Australian Sojourn – April-May 2026

Part 3: Guruk

I’ve spent the last four-and-a-half days in Guruk (aka Port Macquarie) on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. Here with me during this time was my older brother, two of my four nephews, and my two great-nephews. They had all traveled up from Melbourne on Monday, April 13. My younger brother and his family, who live just south of Guruk, also joined us on a number of occasions. The primary purpose of our gathering in Guruk was to spend time with our mum/grandma/great-grandma (right).

Although she continues to make a good recovery from the stroke she experienced last April (just a day after my return to the U.S. after a month-long visit), my mum has moved into the assisted-living hostel that is part of the retirement village in Port Macquarie that’s been her home since 2013 – first with dad and then, after his passing in 2019, on her own.

As well as spending time with mum/grandma/great-grandma, my family also enjoyed time at the beach and a visit to Billabong Zoo, “Port Macquarie Koala and Wildlife Park.”

Above: Four generations are pictured in this photo – my mum, her eldest son Chris (my brother), Chris’s eldest son Ryan and third son Mitch, and Ryan’s two sons Ramy and Jake.

NEXT: Gunnedah

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Last Days in Australia (July 2025)
• Family Time in Guruk (2025)
• Home to Be With Mum (2025)
• Last Days in Guruk (April 2025)
• In Birpai Country (2025)
• Family Time in Melbourne, Guruk, and Gunnedah (2023)
• Return to Guruk (2019)
• Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland (2019)
• Guruk Seascapes, From Dawn to Dusk (2017)
• Port Macquarie, Wingham, and Ellenborough Falls (2015)
• Port Macquarie Days (2014)
• Thanks, Mum!
• Happy Birthday, Mum! – 2024 | 2018 | 2017 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
• Congratulations, Mum and Dad! (2009)
• Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents (2006)

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

In Australia today my Mum celebrates her 87th birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

I’ve said it many times before but it’s always worth repeating: My brothers and I are very fortunate to have Margaret Anne Bayly (née Sparkes) as our mother. She is a beautiful, wise and strong woman who extends care, kindness and love to everyone she encounters.

I love you, Mum, and can’t thank you enough for who you are and for all you continue to be and give to me, my brothers, our family, and so many others whose lives are fortunate enough to be touched by yours. Wishing you the happiest of birthdays! 💗

This is mum’s first birthday since she began her journey of recovery from the stroke she experienced in April. I continue to thank God for her ongoing recovery and for the ways she is participating in this recovery through her chosen attitudes and actions. As I’ve said previously, they are attitudes and actions of grace and gratitude, surrender and trust. I’m grateful too for those in her life who are helping facilitate mum’s healing – our family, her friends, and the staff at the assisted living home where she now resides.

Above: With Mum and some of her Port Macquarie friends during my most recent visit back to Australia – June-July 2025.

Above: Mum with two of her four great grandchildren, Ramy and Jake – July 2025.

In celebrating Mum’s birthday over the years at The Wild Reed, I’ve shared quite a number of photos from the Bayly family archives. In fact, I’ve pretty much exhausted my supply. So if you’d like to take a wonderful “trip down memory lane,” as they say, then click on any of the links below. You won’t be disappointed!


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Thanks, Mum!
• Home to Be With Mum (2025)
• June 2025 Vignettes
• Family Time in Guruk (2025)
• Last Days in Australia (2025)
• Happy Birthday, Mum – 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2018 | 2017 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
• Congratulations, Mum and Dad! (2009)
• Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents (2006)
• Remembering and Celebrating Dad

Family Time in Guruk

I’m currently in my homeland of Australia where I’m spending time with my family – my mum in particular. As some reading this will already know, mum has recently had some health issues.

I noted previously that although she continues to make a good recovery from the stroke she experienced in April (just a day after my return to the U.S. after a month-long visit), mum has moved into the assisted-living hostel that’s part of the retirement village in Port Macquarie that’s been her home since 2013, first with dad and then, after his passing in 2019, on her own.

For the first half of my time here I was by myself at mum’s villa, visiting mum once or twice a day in the assisited-living hostel that’s walking distance from here. My sister-in-law, who lives with my brother about an hour-and-a-half south of Port Macquarie, has been doing a geat job at posting on Facebook Marketplace pictures and descriptions of the bigger items of furnitire that can’t fit in mum’s room at the hostel. I've been meeting people as they come to the villa to collect the items they’ve bought, oftentimes helping them load them into their vechile. The villa needs to be emptied and vacated by the end of July.

I've also been going through my own things that have been stored for years in mum’s garage, and organizing a small storage unit in town in which I’ll pay to have them safely kept moving forward.

As often as I can, I go to Shelly Beach or Town Beach and watch the sunrise. This continues to be a very grounding, very anchoring way to start each day.

I even saved a baby shark one morning! . . . The image at right of a young grey nurse shark at left is not mine; it is, however, a picture of the type of shark I came across on the morning of June 26 after it was stranded at low tide among rocks on Shelly Beach. Lifting and carrying this young shark by its tail, I brought it to the shallows and (as gently as I could) threw it into the sea. I’m happy to say that I soon spied its two fins cutting through the water before disappearing beneath the waves. It was clearly making its way back out to sea. 🦈

Above: Mum and her former neighbor Glynnis – Friday, June 27, 2025.

As I noted previously, I arrived in Guruk (aka Port Macquarie) at around noon on Saturday, June 21. After showering and freshing up at mum’s villa, I decided that before visiting mum in her new home, I would call in on her neighbor Glynnis who lives in the villa next door. I did so to thank her for the crucial role she played back in April in notifying my brother of her concerns about mum, whom she hadn’t seen for a number of days. Thanks to Glyniss, family and paramedics were able to come and get into mum’s villa, find her down and unconscious, and take her to the hospital.

Above: Mum being visited by her neice (my cousin) Sharon and Sharon’s spouse Ross – Friday, June 27, 2025.

Above and below: On the weekend of June 28-29, 2025, my aunt Ruth (mum’s younger sister) travelled by bus to Guruk from our hometown of Gunnedah. It was great to see and spend time with her.

Above and left: My neice, the award-winning author and illustrator Sami Bayly, at her booth at Port Macquarie’s annual ArtWalk, a “galactic night of creativity and wonder” – July 4, 2025.

Above and below: My nephew Brendan, who arrived from the United Kingdom (via China) to Guruk on Saturday, July 5. First thing the next day I took him to watch the sunrise on Shelly Beach.

Brendan’s staying with me at the villa, and together we’ve been going through and sorting stuff, visiting “grandma” everyday, helping make her new place more homey, and taking her out to lunch with her longtime Port Macquarie friends, something she hasn’t done since before her stroke in April.

Opening image and above and below: Family time in Guruk – July 2025.

Brendan’s older brother Ryan soon joined us in the villa with his two young sons, Ramy and Jake – my great-nephews and mum’s great-grandsons. They came all the way from Melbourne.

Above: Brendan and Ramy chattng with Glynnis in the warm winter sun – July 9, 2025.

Above: Jake, preparing what he called “frog soup” for his great-grandma, who, judging from her expression below, didn’t find it very appealing. 🤣

Above: Great-grandma is always a good sport, even to the point of happily posing with her beloved great grandsons and the “frog soup” they made for her.

Above and below: On Tuesday, July 8, Brendan and I took mum/grandma out to lunch with a number of her Port Macquarie friends.

Above: My neice Layne, an accomplished tattoo artist, delights Ramy and Jake with her many beautiful tattoos – Wednesday, July 9, 2025.

Above: Ramy and Jake say goodbye to great-grandma – Thursday, July 10, 2025.


NEXT:
Journey to Gulmarrad

Australian Sojourn – June-July 2025
• Solstice Dawn
• Home to Be With Mum
• This Moment
• Australian Indigenous Culture and the Reality of LGBTI Lives
• June Vignettes
• “A Mysteriously Charged and Magnificently Alive Archetypal Presence”
• Warumpi Band

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In Birpai Country
• Last Days in Guruk (April 2025)
• Family Time in Melbourne, Guruk, and Gunnedah (2023)
• Return to Guruk (2019)
• Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland (2019)
• Across the Mountains
• Guruk Seascapes, From Dawn to Dusk
• Port Macquarie Days
• Thanks, Mum!
• Happy Birthday, Mum! – 2024 | 2018 | 2017 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
• Congratulations, Mum and Dad! (2009)
• Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents (2006)
• Trusting the Flow
• Surrendering in Sacred Trust
• The Guidance of Higher Forces
• A Prayer of Anchoring
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• A New Day
• The Art of Gentle Revolution

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Home to Be With Mum

I’m currently in my homeland of Australia where I’ll be spending the next three weeks with my family – my mum in particular. As some reading this will already know, mum has recently had some health issues.

Although she continues to make a good recovery from the stroke she experienced two months ago (just a day after my return to the U.S. after a month-long visit), mum will be moving into the assisted-living section of the retirement village in Port Macquarie that’s been her home since 2013, first with dad and then, after his passing in 2019, on her own.

The time is right for this move, and I’m looking forward to helping it go as smoothly as possible. I’m also looking forward to supporting mum during this time of transition and change, and to spending meaningful time with my family.

Following are some photos of my journey from Minneapolis to Guruk (aka Port Macquarie).

Above: Late-spring light in my attic apartment in south Minneapolis on the morning of my departure for Australia – Thursday, June 19, 2025.


Right: My dear friend Kate drove me to the airport on Thursday. On the way, we had a delicious lunch at Wise Acre Eatery in Minneapolis.

Above: Californian hills outside of San Francisco.

Above: Leaving the U.S., with the lights of San Francisco in the distance.

Above: Flying over the wharf of the former Kurnell Oil Refinery (now an import terminal) in Botany Bay. We were coming in to land at Sydney Airport – Saturday, June 21, 2025.

After landing at Sydney Airport’s international terminal, I made my way to its domestic terminal (above and below). Here I boarded my flight with QANTAS to Port Macquarie.

Above: Shortly after takeoff, the plane that took me to Port Macquarie yesterday morning flew right over Sydney Harbour. What a spectacular view I was treated to! . . . It was just over two months ago that I had a much more up-close experience of this world famous harbour.

Above: A view of the beautiful Mid North Coast of New South Wales – Saturday, June 21, 2025.

Above: Mum — Saturday, June 21, 2025.

I think this photo is a lovely one of mum, but she’s not so enthusiastic about it, saying she looks like an “old lady.” 🤣

While in Port Macquarie I’m staying at mum’s villa in the independent-living section of her retirement village. For almost a decade now, this very spacious villa has been home for me whenever I’ve returned to Australia from the U.S. for a visit. It’s definitely strange to be staying here alone. Indeed, I realized on my first night that I’m here with my father’s ashes and my mother’s absence.

It is without doubt a challenging time for my mother. Yet in certain ways it’s also a time of transition and change for our entire family, myself included. Now that mum is in assisted-living, my days of having a “home” in my homeland are coming to an end. With such a realization there comes a range of emotions. And yet I remain hopeful . . . for both myself and mum.

Interestingly, within an hour of arriving at mum’s villa, I came across a book in the kitchen/dining area. It was Julia Cameron’s Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life, a book that Cameron herself describes as “a companion in challenging times.” A page was bookmarked, no doubt by mum, and I immediately experienced the prayer on this page as a blessing, one that I continue to hold in my heart; again, for both myself and mum.

All change can be expansive in potential. The choice is ours. As I open my heart to accept change, my heart softens and grows larger. Every experience carries the seed of transformation. Every event can bring blossoming and wealth. My personal will can resist change or embrace it. The choice is mine and determines the life I will have.

Today, I choose to embrace change. I open my heart to its hidden but abundant blessings.

– Julia Cameron
Excerpted from Transitions: Prayers and
Declarations for a Changing Life
Jeremy P. Tarcher / Putnam, 1999
p. 3

Above: For the last two mornings I’ve watched the sunrise from this bench on Port Macquarie’s Shelly Beach. It’s been a very grounding, very anchoring way to start each day.

NEXT:
This Moment

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Thanks, Mum!
• Last Days in Guruk (April 2025)
• In Birpai Country
• Happy Birthday, Mum! (2024)
• Last Days in Australia (March 2023)
• Family Time in Melbourne, Guruk, and Gunnedah (2023)
• Return to Guruk (2019)
• Family Time in Guruk . . . and Glimpses of Somaliland (2019)
• Across the Mountains
• Guruk Seascapes, From Dawn to Dusk
• Port Macquarie Days
• Happy Birthday, Mum! – 2024 | 2018 | 2017 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
• Congratulations, Mum and Dad! (2009)
• Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents (2006)
• Trusting the Flow
• Surrendering in Sacred Trust
• The Guidance of Higher Forces
• A Prayer of Anchoring
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• A New Day
• The Art of Gentle Revolution

Images: Michael J. Bayly.