Where do I begin? – ‘How about at the beginning’
Week 1 took me from the lush southerly green fields surrounding Lucaston in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, up to Devonport, the trade and transportation hub of the north, to load up ‘Orange’ (my ‘Burnt Orange and black 2022 Nissan X-Trail), onto the Spirit of Tasmania car ferry, to begin my ‘Grand Circumnavigation of the Australian mainland; this time by AWD 4-wheel drive comfort machine. I would be following in the footsteps of a similar journey that I made 30 years previously, when as a younger backpacker I trailblazed the country by public transport.
Really, that’s about where the similarities end, being that back in 1995, I flew into Australia for my first visit and major stopover on a World Ticket that took me, London to London in 365 days, to the minute. Flying was pretty new to me then, which meant that anywhere further than the South of France was beyond my furthest sphere of activity; it also meant that so many of my extended family, were still very much alive and there to welcome me.
Three decades later and so many of them are now gone; either that or grown up and starting families of their own. And after seeing a twenty-year relationship of my own, blossom, produce two beautiful boys, only to falter on the rocks of unforeseen circumstances. ‘This one’s for me’; time to see beyond the trees of blinkered might? Beyond attention deficit diagnosis; beyond a life on the back foot ever determined to prove myself right! At least I’m fortunate to take with me all their love, so still a relationship of sorts, just not the one I saw coming.
That first week was all about final purchases, such as picking up a full sized spare and generally readying myself whilst staying with family and friends. Time to complete checks; re pack; and convince myself that, although I didn’t really understand why I was doing this, that it would all become clear in good time..
And so it was, that taking each week from Monday to Monday, week one saw me arrive, stop over and depart Melbourne; drive the 726km in one day to Adelaide where I performed the same rituals whilst regaled by those closest to me in that city; caught up with a colleague from my Tasmanian Writers group and was served up two rounds of Happy Birthday just before setting off on Tuesday 25th June, my actual day of celebration; on route to Perth.
In that earlier sojourn I’d journeyed by train, sleeping in my seat on an ‘Indian Pacific’ trundle to the WA capital; this time it was me and ‘Orange’ on a drive that would include my first two nights ‘sleeping in’.