Travel

My interest in travel I guess was inevitable having parents and two older sisters who were not born in Australia like me and my younger sister. Growing up listening to my parents describing their country of birth and the differences between there and life in Australia was totally fascinating to me. I was determined from a very young age that I wanted to travel and see these places for myself.

Another influence came from my two older sisters marrying Dutch boys. They had also emigrated to Australia and because of their young recollections from their country of birth, windmills became an additional feature in my drawings from a young age.

Looking back, I can see that the second biggest influence to do with instilling an interest in the world and other countries (apart from my parents), came from a German lady. She was an old neighbour of my parents when they lived in the city of Melbourne before they moved to their one acre piece of land in the outlying north east area of Melbourne. I had to respectfully refer to her as "Auntie L" even though she was not a blood relative. After her husband passed away quite suddenly, she became too frail to live on her own and had no relatives to care for her. She moved in with us when I was approximately 4 years old and remained in our home for about two years before my parents had to eventually place Auntie L in a home due to the amount of constant care she required. In the two years she lived with us, I used to listen to her stories of her travels with her husband in the early part of the 1900's and she had a box full of photos of exotic places they had been to such as Egypt and Africa. I have all those photos in my possession - kept them safe for all these years and they have been a constant source of pleasure. It was these photos which were responsible for developing my deep fascination with Egypt and I vowed to myself that one day I would get there - and I did - in 1988 - amongst other countries.

I always wonder if I would have been so interested in world travel had it not been for Auntie L, or if my older sisters had not married Dutch people, or if my parents had not been immigrants from Europe. Or would my fascination with the big wide world always have been there anyway?

You can share my experience of my Grand Tour of Europe through my travel diary.

• Grand Tour of Europe
• Auntie L's Travels