It’s amazing how quickly the years pass by.
Before the memories fall into a dateless mix of my life, or worse and completely forgotten, I wanted to chronicle some key moments from the last twelve months for future reference. I’m hoping my recordkeeping is good enough to support the new habit of producing a yearly report. My own State Of The Union.
Events
20/01: Some mates and I attended the Geelong Beer Festival again. Each year it seems to get bigger & better. What made it interesting for me was our dubious attempt to archive the event by recording videos of the different beers we tried, with thoughtful reviews which just got louder and less articulate as the day went on. Well, until my phone died altogether – along with my method of payment.
A mate and I also navigated a very creative route from Johnstone Park to a nearby bar, which I learned the next day that I had helpfully saved to Strava.
24/02: Pakofesta, Geelong’s multicultural festival (on Pakington Street) we lock in to attend each year. This time we had my parents staying with us, and as always we all enjoyed eating various delicacies from around the world. It’s our challenge each year to eat from more countries.
27/06-04/07: One of the most significant events of the year was our full family trip up to Queensland.
It was under the pretence of my brother’s 51st Birthday Party (as Corey & his family came down to celebrate his actual 50th birthday milestone with us). The night out at Redcliffe Leagues Club was actually a surprise celebration for our Mum. She got to see so many of her former colleagues, friends & family from various parts of Australia without having to wait for a birthday, or to put it morbidly as we did, for her own funeral where she’d be disappointed to miss the party.
We combined the trip with a few memorable activities, like flying into Coolangatta where we stayed and caught up with our old Dubai friends who had moved back to the Gold Coast, whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. We even went Go-Karting with them the following day. There it became very obvious they’re a family of petrol head / motorsport enthusiasts and my kids & I clearly are not. It was definitely fun tho.
Lewis, Owen and I stayed up in Qld for another couple of weeks as we had no work/school pressures to get back to. It gave us time to stay up with my brother on the Sunshine Coast for longer, and even drive up to Hervey Bay to stay with my cousin John/Jason for a night and explore the region a little – including a selfie or two with Mary Poppins.
It’s a little perplexing that we had such a great time and fitted in so much, yet I posted nothing online during or immediately after this trip. In hindsight, it was probably too daunting to do justice to such an awesome holiday. So I did keep the photos to myself and just shared with family. And we certainly enjoyed being in the moment.
Movies
It’s pretty rare for me to visit a cinema, but I did go to watch two films this year.
03/04: I kind of reluctantly watched Kung Fu Panda 4, which wasn’t bad. Just felt maybe longer than necessary, and predictable.
25/08: And Lewis & I went to watch Deadpool & Wolverine. It was such an epic movie, we seemed to need quite a debrief afterwards to check on some of the content & gags that we struggled with, which maybe only true fans might get.
Sports
2024 was a wonderful sporting year for me in many ways.
Brinky boys sport
Lewis & Owen both won their first rugby union premierships, after moving clubs to join the Wyndham Rhinos.
Lewis had another significant year in rugby. He captained his school team, who went undefeated to become Rebels Shield premiers of Victoria. He also became a key player in the Super Rugby Under 16s competition for the Melbourne Rebels in their final season. And he joined the Lloydies Aboriginal team with Uni of Sydney again for the Ella Rugby 7s competition in Sydney. His performances got noticed by others as well. A player agent reached out, and has supported him to take a new trajectory with his rugby. It will now see Lewis shifting to Queensland in 2025 to join in the private school’s GPS rugby competition. He’s looking forward to it, with far fewer hesitations than his parents having a first son leave home.
Myles’s Aussie rules team, the Anglesea Reserves struggled more in 2024. I think it’s fair to say it was a rebuilding year. And despite the coaches placing Myles into defensive roles for significant parts of the season, he still had a wonderful year and in the final match kicked four goals to narrowly leapfrog his competition to win the coveted leading goal kicker award.
We recognised these amazing achievements with our own “Sporting Legends” dinner at Squire’s Loft for the family. And we felt it important to reiterate that their successes are amazing achievements and not something we can’t take for granted.
My own sporting exploits were definitely hampered this year due to my age and a string of reoccuring injuries.
I “played” in both the VACSAL Basketball Tournament in Shepparton (09-10/03), and the VACSAL Football Carnival in Portarlington (05-06/10). But each resulted in me having pretty bad (and different) knee complaints.
At the basketball I’d put it down to me doing too much before the tournament began. At this stage I was playing basketball every week or so with the AMC (old farts) league, and usually doing well with 2-3 casual games on a Thursday evening. But while in Shepparton I thought it’d be a good idea to run from the hotel down to their ParkRun, do that & run back again. Then, by no surprise at all, after the 2nd or 3rd game, my right knee had enough and started swelling. We played better as a team this year. In 2023 I was frustrated watching from the sidelines, with the same knee issue the year before. But this group made it one game away from the grand final. Once we were done there, the kids and I still managed to climb Mount Piper on our return journey.
At the footy carnival, I’d put my knee injury down to me thinking I was young again and trying to match the athletic kids leaping high for a mark. My body has clearly become unfamiliar with such heights, and on the landing I hyperextended my left knee. I was able to play one more game very sheepishly, then sit on the bench for the final game of that day. Day two I had to play a couple more games, on account of our team lacking numbers. The correct taping of my knee joint by a proper footy strapper though made it bearable and allowed some pain free movement. Apart from those limitations it was wonderful to be out with our local Aboriginal community and have lots of fun.
Golf
On the 01/01/2024, Myles and I with another father & son played a round of golf at Anglesea. The scoring went a bit off, but it was great to start the year right by getting out and having a social hit. And I’m happy to report it’s become an annual tradition now, after we played together again on 01/01/2025. That’s been great, if we ignore that we all said last year that we should do this more often. HA!.
Myles returned to working at the golf course this year, and has taken more of a shining to playing golf in recent months. So with Lewis, we’ve played a handful of times almost weekly. It’s been lovely to see the boys figuring out their games and rapidly improving. Myles in our final game beat me for the first time. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Sports spectating
When the kids or I aren’t playing sport, I enjoy watching most sports. I’d say I enjoyed some mixed results this year.
Olympics
Just five months on, I had almost forgot that 2024 was an Olympics year. It was hosted marvelously in Paris. There were many highlights, and sadly for breakdancer Raygun quite a few lowlights that will be the main memory for many. I see in my notes from the time, I made the most of the timezone difference on a few evenings to watch the whole Olympics program until our morning. Australia did amazingly well. The Australian team came fourth overall, winning a record 18 Gold medals.
Aussie Rules
The Brisbane Lions are AFL Premiers, after beating the hapless Sydney Swans (their 2nd Grand Final loss in 3 years). What a HUGE relief for Brisbane after losing the grand final the year before, against Collingwood of all teams. We couldn’t get any grand final tickets (for less than $5000). So we happily watched at home, well initially it was more nerves than happiness. The game finally finished 9.6 (60) – 18.12 (120). In many ways the grand final was an anti-climax after the Lion’s two preceding games needed massive come from behind wins. Being behind by 44 poinst against GWS in the Semi-final, and winning a tight contest again Geelong Cats (our local team) after being behind by almost 30 points at one stage.
Two months later Brisbane almost pulled off ultimate bragging rights, with their AFLW team also playing for the premiership in the women’s comp. Sadly that wasn’t to be. It flipped the outcome of the 2023 season, where the lady Lions won, and the men’s team lost.
Before the biggest day on the AFL calendar, I attended an AFL Grand final eve golf day. It had many promotions & special activities, sadly I didn’t manage the year’s worth of beer Hole-in-one. With so much on the line the following day with my Brisbane Lions, I had less interest in the game of golf and much more interest in contributing to the profits of CBCo, the event’s beer sponsor. It was fun day I’ll probably do again.
We attended a couple of matches this year.
07/06: Bulldogs vs Lions in the Medallion Club of Marvel Stadium was a highlight. We sat alongside some of the injured Bulldogs list in the fancy seats. Lions got a nice 40 point victory. It led many nearby Western Bulldog fans to quite hilariously complain incessantly about the umpiring which we viewed as absolutely perfect.
That victory was the first in a record nine match winning streak, which was desperately needed to get the Lions back into a position to battle for the premiership. And it was also the first time Myles saw a Lions win live, after him attending matches since 2018.
28/06: While in Brisbane for my Mum’s celebration we managed to catch Lions vs Demons with nine of us. Brisbane won by less than a goal in the final minutes courtesy of a Hugh McCluccage 6 pointer, after being behind from basically the middle of the second quarter.
Rugby League
04/04: In a pretty sad annual tradition, I went to see Melbourne Storm beat Brisbane Broncos down here at AAMI Park. This time it was terribly close, ending 34-32. A couple of mistakes the only thing keeping Broncos from achieving quite the upset.
17-19/05: I loved attending the NRL Magic Round again. This time I took two mates from Torquay up to Queensland to make it a boys trip. One of the guys had not attended a single match before that weekend.
Unfortunately in the NRL, my Brisbane Broncos failed miserably in 2024. So miserably, the powerbrokers realised a change was needed and Kevin Walters their coach was dropped, along with a few other off-field changes like club stalwart Allan Langer no longer running the water on the field.
And one the other 5 league teams I support, the Redcliffe Dolphins in just their 2nd season narrowly missed out on finals again, due to a final round loss to Newcastle. Though they had a fantastic season.
Sadly, Queensland lost the year’s State of Origin Series despite looking unassailable again after winning Game 1 of 3. That result was massively assisted by (new rugby union recruit) Joseph Suaali being sent off in the 7th minute for a brazen high shot on Reece Walsh. It seemed Mike Maguire the NSW coach was worth his money, turning around the series very impressively. Now that he’s the new Broncos coach, things are looking up for Brisbane in the 2025 season! And hopefully bad again for NSW for three foreseeable future.
Rugby Union
Last year I attended only a couple of professional matches.
23/02: We saw Rebels vs ACT Brumbies at AAMI Park while my parents were in town. The stadium lived up to its informal title as the coldest place on Earth. Sadly the Rebels got smashed 30-3 in the opening round clash.
13/07: And we also watched the Wallabies playing Wales at Marvel Stadium. It was good to see Wallabies playing better, winning 36-28.
Wrestling
11/05: Something entirely different, was when Owen & I went to watch Lucha Fantastica (Mexican) Wrestling at Geelong Town Hall. It was so much better than I ever expected. We’re definitely on the look out for when wrestling comes to town again.
Running
I was happy to easily complete another 100km per month, finishing the year at the Dawnbuster Fun Run on the morning of New Year’s Eve with a total of 1290km. This year I was less motivated to round up and force in another run. It was the same time at the Dawnbusters two years earlier that I learned how to find my yearly km total in Strava, where I had a meagre deficit to make a 1200km year, which I rectified when home with a second run.
10/02: The first event of the year though was the half marathon at Bellarine Sunset Run, which I unexpectedly joined up with my friend Gary.
21/09: The highlight event for me was Surf Coast Century 50km trail run. What a delight that was! Training went well with the Surf Coast Trail Runners, and it was a worry to open my eyes to the potential of going further, when in the final 3 kms we actually sped up and had plenty left in the tank.
13/10: I also ran the 10km at Melbourne Marathon with Myles and our family friend again. This goal time was reduced again to support Todd, and somehow I managed it – despite the hyperextension of my knee at the footy happening the weekend prior. I thought that was a sign the knee wasn’t serious. Nope. The physio clarified running in a straight line is easy. My PCL injury is bad with all other types of movements.
2024 was my most prolific year at ParkRun. I ran 21 events (in the preceding 6 years I ran just 37 times). It’s hardly a noteworthy number, with some people religiously completing 52 each and every year. But for most of the year I do have a clash with the kids Saturday sports. At ParkRun I enjoyed volunteering twice also, including being the photographer for the first time. It was definitely fun, although the whittling down & editing of 400+ photos was a mammoth undertaking.
Actually I volunteered a few other times this year:
- Marshall at the inaugural Torquay Triathlon – where I basically just cheered on for all my friends out on the course
- Aid station at Afterglow, which was lots of fun, and
- Sweeper at the Anglesea Roo Run.
Health
I started the year with big hopes for being super healthy, returning to Yoga after many years off. It became a solid weekly practice thanks to a ClassPass benefit from my employer. I’d even pack my mat when meeting mates at the brewery, before walking on to my Yin Yoga session nearby which got a few laughs. A couple of knee complaints though put a stop to me wanting to stretch in non-mandatory ways.
Overall I think I was pretty healthy in 2024, given it’s the oldest my body has ever been. There was one further hip/adductor complaint in late July that had me painfully glued to the couch which required physio attention. The physio sorted that out without it hampering my Surf Coast Century training, which I remember being an absolute relief.
I am surprised to spot that I actually had COVID again in 2024, on 9th January missing the first few days returning to work after the new year.
One further blemish last year was that I donated blood only once. And that occasion was a #fail, with the blood flow slowing too much to continue in full. I sufficiently drank far too much water as usual beforehand to help, which I learned from past experience. But my veins weren’t playing on the day. There was a trainee nurse who did seem to struggle with the needle. And it was the week after the 50km ultra marathon. But neither of which should have mattered.
Reading
I managed to complete my 2024 reading goal of six books. Having a 2 hour commute a couple of times per week has been really helpful. I actually read 7 books, https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024/12648231.
I noticed in the initial Goodreads summary, one of my tally was a graphic novel which I didn’t even enjoy. So I fast-tracked finishing a more appropriate book before the year was out.
This is in quite stark difference to previous year’s reading goals where I included audio books, which I was well aware I had very little recall of moments after listening to. This was particularly the case while listening during a run, to manage the final book’s completion on the final day of the year.
And that’s a wrap
2024 was another great year that I’m terribly grateful for. My family and I experienced so many joyful moments & events.
It’s been lovely to review and recount many of those moments in pulling this together.
Here’s hoping, we all have a happy and safe 2025!
