Day 331 | Georgina River crossing: yeah, that's actual water down there
54 km | zzOz total: 8535 km
Australia?
Someone asked me why I’m spending time looking at Oz, after all it’s so boring.
Why not SE Asia. Europe, somewhere interesting?
I just said something vague, or random, after all what were they doing out there. Later I had a think about it.
It’s not as if I haven’t travelled parts of the world in the past. My first experience of leaving NZ was Oz, but after that I went up to Papua New Guinea for 4 months, walking the Kokoda Trail solo, although I did meet an Ozzie, travelling up to Lae then out and back to Rabaul, before it was wiped out by a volcanic eruption in coastal boats, canning down the Sepik. Then I hopped into Jayapura in West Papua, still can’t bring myself to say Indonesia, then jumped islands to Biak, Sulawesi, Bali, Java and some 65c a night hotels, hitch hiked up Sumatra via Lake Toba to Medan. Then I headed back to NZ, thin and exhausted.
Later I was in South America for 6 months, took 3 months to get out of Buenos Aires, Europe for almost a couple of years, based in London. There were other shorter trips to Mexico, Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, New York, 5 weeks in Los Angeles, etc.
So I’ve seen bits of the world.
I guess I’ve had it with crowds, I’m enjoying the usual solitude out here.
On a bike, of course, it’s much more interesting, you see the subtleties, birdlife, slow travel allows exhilarating experiences, like that Ridgetop Walk at Trephina Gorge.
There’s something about just cycling away from your, well, David and Chris’s actually, front door. It’s a smalltime philosophy at work now.
Touch the Earth lightly.