Whoever that Hamish Danks Brown is crouching behind the masquerade of Danksta Downunder (yours truly madly deeply and all that), he is celebrating his half-century this weekend.

What? The half-ton? The Big Five-Oh? So soon it's getting late? Who wound the clock on so far ahead? Why is time now running so fast-forward?

Or so it seems to me, now that I am obliged to devote whatever remains of my neurology and my senses to admitting having reached such an age.

Turning 50 is to realise that my life is making its idiosyncratic way somewhat closer to the end than to the start of it.

Turning 50 is to begin to understand that I've met and mixed with many more people than I've probably yet to meet.

Turning 50 is to remember and to honour all the people that I have known and outlived over the numerous years gone by. I am somewhat saddened and sobered by memories and thoughts of those who I'll never share a moment with ever again.

However, I'm not about to attend a seance or consult a clairvoyant to try and get in touch with wherever they are supposed to be. They already inhabit my warping shelves of memories about way back when.

Turning 50 is a great opportunity to give thanks for having lasted this long, since I don't want to dwell on what happened to various family members and friends, or contemplate previous relationships and what might or might not have been.

Such speculative fiction looks backwards and forwards at the same time.

Turning 50 is to take stock of all the ways the world has changed in my lifetime. Since I was born, on August 19, 1957, the human population has trebled to more than 6 billion, the population of Australia has more than doubled to 21 million, as has Queensland's to more than 4 million, and the population of Noosa has increased tenfold.

Fifty years ago it was the Cold War against Kruschev and Mao's communist bloc, Dwight Eisenhower was the President of the USA, Bob Menzies was prime minister of Australia, and the Nationals had just regained power in Queensland after 42 years of ALP government.

When I arrived at St Margaret's hospital in Darlinghurst, there were no satellites (not until October 4, 1957), manned spaceships, jumbo jets or Concordes, colour TVs, DVD players, home computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, heart transplants, particle accelerators, ATMs and most of the gadgets and modcons we take for granted.

Yet science-fiction writers of 50 years ago like Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov and Stanislav Lem were already conceiving hugely changed and seemingly far-fetched future worlds.

Turning 50 is something of a mystery and an arrival at a possible solution all at once. How did I get all the way here? Was it ever in doubt?

For most of the time allotted to us, nobody knows what the next second might bring about, in spite of all our acquired habits, plans, dreams and intentions.

That's why my personal motto has long been a quote from the Italian writer Italo Calvino, taken from his novel Time and The Hunter: "La seconde que je vis est la second que je demeure."

Which translates as: "The second that I live is the second that I live in."

So far my own story has included a rich variety of people from around the world through assorted adventures and journeys and episodes and mishaps across Australia.

I am grateful for the gamut of challenges and experiences that life has presented, and to the people that have been encountered, loved with, lived with, worked with, played with, fought with and sometimes parted from, all along the way.

How can anyone be a writer without having people and their lives to observe, interact with and write about?

So, subject to divine intervention, today I'm going to have a straightforward and informal gathering at a local venue with a mixture of family and friends and local characters (sometimes all three-in-one).

There will be conversation, poetry, music, food and probably some over-indulgence, but even moderation has to be in kept moderation now and then.

It occurs to me that I don't really want for or need anything at this age, as I am still healthy, indifferent to being wealthy, and finely balanced between both folly and wisdom.

So it is a blessing and a bonus to enjoy a get-together with a range of people who have meant a great deal and who have been very close and influential at different times in my life.

Here's to the insight, the help and the endurance of my parents Jock and Cora, my brother Jock and his family, and to those constant friends over the decades, even though we now often live very far apart and some of us have already moved on from this human hearth.

Turning 50 is not simply about advancing age versus retreating youth. Fifty is another figure in life's sequence of numbers and anniversaries, but lifespan should not be conducted by competition.

As far as I'm concerned, turning 50 is really rather nifty! Overall, I'm somehow still intact, still feel as if I'm in the prime of life, and am ready to proceed with the rest of however long is left to go in this life as a writer.

There is still the matter of fulfilling one lifelong goal. That goal is to produce at least one book that people might still get to read, more likely online rather than in print, long after I've been found out, and been given directions out of here. I can only hope that that book and its stories do you justice.

The books I've treasured and the music I've revelled in have also been an enticement to keep exploring along a corkscrewed, intriguing, sometimes confusing and sometimes potholed road.

As the childhood song goes, "life is but a dream" ...

Hamish has two MySpace websites. On one he writes about poetry, writing, music and other interests such as performing, reading, history and archaeology link to site, while the other focuses on amalgamation and other local issues link to site.