Books and travel
I am eight years old and curled up in the sun that is fading the stripes of the cane couch on our verandah.
Everything is quiet and warm and peaceful, but I am oblivious to my surroundings.
I am away with “The Irish Twins,” running away from the tinker’s caravan, eating jacket potatoes outside their grandmother’s whitewashed cottage and exploring the green fields of Ireland, which had probably been whitewashed as cleanly as the cottage. I had discovered the “Twin” books and was devouring the exploits of twins in the American Revolution, in the highlands of Scotland, in their igloos in the Arctic. In fact, twins were introducing me to life in countries all over the world.
When they were all finished, I skated across frozen Dutch canals with Hans Brinker and His Silver Skates, I galloped across the Hungarian steppes with Jancsi and Kate and The Good Master, I braved the Afghani guns on the Khyber Pass with “Khyberie, a Pony on the Indian Frontier,” and followed Kim across the India and the Himalayas.
Romanticized adventure in exotic locations filled my days. Around this time my father started the habit of giving me an Illustrated Children’s Encyclopaedia every Christmas, and for the first time I became captivated with Tibet in “Life on the Roof of the World.”
Surely I had discovered the most exciting and secretive land imaginable, one that I would spend the next forty years wishing to visit.
But I have to say I think more than anything it was the picture of saffron robed monks playing their long horns in front of a backdrop of great white mountains that piqued my interest and which I never forgot.
These books must have started my longing to see the rest of the world. My parents certainly did nothing to influence it. As a child I travelled no further from Sydney than the Blue Mountains or Southern Highlands.
My father had no desire to travel and I don’t remember my mother ever mentioning it. My longing only deepened over the years of high school as I absorbed more and more literature, relived historical escapades and journeyed through geographical daydreams. I rode with Lawrence across the Arabian deserts, wallowed in the mud and poverty and grandeur of Tolstoy’s Russia, and conquered the world with Alexander the Great.
Finally the time came when I had graduated from university, saved the barest minimum of money, and at 21 I was on board the SS “Fairsky” bound for the rest of the world.
I don’t think I was ever trying to escape from the boredom and restrictions of Australian society of the early sixties as many were. I just needed to see all those places I’d been reading and learning about for years. I don’t think I was ever disappointed, and was always prepared to accept the reality rather than the romance.
I have been lucky and in the years since have travelled to many countries.
I married a geographer and travel was a main priority. But I have only just realized quite how completely I have answered those childhood yearnings, not by design, but simply by seizing the opportunity when it arose.
The Khyber Pass, Kim’s India, the fabled lands of the Silk Road, those we did see by intent. But once on the plains of Hungary I had the chance of riding a spirited Hungarian stallion, clutching on to the embroidered shirt of a Hungarian cowboy as we recreated Kate and Jancsi’s rides in The Good Master. Then in the mid nineties we were in the Sinai in Egypt. Chris was diving in the Red Sea, an activity which held absolutely no appeal for me. So I hired a horse and a young boy as a guide and together we galloped across the hot desert sands. We passed camels tethered outside Bedouin camps; saw a caravan of them wavering in and out of sight in the desert heat and I half expected to see Lawrence appear, staggering over the dunes. Even though I was in my mid fifties I felt as excited as a young explorer.
That article on Tibet in my first encyclopaedia had left an indelible impression on my mind. For years and years I thought it would be impossible to achieve my dream of discovering the secrets of that elusive country, but finally the Chinese relaxed restrictions and visitors were allowed into Tibet again. Of course it was no longer the Tibet that I had read, by then, so much about, but it was still that fabled land of my dreams, and so when we had the opportunity to go we jumped at it, even though we had many political reservations.
Beyond the Chinese concrete we were able to find some of that old Tibet, and when I heard the long sonorous notes of the monks’ horns I felt I could finally close the pages of that encyclopaedia forever.
And then, only a few years ago we were staying with friends on the shores of Alta Lake at Whistler in Canada. The winter had been very cold but there hadn’t been a great deal of snow. The lake was frozen, and the unusual lack of snow meant that the ice was clear and thick and we could skate. Old skates were hunted out of basement cupboards and strapped to six pairs of equally old, very wobbly and out of practice legs. The full moon shone down on the glistening ice as we tentatively made our way to the centre of the lake. The ice didn’t crack and our legs started remembering. Look out, Hans Brinker, here we come!And the book that started it all?
I once came upon a little whitewashed cottage in the wilds of Connemara in Ireland. Smoke from the chimney was drifting gently up to the sky, the only sign of life in the whole wild valley. But I could see those twins racing across the landscape as they tumbled from one harmless adventure to another; they had finally called me home because I realized this area was also the home of my grandfather’s people.
My travel really had caught up with
my books, and my past.