WhitSundays, Australia
Fourteen years ago She sailed away. New found land In her Canadian way. Cities, outbacks and dingoes called. Oceans, islands and ships too tall. Blues, hues in journeys grasp. Anchors and tides, Her adventures rasp. Fourteen years ago She sailed away New found land as natures way.
The life of an expat is never easy. Moving to a new country, maybe learning a new language and generally starting a new job are stressful factors for anyone beginning new. There are hardships to being an expat in any country. I’ve been an expat for sixteen years and in four different countries.
Where I spent nine months living the life between the outback and the ocean. Working in small beach-side cafe’s just to make enough money to travel further up the coast or deeper into the red desert. Some jobs lasted a weekend, some three weeks, but never over three months in one place, as my visa wouldn’t allow it. Continue reading
Life before the internet was, well, freedom. In nineteen seventy-nine email didn’t exist. If you wanted to email someone you had to put pen to paper. So Old-Skool. Imagine. There was that pen pal in Italy who sent strange gifts of potent liquid lavender and small dried pieces of bread shaped like a boot. The writing stopped after the lavender incident, Mom said it was just weird. Continue reading
Padova, Italy
NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA
Luck was on my side in 1997 when I checked-in for a domestic flight, Cairns to Darwin. One-way.
“Passport, please.” Said the pretty little lady dressed in blue polyester.
Hands over the passport. “So, you’re Canadian, eh?”
“Um, yeah.” Not giving in, she wanted me to say it. To say, eh. Well, I didn’t.
“Would you like to sit in the cockpit for take-off and landing today?”
What the what? What she just say? My body still intoxicated, filled with VB vapours from the beach party the night before.
“Yeah, yes. Ok. Wow. Thank you.” Effin almighty, eh!
Northern Territory
It was 1997 and my twenty-second birthday. We’d just drove down from Darwin and were swimming in the Katherine Gorge when I happened upon these little fella’s… Continue reading
This is a first in a series called:
“Favorite Places on the Planet.”
BONDI BEACH. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
There’s a beach-bum in all of us, but it takes that lounge lizard to find just the right hot spots. A lizard whom seeks only the ultimate in life’s little pleasures. Because that is why we are all here, right? If not for the pleasure(s) in life, what is there left to seek?
Bondi Beach. Sydney, Australia. 1997. 21 years old and I was a virgin on the travel beat. I’d traveled domestically and within The United States several times in my young years, but I had never traveled internationally, like over the ocean!
Six months in paradise.
I was very young, and very naïve in Australia, I savoured every moment. My mother asked me several times before I set off on this wicked year of excursions “Well, what are you going to do? Where are you going to sleep? How are you going to eat?” Continue reading
My Sardinian Life 