I dropped my Mum (Margaret) and Aunt (Gerardine) to the airport this afternoon, but before picking them up from my other Aunt's home (Carmel), I took some photos along Beach Road, a road that has a bit of meaning in my life, and a road that I've driven up and down quite a lot this past year, filling in the gaps, and loving the bay view too.
I was only 4 weeks old when my mum and dad moved up to the Gold Coast, where I spent around 25 years of my life, so moving down to Melbourne over 14 months ago has been one big history lesson, winding up at my place of birth, I only saw where I was born for the first time late last year.
Here's a few photos that stand out.
Armstrong Street, how Lance Armstrong has moved his Live Strong message is inspiring to me.
I like following Lance Armstrong on Twitter, it was actually the only reason I set up my Twitter account, to follow Lance Armstrong throughout the Tour De France.
Improvement After Movement is a message I've been given the responsibility to move.
Meek Street, there's a pretty well known verse in the bible:
Matthew 5:5. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
I didn't know what Meek meant when I first read it, it means quiet and humble.
When I did first read it, I actually thought it had an association with the word weak, but being weak and being meek are two very different behaviours.
Improvement After Movement isn't a christian movement, just in case you were wondering, it's all about human movement. If there were streets called Hardship Street or Ease Street I would have taken a photo of them too, quoting the following text from the Koran alongside it.
'Every hardship is followed by ease, every hardship is followed by ease'.
It actually gets mentioned like that in the passage, one after the other, I guess it's a message Muhammad (or God, Muhammad was simply the messenger) really wanted people to understand, I think it's full of truth too.
Bayview Cr, (right) the house I lived the first 12 years of my life was 316 Bayview St, Hollywell, on the Gold Coast.
This past year in Melbourne has really been about coming to new understanding of my early years.
Plummer Road, my mum's parents, nanna and grandpa lived on Plummer Road, in 1987 we watched Carlton win the VFL flag at nanna and grandpa's while dad watched it at the MCG.
I still remember seeing him walking up their driveway with a big Carlton flag, it was almost as big as him, that flag was thumb-tacked to me and my brother's bedroom wall on the Gold Coast for the next 12 months or so.
My earliest memory is actually at nanna and grandpa's home.
I can remember walking down the little hill to the beach with mum, when I was about 4 or so, and playing in the sand.
St Bede's College on Beach Road would have been the high school I'd have gone to, I took this photo a couple of week's ago on a Friday afternoon drive.
It was the first time I'd seen a game of Aussie Rules being played there, so I pulled up and took a quick snap. (pic, not kick)
Where rugby league was such a massive part of my life growing up on the Gold Coast, I would have been playing Aussie Rules like all my cousins if mum and dad stayed in Melbourne.
I owe so much to what I'm doing with my life right now to rugby league, and what the Runaway Bay Junior Rugby League Club did for me.
I was 18, had dropped out of my final year at high school, and weeding bunkers on a golf course when the president of the club, Peter McGrath asked to speak with me and my mum. Mr McGrath said they were creating an Assistant Coaching Director traineeship role for 12 months and basically said, the jobs yours if you want it.
I grabbed it with both hands and loved every minute of it, even the ordinary roles like cleaning out the sheds and picking up the rubbish on a Monday after the weekend's games.
Most of all, what it did was allow me to train by myself, so that at the end of the season I could fly down to Sydney and have a go at a couple of trials, which fortunately for me, I played pretty well in the Wests trial, and Bob Lindner asked me to move down to Sydney the following year.
The year in Sydney wasn't that enjoyable for me, my body wasn't up to scratch, and I pretty much lived the whole year on anti inflammatories and having weekly chiropractic adjustments.
This is where I was born on August 22, 1981.
It used to be called the Mordialloc Hospital, but is now a Community Health Centre. It's situated on the Nepean Hwy, only two minutes from Beach Road.
As I said at the top of my message, I only saw where I was born late last year.
It's not like I was told, here's where you were born... I had to dig and dig, and ask questions.
I remember calling mum a couple of times last year and she'd tell me streets to go and check out.
It was only at mum's 60th birthday in June this year that my uncle Paul (dad's brother) told me where the street was that's named after him.
It was in Mordialloc too, just round the corner from where I was born.
It feels good knowing that these gaps in my life are filled.
ps. Peter Weekes, mum's brother, he played for Melbourne in the early 70's, here's a newspaper clipping of him playing against Carlton, his opponent is Mark of the Century winner and Carlton legend, Alex Jesaulenko.
pps. The other thing that blew me away last December was finding out that the father of the low carb diet, William Banting, was at the top of our family tree, along the Jarman side of the family.
Dad's mums name was Faith, Edward, her father was a minister in Melbourne, William Banting was his great grandfather. There are 7 generations between me and William.
"Only three men in history have been immortalized by having their names enter the English language as verbs. ... the third was the subject of this article—William Banting..." —Barry Groves, PhD
Over 100 hundred years before Atkins, the low carb movement all started with William Banting.
Click here to find out more about how he influenced the world for good.
