Yesterday I was driving home from Sydney on the Hume Highway, pelting along at 110km per hour with the cruise control on and my daughter in the back seat listening to music with her headphones on. It was raining hard and I was lost in a podcast.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a black crow swooped across my windscreen. It was an unusual sight and close enough to startle me out of my reverie, bringing me back to the present. Whilst I don’t think I was drifting off as such, it pulled me up. Black crow crossing my path, isn’t that a bad omen? Doesn’t that mean bad luck? Death?

I took the car out of cruise control, reduced my speed and re-focused on the road ahead. The Hume Highway has played host to a number of random, catastrophic accidents in recent years, and I have no intention of being one of them.

Then, out of the blue and around 10 minutes later, another black crow flew across my windscreen. Ok, now you’ve got my attention. I slowed the car a little more, sat up in my seat and drove the rest of the way home trying not to obsess on the doom that awaited me and my daughter (who incidentally is named Tippi, as in actress Tippi Hedren who is best known for her role in the creepy film The Birds).

Today out of curiosity, I googled “what does a black crow symbolise?”  Many things, it seems. Bad luck, yes. Death, sure. If you see a crow near your house, be concerned. When death is near, a crow will come to a window or near a home repeatedly for several days before the passing takes place. After someone has passed, a crow will visit the home again in the same way.

However, I’m relieved to find crows can be taken as a positive sign as well. They can mean wisdom, magic, personal transformation, change. When a crow crosses your path, it symbolises positive changes in your life, two crows crossing is good luck.

Interestingly, after years of my life being somewhat stagnant – I’ve called it being in a holding pattern – there are big changes ahead. I don’t know what next year will look like, but it will almost certainly be very different to the last few.

Was this a warning to pay attention to the wet conditions I was driving my daughter home in, or a positive sign of changes on the horizon? I’ll never know, but it served to ensure I drove to the conditions and got us home safely.

Maybe it’s just Spring.