Half A lifetime Ago
On this very day, July 15th, 1986 (which ALSO fell on a Tuesday) I left Australia for what I thought would be a six month trip through Asia. I had saved for the trip for years but a fall in the Australian dollar while I was trying to amass travel funds meant that I didn’t have much spending power. In fact, it would have been better had I left a year earlier with less dollars but at a higher value. In frustration, I sold all my stuff and gave up my flat in Sydney just to be able to afford to go at all.
But because of a series of adventures, happy accidents and connections made along the way, and the fact that I hadn’t left any entanglements back in Sydney to draw me back, I wound up getting work in various countries, which enabled me to extend my trip, and here I am, 22 years later, still abroad, meaning that I have now lived exactly half of my life away from my native land.
Funnily enough, I have yet to do a few of the things I had planned when I left home all those years ago. My original plan was to visit Japan and then go to China and ride the Trans-Siberian express into Europe, find some work in London (as most Australians do in their youth) and then head home. But although I got as far as Japan and China, I never rode the Trans-Siberian.
Along the way my plans changed, and I ended up staying in Asia for 3 straight years, using the money made from working in various animation studios throughout Asia to finance wanderings around the region. After that, I came to the USA to visit friends who I had met in Asia, and then I travelled around both North and South America.
I worked in France for a year and did some travelling in Europe, but by that stage my wandering feet were getting tired and I wanted to stay in one place for a while. Thankfully I was given a job-offer to move to San Francisco and I have been living in this great city pretty much ever since.
Now I am feeling somewhat restless again… For sometime now I have been thinking that it might be time for some kind of a change, although I don’t know what it should be. Maybe I should actually complete my original travel plan by riding the Trans-Siberian express from Europe into Asia and then back home to Australia…
