As we celebrate Mother’s Day in Australia today, I can’t help but think about the mothers I have seen all over the world in my travels.

Seeing mothers with their children just confirms that for all our differences – geographical, cultural – we are fundamentally the same. Mothers work, cook, feed, cuddle, teach, tell stories and play with their children. But most of all, they love their children unconditionally and would do anything for them.

Washing day, Solomon Islands

It’s more than 30 years now since I first became a mother. Holding my first baby, a beautiful girl with a shock of spiky black hair, I was filled with those indescribable emotions that the first hours of parenthood bring. Amazement that I had helped create this child, overwhelming love, and inexplicable fear that something terrible would take this new love of my life away. I could not take my eyes off her.

Eighteen months later, this surge of emotions – mostly a flood of love – came again as my heart expanded to make room for an equally beautiful, but so different, second daughter.

Now I am a grandmother, watching my eldest daughter discover for herself the joys and terrors of parenthood.

A kiss for Mama Bear.

I am also lucky enough to still have my own mother, who recently turned 91. This Mother’s Day, I can speak to her but not see her, as she’s in another country and – even if I wanted to – visiting is impossible under Covid-19 travel bans. But I hope to do so as soon as those restrictions are lifted.

With my mother last year on her 90th birthday.

In a number of western countries, including Australia and New Zealand, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. This tradition was founded in the USA in in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother and later campaigned for the day to be a holiday in tribute to mothers. Jarvis later decried the commercialisation of the day. Other celebrations, such as Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom, which is observed in March, also honour motherhood

In tribute to mothers everywhere, take a look these photos of women caring for their children that I’ve taken on my travels.

Qelqanqa, Peru

Baby in a bilim, Papua New Guinea

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Hmong mother and child, Sapa, Vietnam

Family group, Laos

Picnic, Abu Dhabi

Lombok, Indonesia

Mother and child, Solomon Islands.

Lunchtime with babies at the Bac Ha markets, northern Vietnam.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, grandmothers, step-mothers, aunties and those who care for children all over the world.