Today (Saturday 8 July 2017) was an exciting day - even though there were dreary skies and rain, my mum (Lyne) and Dad (Simon) departed Kortmar Shiba Inu home base in our bus to take Me on an AWESOME Australian adventure over the next 3 months! There will be lots of National Parks and hiking and checking out Central Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia - do you want to come and see Australia with me?

Dont you worry about the REAL Betty and the rest of the Kortmar team - the amazingly awesome nomads Karen and George are on hand to keep them all lovingly looked after and Kylie, Selene and Georgia will keep the show flag burning while we are all gone traipsing around the country-side - mum & dad said they are all awesome folks and that they have all promised to send lots of photos and will even let me Skype my Betty & the rest of the gang regularly - I will have so many stories to tell them!

Today is the day, #BadBetty on Tour has commenced. It feels surreal to leave behind the cut and thrust of normal life to do this trip - going on long holidays is not something Lyne and I do regularly, in fact this is the first time for both of us. Kortmar Manor has come to a standstill and must wait patiently for my return to complete her transformation from ugly duckling to beautiful swan.

We are getting older, that's no secret - every time I look in the mirror some old grey guy is staring back at me, but that's ok, I like getting older and who I have become, so does Lyne.

We want to embrace getting older and reap the benefits of life lessons thus far.

A few years ago we started a conversation about retirement and decided that our fifties was going to be a decade lived on our terms - not decided by work and family commitments but by us - we were only going to work in paid jobs when and if required and find a way to work less and spend more time doing what we wanted to do with each other - now the adventures have begun.