A few years ago, Padma and I started talking about a sea change. Joseph was nearing the end of his high school days and that would present us with an opportunity to spice up our lives a bit … change our jobs, change homes, change something, change anything. We all reach a point in our lives when we need to re-evaluate the direction our lives have taken, we need to examine what our true values are and, if we’ve strayed from our ideals, we need to get back on course.

I set out on a mission as a young man full of altruistic values fuelled by the environmental movement of the 1970s. Life threw in some welcome detours in terms of my family life but I got off track in terms of my mission. Yet I’ve yearned to get back on the track that the younger version of me followed.

After a long, and often incredibly depressing, quest, I have gotten back on track. But that small sea change Padma and I searched for has become more like a tsunami.

We’re pulling up stakes in the Adelaide Hills and moving to Bonn, Germany. I depart on 7 July with Joe to follow in September and Padma in early October.

When Padma and I decided we’d like to return to working overseas, I figured it would be easy to get a job. I was at the top of my career and so much wiser and knowledgeable than those days 25 years ago when I worked in international agriculture development. I felt I was full of energy, enthusiasm and passion. But I was wrong … I was the wrong age, the wrong gender, the wrong salary level and I had worked too long in the private sector. At 58, it appeared I was no longer employable.

But I kept trying as I didn’t want the dream to die. Surely somewhere out there a non-profit organisation and I would discover we are the perfect match.

During that time, I would check one particular website for vacancies: the Crop Trust which is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It’s a small organisation with very little staff turnover. I’d always see the same message: ‘The Crop Trust currently has no employment vacancies.’ I had the vacancy page bookmarked and every week I’d check and hope. And every week I would be disappointed.

Last February, I went through my routine and noticed immediately something was different. There was a vacancy! And I couldn’t believe what I read. Surely someone had taken my CV and wrote a job description from it. My interests in botany, genetics, agriculture, biodiversity, preservation, writing, storytelling and website development all rolled up in a single job. I immediately applied for the science communication specialist/science writer position.

Three months and several interviews and writing tests later, the phone in my study rang late at night. The caller ID showed an international code of 49 and I knew Germany was calling. Twenty minutes later I was glowing. I was back on track.

The Crop Trust has confidence that I could tell their story about the need to safeguard crop diversity forever. And I can’t wait to tell those stories. I’ll tell stories of how up to 20% of our plant diversity is under threat. I’ll tell stories of the crop wild relatives which need to be collected and preserved before they are lost. I’ll tell stories of the 1700 seed banks worldwide that are fighting to preserve that diversity so our children’s food supply is secure. I’ll tell stories of the Global Svalbard Seed Vault – popularly known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’ – on a Norwegian island in the Arctic. And I’ll tell stories of how our agricultural crops will struggle to cope with the clear and present danger of climate change.

For Joseph, it will mean an opportunity he could never have imagined. He hopes to attend a German or Dutch university. Many offer bachelor degrees taught in English. It will mean getting a top-notch degree while being able to enjoy a bit of play at biergartens with Fräuleins and having any major European city a few hours away on train or a $99 ticket on a budget airline. We don’t know where, or even if, he will be accepted but we do know wherever it will be won’t be more than a six-hour train ride away from mom and dad. We wouldn’t be happier if he shows up frequently in Bonn with a bag of laundry and a craving for mom’s home cooking.

For Padma, the sea change will mean a retirement from teaching. The profession she loves and excels in is simply wearing her down. The stress and the long nights marking papers will soon be over for her. She will dearly miss her colleagues and students at St Marys College. Padma will not join me initially but will wait till she can fully prepare her Year 12 students (seniors) for their final exams. It’s not so much the hard work she wishes to escape; it’s being tied down to a full-time job. Padma needs to have the freedom to travel to Perth at any time to spend time with her mother, who is advancing in age. Retirement will bring her that freedom and allow her to be at her mother’s side within 24 hours for extended stays.

For me, this opportunity confronts something that I haven’t been at ease with for two decades. I have not happy with my career path. I grew out of a generation of altruism, a generation where we felt we all had to contribute to better society and our environment. I was never happy with myself that I had veered so far away from who I once was. The return now to working in food security helps satisfy that desire. Politicians who don’t read books and think only of electoral votes will do nothing to safeguard our food supply. But scientists will. I’m jumping out of my skin with excitement and eager to tell their story.

It’s rare in life when an opportunity presents itself where all the components line up perfectly. I would happily work for Crop Trust anywhere in the world but Germany is special. On past trips, I’ve felt a strange connection. I felt I was meant to be there. I felt at home. And it is home … my ancestral homeland. Germany is in my DNA. No doubt on weekends I will travel to the little village of Olberobe to drink kirschwasser with my mother’s distant cousins or I’ll travel south to the Rhineland to Herxheim and enjoy a Riesling with yet-to-be-discovered cousins on my dad’s side.

This marks a final farewell to the Adelaide Hills, our home for 22 years. Adelaide is where we experienced those milestone events in our lives: our marriage, the birth of our son, Joseph’s high school graduation, our 50th birthdays, the death of our 21-year-old cat. It is where we developed ageless friendships, where we made our home and where we felt welcome. But we will not return to Adelaide once our overseas adventure ends. In mid-August, removalists will come and stash all of those material things one accumulates in a lifetime into a sea container bound for Bonn. We will sell our home and bid adieu to our resident kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras.

At some very uncertain time in our future, we will return to Australia and retire in Perth so that we can spend more time with Joshua, Shereen and Xander and so can enjoy all those life’s joys that come with watching our extended family grow.

The Roman poet, Horace, was thinking of us when he said ‘Those who cross the sea, change sky, but not soul’. We will deeply miss our life and friends in Adelaide but this sea change merely means a geographic relocation. Adelaide and our friends here have become a part of our souls and that will never change.

Please fill your coffee cups, wine glasses or beer steins and take 16 minutes of your lives to watch the below beautifully presented video about the importance of safeguarding our crop diversity as passionately told by the Crop Trust’s first executive director, Cary Fowler.