NB: For the first half of this two-part post see We've seen better days (part 1)

The last three entries of my mother's onboard diary are as follows:

Sunday March 16th
Didn't go to church this morning. We, Connie [a friend she made on the trip] & I were talking in the cabin, about what we would wear to greet our husbands in, & then found it was after 10.30 pm and too late to go. Later we went into the baggage room & I packed all the toys back in the pram & tied it all up.
Monday March 17th
There seems an air of unrest about the ship. Everyone is packing, that is except the few who are going on to Sydney. We just cannot seem to settle down today. We all came to bed early tonight, our cases are packed & our clothes laid out for the morning.
March 18th
Today we land. The steward came & woke me with a cup of tea early, so that I could get a bathroom without waiting. He has been good to us. I had a bath, got another cup of tea from him, & now I'm dressed & breakfasted & sitting in the lounge on pins!! The children are clean, they were bathed last night, & have been dared to get dirty, before they see Don. Connie & I have just had a gin & tonic. She says her tummy feels funny too! Fifteen months is a long time & I'm wondering how much we have both changed. Lunch is early today & at 12.00 we dock at Melbourne & my trip on the "Moreton Bay" is finished. It's been very enjoyable & I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.

Her nervous anticipation of the reunion with my father is clear. It went well, though my mother was not impressed with the accommodation and transport my father had arranged. The 'house' was a flea-infested cabin in the Dandenong Hills, with neither electricity nor water, and his transport was a BSA 250 motorcycle with a cushion strapped to the rack for my mother to sit on. But that was the worst things ever got. Within a few years the family moved to Sydney and, with Derek and Rachel now aged 12 and 9 and beginning to exert their independence, my mother felt the need for more children. I soon arrived, as did my younger brother Greg.

At about this time the travelling really started to get serious. Through the Sixties and Seventies my father took postings all over the world, and most times my mother and the rest of us followed him. There was always somewhere new to go, and it was a colourful time. My dad once overpowered a cat burglar in his Ceylon hotel room, was stabbed in the neck, but still managed to frog-march the thief down to reception. My mother, Greg and I were once stranded in the Libyan Sahara for a week after an emergency landing caused by engine failure. We rode on elephants in Ceylon, camels in Egypt, and ostriches in South Africa. We listened to lions roaring outside our camp in the dead of night in Rhodesia. Together, mum and dad visited Niagara, Victoria and Iguacu falls, traversed both the Panama and Suez canals, and lived on every continent of the world.

I never expected my parents to be immortal, but to see them now, two slow-moving, stooped old people, unkempt and inarticulate, pottering around their unnecessarily dark house, arguing about cups of tea, is sometimes unbearably sad. My mother stays at home and the highlight of my dad's week is the walk around the block to the day care centre. The ambit of their world has closed down around them and they seem now to be merely marking time. Where did all that life go?