Hi all,

It’s been a whirlwind couple of months to say the least, but I’m finally back in Australia, and happy to be in my own bed.

To help explain, I’ll go back to the start. As part of winning the Australian Open in February, I earnt the right to represent Australia at the World Champion of Champions in Scotland in late July.

The tournament has been up and running since 2003 when it was first staged at Moama, and while Australia has had some incredible bowlers competing at it, we’ve never been able to win the women’s title. Julie Keegan came close in 2006 when she reached the final, but that’s as good as its gets, until now.

With 25 nations in attendance, Brett Wilkie and I flew the flag for Australia during a grueling qualifying campaign, which consisted of 10 round-robin games before the cut-throat quarter-finals on eight second greens.

While I managed to top my group, I did drop two games along the way, including one to Guernsey’s Lindsey Greechan, who I met in the final. There was little between us in the pool game, with Lindsey posting a narrow win, but I felt confident going into the final and I really wanted to win after capturing bronze at last year’s World Championships in Christchurch.

With strong, gusty winds making conditions difficult, I managed to halve the first set 6-6 after trailing by two playing the final end. In the second set, I made a better start and midway through my match I looked across and saw that Brett had won his own final against Scotland’s Wayne Hogg, which made me even more determined to win.

Playing the final end of the second set, I led 7-5 and I knew I needed to keep my cool, because if I relented for a moment, Lindsey would step up and take the match. With her final bowl Lindsey came close to knocking out my shot bowl, which would have given her the title, but she trailed the jack instead and claimed a shot to hand me the win.

It was an incredible moment being crowned a world champion and it was great that I had Brett in the same boat alongside me. I had a tear in my eye when they played the Australian national anthem and that’s when what I had achieved really sunk in.

While it would have been great to kick up my heals and celebrate, from Scotland I boarded a plane to Malaysia to hook up with the rest of the Australian squad for the XIII Asia Pacific Championships. In 2005 I made my Australian debut at the Asia Pacifics, so it’s a fond tournament for me, and we held high hopes going into the two-week event.

After a little R & R with the rest of the squad, which included a great day go karting, I played in the triples alongside Claire Duke and Julie Keegan and we looked on track for gold before meeting a blistering Malaysian in the final. Claire and Julie played some terrific bowls, but on the final end, Azlina Arshad played the shot of her life and we had to be content with silver.

In the singles, fresh off my win in Scotland, I held high hopes and everything was progressing smoothly until the semi-finals when I met the Philippines’ Rosita Bradborn, who also knocked me off in the pool games, and came unstuck. As a result, I claimed bronze to go with my silver in the triples, which wasn’t quite what I was after, but that’s bowls.

I’m now back on the Gold Coast and trying desperately to catch up of my uni work. Having spent five weeks on the road, I’m well behind where I would like to be, but it’s a tremendous honour to represent your nation, and one that I couldn’t pass up. It was also great to catch up with my family and hand them the presents I had bought while I was overseas.

I managed to sneak a quick visit to Rome and Paris and it was great to see another part of the world, not to mention a golden shopping opportunity. Coming back to uni after such a long break was difficult, but I'm slowly getting through it.

I’m enjoying my classes a lot more this semester, especially after I ditched politics, and I’m now the favourite aunty after handing out all my presents!!! I’ve got the Helensvale National 5 a Side coming up next week with South Tweed, so hopefully we can do well, and I’m looking forward to catching up with a lot of the bowlers who I haven’t seen for a while.

Until later, good luck on the green.

Kelsey