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Saturday 20 April 2019

Circumnavigate the globe

When I was in my early 20’s it seemed like a good idea to go travelling. The idea came about after one of my friends had done the same but it was suggested by another friend. I actually crashed his idea. He told me he wanted to go to Australia and I invited myself on the trip. He didn’t put up too much of a struggle though so shortly after the idea had been aired we started planning. In every plan there has to be a degree of compromise and Ian agreed that we could go and see a little of Asia before we went to Australia. So we started in Bangkok and after a week in the heat and humidity we headed to somewhere hotter and even more Humid, Hong Kong. I am still not entirely convinced that Ian was happy doing these trips as he struggled with the spicy food and we had to find alternatives for him, while I was happy to eat more or less anything. After 10 days in Hong Kong we landed in Cairns for the beginning of our trip down the Queensland coast. On our trip south we lived it up like we were on a long holiday but we also picked up work along the way. Work in Queensland at that time meant picking fruit. So we turned our hand to picking anything that was growing in any place that would have us. Conditions were normally hot and uncomfortable but if you were lucky you would have a laugh. This was needed at times as it is amazing how quickly the mixture of lifting and the 40 degree heat can wear you out. We stopped many times on the way down the coast, not just at the bigger towns like Townsville and Magnetic Island, Airlie Beach and The Whitsundays or Hervey Bay/ Fraser island but also in smaller places like Ingham. The decision to go to Ingham was made aafter one of said "no-one ever goes to Ingham". We arrived in Brisbane just before Christmas and we were behind schedule, we should have been in Sydney but Brisbane was a nice city and we’d been moving for a while so we stayed and worked and eventually I decided I’d had enough and went to Canberra and then to Sydney. Ian came with me but decided after a few weeks that he wanted to go back to Queensland. Our parents thought we had fallen out but this wasn’t the case. I worked for a while and eventually ended up back in Brisbane but took a more leisurely trip back up north. By the time I had got back to Brisbane another of my friends had come over from the UK. As Ian had got settled in Brisbane, Adam joined me on the return leg of my Journey. This took us to New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji and across America ( LA, San Francisco, Orlando, Washington and NYC) before I landed at Heathrow airport 11 months after I had set off.

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