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.
|