The Melbourne of my childhood was a different place.

My parents, Russell and Anne, and my siblings, Janet and Peter, and I lived in the suburbs in what seemed like simpler times.

My 93-year-old father often reminds me of those times, and how when he and my mother married they could not afford a double bed, spending the first two years of their marriage sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I was ten before they could afford a car. In contemporary Melbourne those circumstances would elicit pity, but this was in the first decade following the Second World War and starting a marriage with very little wasn’t unusual.

The changes to our society over the past 60 years have been quite dramatic in some ways. In my parents’ era there seemed to be less wealth and more community, but now that seems to be reversed. Most people start their marriages these days with a bed, as well as a television, DVD player, dishwasher and laptop, but it may take them two years to meet their neighbours!

Melbourne has become a wealthy, tolerant, cosmopolitan city but I can’t help suspecting we have also lost a little something along the way.

One of the privileges I have had since becoming CEO of World Vision Australia is travelling all over the world and I am constantly struck by the sense of community that I see in some of the most impoverished places I visit. I am always reminded that no matter what we take to developing countries, they can teach us just as much about a richness of spirit.

The growth in prosperity in Melbourne – and Australia as a whole – has left us in an enviable position and I am always humbled to see there is still such a strong sense of compassion in this city – we just have to remember community as well.