Category Archives: Retirement

‘This book’s a beauty’

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I know this is indulgent, but I couldn’t resist sharing this welcome LinkedIn posting from my elder daughter, Julie, Director, Healthy Ageing and End of Life Care, CCQ Country to Coast, QLD:

“Yesterday I watched my dad launch his new book, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

Done Working: Finding Contentment in Retirement draws on the real experiences of 101 retirees and global research to explore what actually makes retirement good — not the finances or logistics, but genuine contentment: connection, purpose, identity.

It struck a chord professionally too. I work in healthy ageing, where so much focus goes on keeping people well physically and clinically, and far less on whether they’re genuinely content. This book is a good reminder that contentment deserves as much deliberate thought as any financial plan.

Mostly though, I just felt proud — of a dad who’s always been curious, generous, and a real listener. Fittingly, he hasn’t quite stopped working either. Congratulations, Dad. This one’s a beauty.“

https://lnkd.in/p/gv566nMY

One book launch down, one to go …

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We had a very successful launch of my latest book, DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement at Avid Reader, West End, Brisbane, in a great conversation with my friend Dr Mark Tyler. Lots of good audience questions too. Many thanks to Eleanor from Avid Reader for organising the event and to Fiona Stager, Co-owner, and Sarah Deasy, the store’s bookbuyer, for their support.

I’m looking forward to another launch across town at Riverbend Books, Bulimba on Sunday 30 August 2026 at 4pm, this time in conversation with another good friend, Dr Ann Kelly.

If you’re in town, you’d be very welcome, whether you’re retired or just thinking about it. And if you can’t make it, you can still buy a book via either bookshop’s website. Or ask your local library to order a copy.

And, after reading DONE WORKING, you can share your ‘Afterthoughts’ if you’d like to, in the Comments section below.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

Wellbeing Workbook: In DONE WORKING, I refer to Dr John Barletta’s stimulating publication, Wellbeing Workbook. You can download a pdf copy of the book right here.

Book Launch: DONE WORKING

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I’m excited to announce my latest non-fiction book DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement will be published on 15 August 2026.

To celebrate this publication of my seventh book, there will be two launches in Brisbane: at Avid Reader Bookshop, West End on that day and then across town at Riverbend Books, Bulimba on 30 August.

In DONE WORKING, I’ve woven together the real-life advice of 101 retirees, world-wide research and my own experience with humour and insight to tease out seven ways of finding contentment in retirement.

The theme was triggered by a comment from a student in a University of the Third Age (U3A) class, who said, ‘I’m retired and busy, but I’m not contented.’

The book will appeal to anyone heading towards retirement as well as those already retired, and help them negotiate their own best way to a contented life.

Clinical Psychologist and Wellbeing Specialist Dr John Barletta said: ‘Dymock speaks a language we can all understand. This book puts you in the driver’s seat to develop a good life, simple as that.’

INVITATION

If you’re in or around Brisbane, you’d be very welcome at one of the launches. Check the bookshops’ websites for details:

Avid Reader, 193 Boundary Street, West End at 2.30pm Saturday 15 August 2026

https://avidreader.com.au/pages/14865-DarrylDymock-DoneWorkingFindingContentmentinRetirement

OR Riverbend Books, Shop 4/77 Oxford St, Bulimba at 4pm on Sunday 30 August 2026

https://riverbendbooks.com.au/events/darryl-dymock-done-working-sunday-30th-august-4pm-at-riverbend-books

There is no charge for entry to either event – tickets are free, but please book online to register. No obligation to order a book when you register for the launch.

If you can’t get to one of the launches, you can still order the book through either bookshop if you’d like a copy.

Outside of Brisbane, you or your local bookshop can order a copy through Avid Reader. It will also shortly be available as an e-book.

With best wishes for a contented retirement, wherever you are on life’s journey,

Darryl Dymock

Feeling on top of the world

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I recently completed my one-month assignment in Nepal as a Visiting Scholar at Kathmandu University (KU) under the Australian Volunteers program. A billboard at Tribhuvan International Airport welcomed me to the land of Mount Everest.

Mt Everest queue

Unfortunately, I was too busy with my Visiting Scholar tasks to have time to slip away to climb the famous mountain or even do some trekking in the foothills. In any case, it was the climbing season and the queue of climbers waiting to tick off their bucket list was too long for me to hang around waiting my turn :).

As part of my assignment, I undertook a review of the Master of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (MTVET) program, at the request of Professor Mahesh Nath Parajuli and Dr Suresh Gautam, School of Education (KUSOE), and with the support of Dr Prakash Paudel.

I worked on that review in the weeks after my return to Australia, and am pleased to say that I’ve now submitted a report to KUSOE for their consideration. I appreciated the invitation to undertake this task and received excellent cooperation from KU staff and students alike.

Since I was based in Nepal for a relatively short time in April/May 2024, opportunities to gather data were limited. Nevertheless, with the assistance of KU staff I was able to organise focus groups with past and present MTVET students and interviews with KUSOE academic staff members. I also had informal chats with staff and students about their experience with the MTVET.

KUSOE Conference, Pokhara, April 2024

During my time in Nepal, I was also fortunate to be part of a MTVET staff/student conference in the regional city of Pokhara, and to join field visits organised by KUSOE, to be a guest lecturer in two online MTVET courses, and to visit several TVET organisations, including the Council of Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT), Pokhara Technical School, GATE Vocational Training, and Shankharapur Poytechnic Institute.

All of these interactions helped me develop some idea of the realities of learning and teaching in the MTVET program and of the broader context in which TVET operates in Nepal.

A presentation from the Dean of KU School of Education, Professor Bal Chandra Luitel, at the end of my in-country assignment in Nepal

I’ll be continuing to work online with KUSOE as a ‘remote’ volunteer throughout 2024. It’s good to be able to bring to bear my long experience as a teacher, researcher and published author in adult and vocational education, including almost 20 years with the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane.

However, I’ll have to wait until the climbing season next year to see if the Mt Everest queue gets any shorter.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

A Hybrid Volunteer Assignment in Nepal – Climbing New Mountains

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Australian Eastern Standard time is four-and-a-quarter hours ahead of Nepalese time. I know that because I recently taught an online class at Kathmandu University that started at 5.30pm their time, which was 9.45pm Brisbane time. I finally signed off at midnight AEST.

Thankfully, coffee and the enthusiasm of the students and the course coordinator, my Nepalese colleague Dr Prakash Paudel, kept me going.

That teaching session was part of a 12-month ‘hybrid’ assignment I’ve accepted in 2024 as a Visiting Scholar with the Australian Volunteers Program, which is funded by the Australian Government. This involves 11 months working online with staff and students of the School of Education at Kathmandu University and four weeks in country.

I’ll be supporting teaching and research in the School’s Master of Technical and Vocational Education (MTVET) program, as well as helping with its Journal of Education and Research.

During my late-night session, it was encouraging to see how interactive and responsive the students were and how well they were able to contextualise theory and ideas from elsewhere to their local context. (Intriguingly, there are also a couple of Namibian students enrolled.)

And, of course, I learnt a lot about those local situations in a very short time, with lots more to come! In case you’re wondering, classes are conducted in English.

I’m looking forward to learning more about the local culture during my one-month stay, which starts mid-April this year. I won’t be doing any trekking in the Himalayas, but I know I have some learning mountains to climb. Good for my brain, and my humility.

I took on this volunteer assignment because I saw it as an opportunity to give back some of the learning and experience I’ve accumulated over the years through teaching, researching and writing about adult and workplace learning and vocational education and training.

Kathmandu University’s MTVET has much in common with Masters programs I’ve been involved in at the University of New England, Armidale, and in the past 18 years at Griffith University, Brisbane.

My wife Cheryl and I recently had a meal at a Nepalese restaurant in Brisbane, Jhigu Bhoye Chhen. Delicious food, and friendly and efficient service. I’m looking forward to trying out more of the extensive Nepalese cuisine when I arrive in the country in a couple of weeks.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

While other Nashos were fighting in Vietnam, Australian Army quietly sent conscripted Education Taskforce to PNG

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We had a great State Library (SLQ) session on Sunday morning 29 May 2022 at Anzac Square Memorial Galleries, Brisbane. Four other ‘Chalkies‘ and I recalled our experiences as conscripted Army teachers in Papua New Guinea 1966-73.

An amazing selection of images from the time, professionally assembled by Mt Nebo Multimedia. Terrific backup from SLQ’s Alice and Greg.

The author, centre, with other National Service recruits, 3 Training Battalion, Singleton, NSW, early 1969
Troops of 1 Pacific Islands Regiment, Education class, Taurama Barracks, TPNG, c1970
Trooping the Colour, Taurama Barracks, TPNG, c1968

Thanks to librarian India Dixon, the videos will be added to the State Library of Queensland resource collection as part of their military memories program.

This is the book of the videos!

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

What a great book launch!

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Writers Group Convenor Darryl Dymock introduces writer John Brown, the founding Shed president

We had a great launch of the Oxley Men’s Shed anthology, Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, on Saturday 27 November in Brisbane. Nine men from the Shed contributed to the collection, and the first (modest) print run sold out! 70 to 80 people turned up to hear a brilliant launch by local Councillor Nicole Johnston, listen to music from the band Crossed Fingers, and enjoy a scrumptious morning tea.

Shed President Martin Rankine makes the welcome

This is no ordinary collection of stories. It draws on the varied experiences of nine men who have led very different lives, but whose paths have eventually crossed at Oxley Men’s Shed.
In this book these mostly first-time writers have taken the opportunity to share some of their fascinating stories from the past with their families and with the wider community. Many of these are never-before-told tales, entertaining anecdotes that not only illuminate the writers’ earlier lives, but often trigger our own memories too.

In these stories we meet a former fitter and turner who as a boy decided to see what would happen when he packed gunpowder from leftover fireworks into a fruit tin and lit the fuse; a retired meat inspector who had to escape hand over hand down a rope off a high church roof when his ladder collapsed; an ex-plumber who starred in a Bollywood movie and dodged bombs and bullets while driving a tour bus in the Middle East; a former photographer who once had the ultimate hand in a boarding house poker game; and a retired insurance underwriter who relives his late-night dash home to dive under the bedclothes before the resident ghost appeared.

Crossed Fingers Band

Then there’s a Vietnamese veteran driving an Army forklift who literally backed himself into an embarrassing corner with his commanding officer; an ex-teacher who was driving his prized first car through South Brisbane when the back seat caught fire; a former electrician who turned jackaroo to help out his mate on a cattle drive in northern NSW; and a retired agronomist who as a young man led a hiking group down a mountain during a cyclone, with intriguing romantic results.

This is a heady mix of yarns from a group of writers keen to tell their often remarkable stories – sometimes humorous, occasionally hair-raising, but always from the heart.

Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, Armour Books, Brisbane.

Publication date: November 2021

ISBN: 978-1-925380-378

BOOK LAUNCH COMING UP!

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BOOK LAUNCH

Saturday 27 November 2021

9.30am for 10am

St John’s Community Hall: 18 California Rd,

Oxley, Brisbane, Australia

Councillor Nicole Johnston

will launch

Offcuts: Stories from the Shed

An anthology of life stories written by Oxley Men’s Shed members

A heady mix of yarns – often remarkable, sometimes humorous, occasionally hair-raising, but always from the heart

Published by Armour Books, Corinda, Queensland

The stories on the bus go round and round – Start here

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Do you know that children’s song: The wheels on the bus go round and round? Well so do stories on the bus. Read on …

As Covid-19 seems to be retreating in Queensland, I’ve started to go back on campus a couple of days a week at the university where I’m an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow.

This means travelling by bus – rear door entry, touch card on and off, wave to the driver somewhere down the front. Masks optional.

It also means sharing the bus with an assortment of fellow passengers and watching the world go by. The 40-minute journey also gives me time to catch up on a bit of reading.

So over time I thought I’d share with you some of my experiences and interactions on those journeys. The theme is: The stories on the bus go round and round! This is Story No. 1.

The other day, a man with a walking stick joined the bus. The reason for the stick was that one leg was stiff at the knee.

In particular, the right leg. So in an uncrowded bus he searched for a seat on the left-hand side, so he could rest his unbending right leg in the aisle.

I was thinking he would always need to do that on buses and trains so he could stretch out his right leg. Which led me to jot down this little poem in the notebook in my phone:

I always sit on the left side of the bus

I always sit on the left side of the bus

Cause my leg sticks out

And I hate to cause a fuss.

My right leg’s stiff with age

But I’m not ready to turn the page

Not while I’ve got you

And we’ve got us.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

Jacaranda trees, Brisbane, Queensland

Dying to be well-read

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Did you know that the more you read the less likely you are to die? That’s the claim made by a writer in a recent issue of Wellbeing magazine.

heart-monitor-blips

An item headed ‘Better read than dead’ reported a study of the reading habits of 3635 men and women aged 50 and older over a 12-year period. With such a large sample and a longitudinal study, the results promised to be interesting for both readers and writers.

According to the Wellbeing writer, the results showed that ‘adults who read books for up to 3.5 hours a week were 17 per cent less likely to die than those who did not read books…’.

Wow! That’s awesome. Reading books means you’re less likely to die?

Let me work out the implications of such a finding: If reading books for 3.5 hours a week, gives you a 17% chance of not dying, then reading books for around 18 hours a week should guarantee you immortality!

When people hear about this, there’ll be a rush for books. What a boost that’ll be for booksellers and libraries.

Later in the article, we discover what the Wellbeing writer meant to say: ‘In all, book readers survived almost two years longer than non-book readers [i.e within the 12-year period].’

In other words, this particular bit of research indicates that if you’re over 50, reading books is one way that may help you live a couple of years longer. But no amount of reading is going to make you ‘less likely to die’.

Of course, there may factors other than reading at play in promoting longevity. For example, book-reading and lifestyle might be linked.

bearded-old-man-book

By the way, the researchers also concluded that reading newspapers and magazines is also linked to longer life, but not nearly as much as book reading. Perhaps reading magazines and newspapers is linked to increased coffee intake …?

The ultimate message from the research is: if you want to live a bit longer, reading might help you do so. See you at the library.

Until next time

Darryl Dymock

 

What writers say:

In the best stories, the odyssey from complication to resolution changes the character profoundly. In fact, the resolution often results not directly from the action but from a growing enlightenment – often a sudden flash of inspiration – as the character finally realizes what he [or she] has to do to solve his [or her] problem. ~ Jon Franklin, Writing for story.