‘My wife’s death pushed me to pack up and live out our travel dreams’

I have a saying: “If it feels uncomfortable, you need to do it.”

And that’s how it has also felt at the start of Our Senior Aussie Gap Year. Maybe it’s because of Covid-19. Not so much because of the health risk, but more as a result of not having a plan.

I had similar feelings when I decided just a few years back to go backpacking around the world. I had no plans then either. The only plan was to take each day as it came. But it made no sense. I must have come up with one hundred reasons not to go. The voice of fear inside my head would not be silent: “You’re too old. It’s too dangerous. What if you get ill or have a heart attack and no one has a clue where you are. Why leave when you have comfortable life here at home?” And on they went.

I decided to go following the sudden loss of my wife. Within a week of her becoming ill, her life suddenly came to an end. After forty years together the sense of loss was overwhelming, not only for me but for our three children and seven young grandchildren.

But it’s what she said as she lay there in her final hours that still ring in my mind to this day: “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this is happening”. It was the most surreal moment of my life to see her life slowly taken away, and along with it everything we’d shared together. All of our future plans now gone; they’d slipped away before my very eyes.

I kept dwelling on her final words and consequent realisation that life is such a gift. I felt the growing urge to fully embrace a life I was still gifted with. But just packing up and leaving felt uncomfortable. However, 12 months on, had I not gone, I would have missed out on one of my most positive life-changing experiences.

All together I travelled through 23 different countries staying in 122 different places … you could say I slept around a bit. You’re right. I did! I slept in anything; guest houses, hostels, dormitories, hotels, bamboo huts, and homestays sleeping on the floor, in a hammock and a swag.

I embarked on this journey without a purpose. But I was open to explore and open to opportunities. I was open to listening to the pull of my heart. And then unexpectedly, I found a purpose far bigger than I ever could have dreamed of.

It was just at the start of my journey. I was visiting family in remote Western Australia during the mining downturn where tons of high-quality linen from the mining towns was being dumped. I joined up with a group of volunteers from the Mill Point Rotary Club in Perth and together we distributed hundreds of thousands of items of bed linen to charities around Australia and the world – charities that serve the homeless, drug rehabilitation, women and children in crisis, and refugees.

Perhaps one of the most overwhelming experiences of the journey came 12 months later when I tracked down some of those recipients, including children belonging to a charity in the northern mountains of Thailand. To see and hear their stories of gratitude was enormously heart-warming.

Losing my wife was the most devastating experience of my life, and yet that loss gave rise to a whole new chapter that focussed on positively impacting the lives of others.

Now, I’m setting out on my next gap year adventure – this time in Australia. My Senior Aussie Gap Year! It’s another journey with no plans and an open mind to explore and take each new opportunity as it comes.

I invite you to join me on this journey over on my website and to be a part of sharing some of the best Australia has to offer. We’ll meet people along the way, laugh, learn and be entertained.

It’s a journey that I hope will inspire you to live out your own travel adventures.