Home is where my heart beats

I didn’t have much of a plan when I landed in OZ, but then again, I didn’t really believe in plans at that point in my life. I was twenty years old with no responsibilities other than to feed myself, and pay my own way. With my ‘real life’ a half world away, I was free.
I had been living in the small coastal town of Mooloolaba. I always loved the way the name rolled off my tongue. Moo-loo-la-ba. Even more than the name, and the town itself, I fell in love with the hostel where I resided for a few months.
I wasn’t the only one. There was a group of us who decided to make that hostel our home for an extended period of time.
In this magical place, time seemed to elude us. No matter the hour, day or night, rain or shine, we spent every waking and sleeping hour with one another. We were adults letting our spirits run wild like untainted children. In the day of internet friendships, lost dreams, and living vicariously through TV, we were the ones who deiced to throw away all the rules and discover what being alive really meant.
We were the lucky ones.
After a few months of becoming part of this amazing nomadic family, I was approached by three of the guys. They just bought a van for next to nothing, and were planning on driving up the coast in the general direction of Cairns. Did I want to go?
Did I want to go?!
It had been just under a week since four of us left our hostel for the open road together. None of us had properly showered since we left, and the small van was starting to expel an ugly odor which seemed to overtake the already pungent smell of burnt oil. If we were a cartoon there would have been trails of green stench following us around I’m sure.
On our journey north, we wound up in some small town which wasn’t even on a map. On the outskirts of the town, close to a beach, stood an abandoned lifeguard type building in the middle of a large yard. In that moment, I saw heaven.
In the middle of the yard, a random, rusted out shower stood erect in an overgrown plot of grass. I made the boys pull over. I have always been a bit of a tom-boy, but enough was enough, I needed to smell pretty if only for a moment.
I sent the boys down to the ocean so I could get some privacy, and then, there in the middle of a grass field, I washed myself. It was magical.
I looked around the barren field in which I stood, tipped my head back, and laughed as I thought to myself, ‘how did I end up here?’