet little hand to take mine and just for a second all was ok with the world.

Easier said than done, I know. But it’s worth the effort.

“you should make sure your psychological centre of gravity is in your real and immediate world – the world of your family and friends and neighborhood, your work and your creative projects, as opposed to the world of presidencies and governments, social forces and global emergencies.”

Today is a really good day to consciously avoid what Oliver Burkeman calls “living in the news.”

That doesn’t mean switching off or being uninformed.

It means this: