As leaders, we often pride ourselves on being reflective, switched on, and in tune with the people we serve. We attend the courses, we read the books, we preach the importance of self-awareness and presence. But sometimes leadership gives you a moment so disarmingly simple and so brutally honest that it knocks the wind out of your certainty and shows you, quite clearly, what everyone else could see except you.

Leadership is often imagined as strategy, vision, direction, and decision-making. But in the day-to-day reality, especially in a school, it can also look like answering a phone call from a parent who sounds determined to tear you, your judgement, or the entire school apart. In my earlier leadership days, and admittedly even now depending on how much coffee or sleep I’ve managed, those calls could feel like personal attacks. They could tighten the chest, speed up the heart, and turn a routine conversation into an internal storm.

There are moments in a career that feel cinematic. Not because they’re glamorous, but because they are so profoundly unexpected that you can practically hear the dramatic soundtrack swelling behind you. I had one of those moments three years into my teaching career, still basically a baby teacher, still convinced that owning a sturdy lanyard made me look “established” - when leadership arrived long before I felt remotely prepared for it.

I grew up in an aviation family. My dad was a Qantas captain - ex-Air Force - and in the 80s and 90s, that meant one thing: access to the world. And not just any access - first-class, silver-spoon, hot-towel access. It was a golden era of flying, and we lived right in the middle of it.

On day one of the Italian Camino, I was ready. Superbly ready. My backpack was balanced, my socks were elite hiking stock, and my first-aid kit was so well equipped it could’ve supported a small field hospital. I’d prepared for everything - foot blisters, sore calves, aching knees, you name it. I’d even done the research on which brand of blister plasters European hikers swear by.

Day two on the Italian Camino had already proven challenging. The morning sun was gentle, the path winding, and my legs reminded me that yes, yesterday’s 19kms were very real. I was plodding steadily up yet another hill when, suddenly, a blur of energy shot past me. I blinked. And blinked again.

Day after day, as my boots crunched along the winding dirt paths of the Italian Camino, I found myself in the company of some of the most unexpected mentors: wild horses and cats. At first, I thought of them merely as passing scenery, creatures going about their lives in open fields, seemingly indifferent to my presence. But as the kilometres unfolded, I began to notice the subtle, unspoken lessons each one carried about leadership, diversity, and the art of moving forward together.

Sometimes, the Camino doesn’t gift you with the golden-hued hills, medieval villages, or unexpected glimpses of papal splendor. Sometimes, it just gives you… roads. Long, dusty, unremarkable roads that seem to stretch infinitely ahead, testing your patience more than your legs. I found myself walking two days in a row where each spanned 28kms, yet each felt like 50. The monotony was profound. Every step echoed the one before it. The horizon barely moved. Time stretched. Minutes became hours. And for the first time in the journey, I understood just how much the mundane can weigh on both body and spirit.

There’s something both poetic and ridiculous about trudging into one of the world’s most historic cities covered in mud. On my final day walking the Italian Camino, from Campagnano di Roma into Rome, I found myself facing two long, open paddocks that looked deceptively innocent from afar. But the closer I got, the clearer it became that there was no avoiding what lay ahead: puddles. Not the polite kind that invite you to skip through them, but deep, swampy, boot-swallowing puddles that stretched across the entire path like nature’s own obstacle course.

Throughout my entire 141-kilometre journey from Montefiascone to Rome, I was repeatedly ambushed by beauty. The Italian Camino, the ancient Via Francigena, has a way of catching you off guard. One moment you’re calculating the exact percentage of your body currently comprised of blisters, and the next, you crest a hill to find a papal town unfurling in the distance, its church spires piercing the sky as if placed there by divine intervention.

Somewhere between Viterbo and Vetralla, on the Italian Camino, I hit a fork in the road - literally and metaphorically

Somewhere along the dusty road of the Italian Camino, about 10 kilometres past “my feet hurt” and just before “I’m questioning all my life choices”, I startled a cluster of wild cats. There were so many of them, darting in every direction, that I barely caught a flash of fur before they disappeared into the hazelnut groves like ghosts.