Rob Hadfield has lived in Armidale since 1974. This city, set in the high country of the northern tablelands of NSW, has provided him with many opportunities, personally and profes...view moreRob Hadfield has lived in Armidale since 1974. This city, set in the high country of the northern tablelands of NSW, has provided him with many opportunities, personally and professionally. The move to the country coincided with a move from school teaching (in Papua-New Guinea and Sydney) into psychological counselling, later finding its expression in tertiary teaching at Armidale College of Advanced Education and the University of New England. More recently he has developed a private counselling psychology practice in the city and worked as a counsellor at O’Connor Catholic College and, since 2006, at The Armidale School. Living ten kilometres from Armidale, Rob enjoys country life, his family, walking, cycling, music, literature, history and being outdoors in the garden. Overseas travel, with his wife Margaret, has been especially fruitful in broadening and deepening his experience of life. Poetry has long been a part of his personal engagement with experiences of all kinds, the search for meaning and understanding, and the acute sense of life itself in all its rich complexity and fragility. Rob’s life is grounded within a contemplative spirituality in the Christian tradition that also turns towards the social and natural world in all its confronting, concrete and specific realities. The diversity of Rob’s life experiences is reflected in the selection of poems for this book.view less