I'm now well over half way through my travels, both geographically (I started in Darwin, travelled down the middle to Adelaide, accross to Melbourne, over to New Zealand, back to the east coast of Oz & now I am in Queensland making my way down the coast towards Sydney & the end of my journey) and timewise (I return to work at NFER in a little over eight weeks). I am well adapted to the backpacking lifestyle (sleeping anywhere and through anything, packing & repacking my bag, getting bottom bunk) and I am well adapted to being on my own.
Travelling alone has not been a problem, I have been able to do what I want when I want and that is great. It is easy enough to meet people... staying in backpackers (youth hostels) most people are in the same situation and just a quick drink in the local bar & you can have half a dozen new best friends!
But the conversations do start to get a little trying, a little repetative: 'where are you from' 'how long have you been here' 'where are you going next', and if you are lucky/unlucky 'what do you do'. It is nice meeting so many new people, but the routine of learning about who they are and where they are from is getting quite wearing! So now that the end of my year long adventure is appropaching, I am strating to look forward to returning home to my old friends, my old job & my old routines (for a little while at least!)
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Another lovely blog Whitters - it brings on a need for cliché time - home for many is wherever they decide it to be (or that it happens to be) and/or with whom it happens to be; it is a fine thing indeed to have a such a solid notion of 'home' as a rock that one can return to or hold on tight to, when the need arises.
For others, no more or less fortunate, its a tad more fluid than that - and perhaps reflects another well warn cliché - 'home is where(ever) the heart is' (or should that be ‘happens to be’?) and, for specimens like me, that is the best god dam definition of home I ever did hear and pretty happily covers all of the above and then some.
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