Today we are having a little celebration for the stone before it makes it's journey down to Kanahooka Point on Tuesday when it will be settled into its new home. Then, on Wednesday, we will be having a launch complete with readings of poems and a gathering of friends and local people and people from Wollongong Council.

It's hard to believe that this journey is coming to an end. After three years in the planning and dreaming and working out there's now so little time before I have to say goodbye to the stone and clamber back onto an aeroplane that we fly me to England.

I am a little sad today. Without exception people over here in Australia have been so kind and generous. In addition, I'm going to miss this stone in my life. Of course it will still be there, sunning itself by Lake Illawarra, but I'm going to be out of physical contact with it for years, possibly for the rest of my life.

I couldn't be leaving it in a better place. But that doesn't stop a few tears from falling as I contemplate these last few days that we will spend together. I wonder if we aren't born with equal measures of sadness and joy; and that together they make the full and splendid spectrum of our feelings and deepen the quality of being alive.

Today's tears fell under a sunny sky as I sat in the shade of a willow tree. The wind blew tiny shadows across me and even in the midst of feeling glum I couldn't help but see all the beauty around me too.