Going through boxes of bygone stuff in my garage yet again, I came across an old photo of my father and me. It is grainy and not well resolved in the manner of the photos of the day, when film and its development were expensive. Quite often the packet that came back from the pharmacy had its fair share of duds - photos that today would be instantly deleted and just as swiftly re-shot. Even if a good shot had been made, there was no guarantee, given the cheaper, instamatic cameras of the day, that colours hadn't bleached into each other or that a red wash of overexposure didn't ruin the picture.

In trying to place the event and the year I was somewhat befuddled, for a part of my memory thinks it is related to being in 2nd Killarney Boy Scouts and another echo from the distant past suggests that maybe it had occurred on a bush walk with Killarney Heights Soccer Club. In any event, the time is somewhere around 1971 or 1972, when I was about 13 or 14.

I don't have many good memories of my father as a father, so this fuzzy moment, on a flying fox in the Australian bush, is one such gem.