Travel Memories

Travel memories – I was inspired to write by reading Tim Leffel’s article here. The thing is I have very few actual souvenirs. Coming to my home wouldn’t mean that you look around and go “Wow you’ve travelled a lot!”

You’d need a keen eye to recognise the pretty throw as being a Berber shawl from Siwa, Egypt, or recognise the prints as being from a West Australian photographer. You probably wouldn’t know that the wooden sculpture was brought back from Bougainville, PNG. And with the exception of shawl none of these actually reflect times when I was travelling, they are from times when I was living abroad and I was more prepared to ship some stuff back home.

So my travel memories are predominantly in my head, in my diaries and with my photos. In fact scanned some old travel photos back in for recent posts have made the memories come flooding back. I’ve written about the importance of keeping your travel memories before – in the end they are the reason I travel and the reason I spend far more money on travel than on accumulating “stuff”.

So today its May 2012 – and I happy to remember that I’ll be in sunny Samoa in less than a month!

Three years ago: May 2009.
We were living in Perth and we had done a return 10 day trip north to Exmouth so that we could swim with the whale sharks – highly recommended if you are in the area. (Exmouth is about 1200km north of Perth – the distances you drive in that state are off the scale of reasonable).

Five years ago: May 2007
We were two months into a 6 month trip around Australia with my partner and a 1986 4WD called “Truckie”. I have so many stories that Truckie needs to write – if I could just get him into gear…

Truckie on the Oodnadatta Track and the Old Ghan Railroad

Truckie on the Oodnadatta Track and the Old Ghan Railroad

Nine years ago: May 2001
We were travelling through Spain, Portugal and Greece. It was my first experiment in introducing my partner to independent travel, he’d only ever done tours before then! It was a great trip and he loved it!

19 years ago: May 1993
Five months into a long trip around South America I was in Ecuador – not knowing that I’d have to cut the trip short because of illness at home. I’m yet to get back to South America – its still on the list!

24 years ago: May 1988 I had just started my “Big OE” – I was working in Vancouver, Canada, after three months of travelling down the east coast of of the US and around Mexico.

33 years ago: Jan 1979 I did a trip to Nelson with a girl friend from school – it was my first ever trip without my family – and it wasn’t a great success. We’d been mates at school for years – but we weren’t compatible travel partners. She was responsible for me realising that solo travel is far preferable to travelling with the wrong person!

Don’t wait too long – start collecting your travel memories now!

Posted in

2 Comments

  1. Vi on May 25, 2012 at 10:23 pm

    That is interesting..During last week of May, 2009 I was driving from Perth to Exmouth for a swim with whale sharks too 🙂

    • Elisabeth on May 25, 2012 at 10:32 pm

      That’s pretty amazing Vi! I think we actually drove up in late April – whenever Easter was that year and came back in early May!

Leave a Comment