The allure of solo travel can promise what sounds like an easy escape into uncharted waters. New lands to be discovered by your feet and new sensations to be snorted up by your senses. Because you, my squirmish friend, have been stuck in the trap of the humdrum, day-to-day existence of ordinary life.
You’ve already had this day before: an early coffee catch-up with friends before work, then a 50-hour work week that is so monotonous it makes the whole month emulsify into one homogeneous mayonnaise of ordinary. And that’s the worst kind of mayonnaise.
So why keep going on with this charade of a condiment they call life? Why not make a change for something different?
*
Cruising down the uncrowded highways with the wind blowing over my bald head, I make my way south from Devenport to nipaluna/Hobart. After leaving the safety of mainland Australia, I am now faced with the wild frontier of the island state they call lutruwita/Tasmania.
I feel free when I’m on the road in my self-sufficient camper van. My worries seem to disappear as I drive, and I’m greeted with new possibilities.
I’m going in the hope to find some clarity about my aspirations in this world, and to tip the scales of the work-life balance in favour of life. Leaving the comfortable setting I have back home, the friends, the job, and the climate. And in its stead, I’ll refill it with new and exciting things.
*
This could be one of the underlying goals of travel: that is, to try out and compare different states of living, to find which is best suited to our personal preference. Experience a different climate, different foods and a different culture. And the best part is that if it doesn’t work out, you can always run back screaming to where you left off, begging everyone and everything to take you back.
*
As I head into a national park campsite at dusk, which is strangely at 9:30pm, the road is slowly being taken over by tiny fat wallabies, the likes of which I’ve never seen. I have to slow my pace to a crawl in order to avoid making wallaby burritos – a delicacy that seems common when I finally arrive in nipaluna/Hobart.
I sleep so well in my tiny van; it has block-out curtains I hand-sewed from black velvet and it’s almost eerily quiet until the wind picks up late morning and wakes me from my slumber. The little fat wallabies are gone now, probably back to the mythical lands from whence they came.
I fold away the wooden flaps on my bed, which have to disappear in order to be able to move the driver’s seat back far enough to drive. Arriving too late last night to organise food for breakfast and, more critically, coffee, I get back on the road post-haste in search of a spot to collect my much-needed drug of choice and some sort of gluten-rich sustenance.
I get to nipaluna/Hobart after a nice slow drive down the eastern coast filled with camping and cold-water swims. I pop over to an old friend’s house for dinner. Storza, as he’s begrudgingly called, has been out playing the local sport of rock climbing and greets me with his usual emphatic, “Slim!”
We quickly start talking of the Hobartian life he and his partner Kirsten have moulded for themselves here. This is their first home-owning experience and it seems to be going well so far if the garden is any measure.
Storza is a man who has a fascinating affinity with hobbies. He obsesses with learning absolutely everything and perfecting any new skill to a level on par with winning a Nobel prize in said topic. He finds no end to his hobbies, which have included free climbing, powerlifting, hunting his own food (which we discuss extensively), vert skating, cooking ramen, smoking meat and baking sourdough. His most recent obsession, however, is gardening. I notice on the way in several raised garden beds perched in the front yard with quite an impressive crop shooting out.
After a lovely night of food and wine, I bid farewell to my old friends and let them sleep for the coming of their incessant work lives in the morning – though two weeks later, I would return to their house for an exquisite meal almost entirely reaped from the seeds they sowed in the front yard.
Finding my way back to my central nipaluna/Hobart accommodation, I discover the washing machine is broken. Luckily there’s a laundromat cafe down the road. I have time to go there when they open at 7:30am, which is a struggle now that I’m well set into holiday mode. I manage to drag myself out of bed with my little bag of washing, squinting like a confused newborn taking its first gaze upon the world.
I get there, order a coffee, chuck the load in the machine, press five one-dollar coins into the metal slot, and wait. I pull my laptop onto the bench and start writing.
Despite the squinting, I concede that I’m definitely a morning person. There’s a calm stillness in the air. There is so much anticipation to tasting those first drops of coffee; the day is yet to be done and there is so much it promises.
Quietly scratching away, a man sits next to me writing in a little blue notepad. He is also waiting on these mechanical clothes cleaners. He’s about my age, dressed in a clean skater aesthetic, and I immediately assume he’s some famous writer.
Eventually, I ask what he’s writing. He turns with a warm smile: “I’m just journaling” he says. “I do it whenever I travel.” He tells me he’s got a huge pile of his journals going back 10 years and they’re the most valuable things he owns.
We talk some more and I let him get back to his writing, and when my washing’s done we say goodbye. “Nice chatting with you mate!” and that’s it. I’ll never see this guy ever again, but that doesn’t matter. It was nice exchanging ideas in a random laundromat cafe in downtown nipaluna/Hobart.
*
To truly live, mustn’t we let go of our grip on the world? Our hands tightly hold the reigns of safety and security, which far too often steer our decisions. We constantly calculate the best options to take, and much of the time we take the safer route. But if we can manage to let go once in a while, we might open ourselves up to new possibilities we never conceived.
*
I don’t want to go home yet. I have more friends yet to be made, more to see and more to learn from strangers. I find a one-dollar coin left from the laundromat and flip it up in the air: heads is nipaluna/Hobart, tails is Naarm/Melbourne.
I can’t anger the coin gods, so off to Melbourne for some fine food and wine, but not before a quick detour back to Queensland to see the relatives.