My sister Fiona left Perth today, to return to her home in Tasmania. She’d arrived here last Saturday and stayed in the room where Tom and Elwyn sleep when they are here.

She puts a huge effort into our family (Mum, Rose, Nigel and their children, and Helen’s children), but Helen ignores her as she does me. So it’s good to just spend time chatting when she’s here between visits to everyone else. She sees Mum every day, taking her out for a coffee or lunch. And one day she took Mum to one of her favourite places, Araluen. The tulips were fading, but they had a good day there, although as I find it’s hard physical work because Mum is quite infirm these days.

This visit we didn’t get any lengthy times together, but we connect about so many things that somehow that didn’t matter. I’ve really enjoyed hearing about the house she’s building on her block of trees in southern Tassie, near the D’entrecasteaux Channel where Rob and I chartered a yacht a couple of years ago. She’s quite a developer, and as she told me about it all I reflected on the way Dad developed Oakleigh Buildings in Perth so many years ago. If he’d still been alive he would have been very proud of her.