Here's a book I started writing in 2003 about my trip to Australia. I work on it a bit here and there, but it's hard setting aside the serious blocks of time required for productive writing. I figured I'd post it online as I wrote it so that the rest of you can follow my slow progress.





Introduction


In 1999, I did something cool. After four dismal years in college and a summer of unemployment, I left my family and friends to celebrate New Year's 2000 in Sydney, Australia. With some money I had saved up over the years, and more gathered by selling off some cherished childhood mementos, I purchased the tickets and made the necessary arrangements to stay down there for two months.

When I was younger, I remember seeing a giant map on the wall of my grandfather's living room, covered with hundreds of colored pins marking places he had been. There were greens and yellows in southeast Asia, purples and reds all over Europe, blacks and whites in Australia and all over the South Pacific. I would stare at it with mild curiosity, trying to pronounce the funny names of cities and countries and imagine the travel routes between them. For the first time, I began to wonder what was out there.

But I was never really into traveling. Learning about other cultures bored me. I would hear stories about far-away countries and other people, but I wasn't interested. What was the point? Why go if I am perfectly happy right here at home? This typically American philosophy would stay with me for many years.

So why did I decide to go on New Year's? New Year's, for me, is one of the only holidays that means anything. There are lots of holidays with political or religious slants, but New Year's is for everyone. It is a chance for each of us to ponder the successes and failures of the year before, a chance to take a good look at your life and yourself, and a chance to wipe the slate clean and start anew.

But New Year's always seemed to be boring and depressing for me. I'd usually spend New Year's at home watching Dick Clark on TV while all the grown-ups went out and partied. When I got older, my own party plans would always fall apart at the last minute, and I'd end up driving around or in a smoky pool hall with other sketchy characters who couldn't find a party. And when I'd ponder the previous year, I'd think about my lack of focus in college, my unfulfilling family life, or my truly pathetic love life. New Year's was always a disappointment.

So with New Year's 2000 coming up and no obligations to tie me down, I figured that I had the opportunity to do something different and special. And Australia seemed like a good place to go. I had heard stories from college friends who had spent a semester abroad in Australia, each of them saying they had the time of their life. And, like most Americans, I had a fascination with kangaroos, Crocodile Dundee, and those marvelous accents.

And, like most Americans, I only knew of those most outrageous Australian stereotypes. I had no idea what Australia was really like. And I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted my experience to be one of true discovery, a deeply personal experience. I felt that by reading travel guides or looking at other people's pictures, I would first discover Australia through their eyes, and somehow taint or bias my own experience to come. As I was getting ready to leave, my friend Melissa bought me a Sydney travel guide, which had detailed maps and lengthy descriptions of Sydney's most famous landmarks. I must confess that I barely cracked the binding.

So I sold most of my Transformers and bought my plane ticket to Sydney, taking with me just what I needed to get by: a Let's Go listing of places to stay "just in case," some all-season clothing, and some photography equipment. I was caught up in the online stock-trading craze of the late 90's (and doing quite well), and I wanted to continue trading as I was gone, so I also took an iBook laptop computer. I figured I could also use it to send the occasional e-mail to friends and family back home.

It was the greatest adventure of my life. My two-month stay in Australia turned into a year-long adventure across the outback, through New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Hawaii, and the western US. I saw a lot of cool things, met a lot of cool people, and changed myself forever.

This work is based on the e-mail I wrote along the way. More than anything, those e-mails were meant to be a personal journal, a way for me to remember where I was, who I met, and how I felt. I found support from family, friends, and friends of friends. It was shortly after leaving Sydney that my brother began publishing my regular e-mails in Netsurfer Digest, the Internet magazine he works for. I immediately began receiving e-mail from total strangers: a Sydney taxi driver, a guy in Boston, a girl in California, a guy in England. Some wrote to tell me where to go, some to say that they admired me for taking my trip, some to say that they wanted to meet me. I found that I had attracted a following of people who living vicariously through me, sharing my experiences every step of the way.

I was once asked a philosophical question: If I was greeted by an alien who offered to take me on a trip to show me all the wonders of the universe and to answer all of the questions we've ever had, but I wasn't allowed to return home to share the experience with others, would I go? I would not.

By the end, my e-mails were getting long and detailed. Here I present them in little snippets, and I've expounded on them with two years of afterthought and injected them with some of the juicy details I had to leave out as I was traveling. At the end, I present my e-mail in its uncut entirety.

I also include some of my photography, especially the shots which capture moments that were very personal to me.

Since returning home, I have been encouraged to write a book about my experience. Most travel journals seem to describe where people went, what people saw, and whom they met along the way, but not how they really felt about those things. How did the experience change them? This is what travel is all about, and nobody really seems to write about it. But I think I may have something different.

I recommend this book only to those who have done some traveling before, to those who might be able to relate to my own experiences and laugh at the same jokes. Just as I avoided being "tainted" by other journals and travel guides before I took my trip, I would advise the same to others who are about to set out on their own adventures for the first time.

Enjoy the world. In your own way.

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