Full circle

The author, happy to be back in Australia

Perth, Western Australia – A little over four years ago my girlfriend and I packed our backpacks with as much stuff as a we could carry and set out for an 18 month adventure.

We aimed to spend four months travelling through south east Asia. Oh, and a year and a half in the UK afterward, to see a bit of Europe and earn some money.

As so often happens with plans, they quickly changed. Europe was a big, busy and exciting place and we realised we’d need a lot longer than 18 months to explore it all.

I also discovered I liked things I had never even considered before: weaving within London’s peak hour traffic on a skinny road bicycle; warm, flat beers from tiny country pubs; and people watching from a cafe table anywhere in Europe.

Cyclists massing in London, UK

I’d always enjoyed surfing and photography and suddenly there was a big opportunity to do both in some very interesting places

Just a few hours flight away were some amazing scenes and I couldn’t get my camera out of my bag quick enough.

In Europe there were ornate churches thousands of years old. In North Africa dusty villages on the edge of a desert. And in Turkey cheeky kids in the hilly backstreets of Istanbul.

I surfed isolated reefs where the only spectators were mistreated donkeys and their herders; thumping waves that broke just metres from the crowded French shoreline; and rolling swells in English bays ringed by green hills and thatched-roof cottages.

Somewhere on the Moroccan coast.

It wasn’t until I was 25 that I first went overseas – to Bali. But in the next four years I visited another 20-odd countries. My passport quickly changed from a pristine, almost unmarked document to a sweat and dirt-stained, rumpled book.

And I think I’ve changed too, from a sort of typical Australian who liked simple things such as the beach, rugby and driving everywhere, to someone a bit more experienced and maybe a bit more confused than that.

I came to like the possibility of big cities and being anonymous in the crowd. Mixing with different people and being inspired by the different ideas that flow from them. The way that bitterly cold weather inspires people to work hard at creating cosy pubs and spaces and events, rather than the laid-back, barbecue and beer approach of Aus.

So this marks the end of the Backpack Storybook adventure. It’s been going for four years and three months and includes 238 blog posts, 291 photos and more recently a handful of videos.

I’ve blogged from open air internet cafes in Morocco, from my room in the middle of lonely English winters and in front of a crowd of curious teenagers in Cambodia.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve had writing it.

Rhys
November 2010