Wanderluster

I’ll never forget the day that I realised I had contracted a terminal, yet invigorating and age defying, dose of wanderlust. Though the diagnosis should have been somewhat expected, the gradual gathering of symptoms could not have realistically be ascertained to any one particular moment. It started out innocently enough with the natural progression; igloo, two man, four man, caravan. My childhood and youth were spent travelling Australia, over and across vast and wildly intoxicating areas of Australia in an appeal against time to ensure as many experiences as possible. From feeling the dry heat of Uluru whilst standing upon the highest peak of Australia’s oldest rock to watching a whale joyously throwing it’s magnificent body into the crashing waves from a safari tent balcony, in a place where the sun both rises and sets over the water at Cape Leveque. Snorkelling through the sunlit and shimmering waters of Turquoise Bay on the Ningaloo Reef, The Great Barrier’s relatively unknown younger sister. Or sitting around the flickers embers of a campfire at Halls Gap, marvelling over the fact that the mountains surrounding you once lay undisturbed, in the waters of a deep sea bed while scents of molten marshmellows on thin sticks tantalizes your nostrils until cool enough to eat.
Driving across Emu Bay’s white sands on Kangaroo Island until you stop at an ancient piece of ocean-worn rock art to indulge in youthful climbing the dune edge provide a twilight playground for climbing. Feeling the red dust seeping into your skin at the Devils Marbles in Central Australia, so much so that you feel a part of the earth yourself.
Or floating down Berry Springs near Darwin, one eye cautioning for crocodiles. No, definitely not one definitive moment could take the responsibility of such an ailment or the development of symptoms. These moments, my friends, are the unsuspecting yet strongly identifying symptoms of wanderlust. Likened to the Chicken Pox, it is generally sanctioned that is much better to endure the experience during youth rather than in old age with limited responses available. Strangely infectious, wanderlust is airborne, transmitted in the snippets of stories and I’ll never forget the day that I realised I had contracted wanderlust. Because that day is: today, in an everyday sense of the word.