‘The snow has melted, leaving a dirty filagree, the wind is blowing around the grit left over from winter, the crocuses are pushing up through the mud of the desolate smashed-down lawns.
If I stay here I will die’.
Cat’s Eye (Margaret Atwood)
That extract from ‘Cat’s Eye’ just about sums up my feelings that early February morning in 1971 in Toronto, when I waited for the lights to change on the corner of Eglinton Avenue and Mount Pleasant Road, and I was thoroughly drenched by a car carelessly ploughing through a deep puddle of filthy melting gunge. Although I had a secure job and a busy social life around my rugby friends, I had had more than enough of freezing dark winter weather. When I got to my office, I resigned, and a month later headed west and south to seek warmer climes.
First came the long, rather monotonous Canadian Pacific train journey across Canada to Vancouver: snow, endless snow, and forests, broken only by an occasional brief stop at a station. When I stepped off the train in Calgary, I discovered that the piercing wind did not deviate in it path when confronted with a body. Thirty seconds of fresh air was more than enough for me.
After three days of flat landscape, the climb and descent through the Rockies was stimulating. But Vancouver proved to be a damp squib – rain, rain, and more rain. I gave up waiting for the rain to stop and bought a one-way ticket to Sydney, via San Francisco, Hawaii, and Papeete. In that era, one could get on and off flights, as long you did not deviate from the original route and destination. And one could also buy a one-way ticket to Australia without a resident visa, an impossible situation today.
San Francisco was marginally less dreary than Vancouver, but I was impatient to get going to a warmer climate. And when I arrived in the Hawaiian Islands, with its warm air, warm water, and warm people, I felt like I was on the right path. About a month later I arrived in Sydney, after a short stay in idyllic Tahiti.
I loved Australia; it was love at first sight. It felt like my ideal place and it ticked all the boxes. But after five years, I was eager to see more of the world, especially some of the Southern and Central American countries. By then, I was a member of the local Spanish Club, and was attempting to learn some rudimentary Spanish.
In early 1976, my journey started on a Chandris passenger liner bound for Panama, via Auckland and Tahiti. I intended to return to Australia after a few months of travel, but somehow I seemed to allow myself to be constantly diverted to yet another destination.
After Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and the chain of Central American countries, Los Angeles was home for a while. Then London to earn some money and replenish my depleted bank account, soon followed by Nigeria, Caracas, Miami and Lima.
The opportunity to have a senior management position in a listed UK computer services company, resulted in my being based near London for several years, followed by a similar position in Switzerland and finally in Paris.
A severe cerebral stroke ended my career, but not my ambition to travel – Uppsala, many pilgrimages and travels in Europe, Montevideo in the southern summers, Chamonix in the European summers, and finally Cape Town, where I have resided for some ten years.
My return to Sydney has taken a rather convoluted route, and it has taken significantly longer than I originally envisaged.
I still intend to get back, if only to see old friends, but not just yet.
Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia are just a hop across the ‘big blue’.
As in the words of Freddy Mercury and Queen, ‘Don’t stop me now’. I’m not yet ready to become an old fart.
The Irish Rover 