A Gypsy's Guide to Earth

I stuck my thumb out on the side of a dusty highway just north of Sydney, a piece of cardboard from a dumpster with 'We have chocolate!' scrawled in permanent marker hanging from my other hand. I left my mundane, unchallenging day job and camped on the side of the road in Newcastle by a sewerage plant, a train station and an abandoned milk factory. It took me two hitches to get to Byron Bay- a German backpacker and a sewerage cleaner; kind, generous men on the road. I spent the weekend camping by the sea of white wash, curled up in a tent during the rain with my head torch laughing and crying with the characters in my novel. I was with a friend who could play guitar, so his music became the soundtrack to my weekend. A soft, melodious acoustic tune that was both peaceful and comforting.

It took 9 hitches to get back to Sydney. In that time I was offered money, a bed to stay, two women driving two hours to a sex show offered a ticket to join their evening's activities, a couple of vans told me to jump in the back and help myself to whatever food I could find. I waited for two hours on the side of the road in a little country town, my chocolate sign failing to crack even a smile of passing travellers until we scored a breezy BMW ride all the way south. It was challenging, but I was exposed to a part of Australia that tourist books and blogs do not explore - the incredible people and the beautiful lands they occupy. It's much more than an icon or a stereotype. It's pure beauty.

My introduction to travel was a solo 7 month expedition to Europe. I arrived in Madrid, Spain with not a single night of accommodation booked or a single plan in my midst. I felt free, liberated and admittedly, terrified. I had crossed the English Channel with freight train surfers, had dinner with a ex-drug and gun dealer, rode a bike through Paris with a female Japanese hitchhiker and film maker, couch surfed in an old windmill in the Belgian countryside, camped on the beach in Italy, drove from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, hiked the Swiss mountains, bought a bicycle and rode in the snow through the Netherlands and shared a kiss in Berlin on New Years Eve. I realised that for most Australians, travelling involves flying as far from our borders as possible. How could this be, when our own landscape is as versatile and beautiful as any other country on this this ball floating about in the atmosphere?