How I caught the travel bug

I love the rolling hills of Dorset, the stone cottages of the Cotswold’s, the wild beauty of the Cornish coast;  the white stone walls of our villa in Menorca, days on the beaches with the little woman who guarded the chairs and our morality.  Sleepy afternoons in hazy heat spent gazing at the knotted pine beams of the ceiling.  Then a tiny fragment of memory that is always etched in my consciousness, our first view of the beach below us at the Rasa Saing, in Penang after being in a dark room and arriving at midnight it was like a technicolour film before us.  Yes the world is a wonderful place sometimes.

Seeing beyond Silverton when we were at Broken Hill, and the endless sky fading into the scrub stretching a hundred miles. My first glimpses of the wide brown land I had only read about.   Gazing at sugar cane growing beside the roads near Brisbane, and the butterfly lakes on Fraser Island. So much of Australia is violent contrasts, gentle beauty and wild raw places, with brutal rocks and emptiness.  

The gentle slopes of Gippsland are now part of me too, the rain forest the empty beaches, and the kindly people. Yet the images in my head of places I have loved keep coming back, I can go there and re visit them on nights when I toss and turn and sleep is hard to find. My first epic journey was what made travel a pleasure.

It was bone numbingly cold.  In Bristol, England; the clock said 2.30. Am as we drove to the bus station to pick up the coach.  A quick goodbye to my parents and I was alone. This excursion was unusual for the 1950’s; the world was still recovering from war time austerity.  For me a shy fifteen year old it would be the longest journey I had ever had.

Softer air and warm breezes enveloped me, as I set foot on French soil; I was in love. I allowed all my senses to savour the moment.  When we arrived, Paris didn’t just creep into my soul, it grabbed me by the throat; and dared me not to like it! Sunshine danced amongst the trees of the boulevards, I saw the icing sugar dome of the Sacre Coeur and the four legged monster that overlooks the city the Eiffel Tower. Later I was to have my photo taken with French soldiers and gaze down at the lethal metal weapons hurtling about the roads, but even the traffic didn’t faze me.

Bakeries lined the roads to our pension, and the heady smell of beautifully fresh bread woke me every morning. I loved the food and didn’t poke at the offerings like some other students. I even tried frog’s legs and snail. I was willing to experiment and take this new life on head first.

The smells of Paris are hard to define; it’s a heady sweet smell in the underground, a mixture of perfume, cigars and people.  In the streets, coffee, garlic and flowers.  Flower sellers were dotted on every street corner, as it was April, and the blooms from the south of France had arrived.  I drank in the smells, and jostled on the pavements with artist and the pavement café dwellers.  We did all the tourist things; gazed at the Mona Lisa, went to the tomb of Napoleon, and shopped in Bon Marche.  Most of all though I wanted to stay, and to live on the left bank, swigging absinthe and wearing a long black sweater. I could see it now, I would be dark eyed and listening to Enid Piaf while my artist lover brooded.

My newly acquired taste for coffee, wine and foreign boys, also embraced fashion. The understated elegance I saw on the streets of the city became my yardstick for the future. “That’s how women should look,” I thought. And remembered the draughty streets of Bedminster and the factory women in their grey coats and scarves.

The school trip was soon to end; we travelled for the last trip to the city in twilight. The Champs Elysees looked like a bright caterpillar leading to the Arc de Triumph. I wandered away on my own, to simply remember this; the reflections dancing on the inky water and the majesty of Notre Dame. I vowed I would come back. 

Now as I stir my creamy coffee, and gaze at the river, I am watching the fashionable parade before me. The pungent smell of garlic drifts from the seafood restaurants along the river bank.  A cruise boat pulls away, and I hear laughter, and the clink of champagne glasses. Walking up the steps to the roadway, the elegance of the carved buildings is picked out in the late sunlight. A cathedral clock strikes as I look at the winter fashions in the glossy windows. Then I am in real time again, as the clang of a tram awakes me. This is Melbourne, with its muddy river winding through its heart, like Paris though with art galleries and coffee places. With the bustle of China Town, and the noise of Lygon Street, it hasn’t quite taken the place of Paris, but it’s a close second.