“ I was born in Newcastle in 1962. My ancestors on my fathers side are Irish from the area of Limerick. I think it’s sort of Angela’s Ashes country. They really corner the market in bleak. Irish Catholicism is a lot darker than the others. There’s a lot of pain, alcohol, poverty from my fathers side. Also very much the same from my mothers side, Catholic but hailing from Scotland and Finland mainly. Again alcohol, domestic violence and some madness. It’s a pretty dark family background to be honest with you but things had picked up by the time I arrived.
I do have family connections to this region that pre date me significantly. My Grandma spent some years in Casino as a girl in the 1910s. She married in 1926. She remembered singalongs around the piano and lots of card games. My uncle was a Marist brother for 20 years. He taught at Trinity in the 50’s. In the 80’s my mum lived in Kingscliff and I loved visiting when I came back from Asia. She would give me all the food I love and pamper me. I could be a boy again which was really nice. I was very close to my mum.
When I was 3 we moved to Cairns, mainly because my father wanted to get away from his older brother who were both working in the family business which was, not surprisingly…alcohol. We moved to Cairns in 1966, mid summer. I spent all my years in Cairns. I loved it as a child because I could just lay in nature. This was mid 60’s and it was beautiful but when I hit my teens I was pretty much bored. It was a small pond.
I didn’t really value the values that surrounded me living in a country town at the time so I left very soon after I finished Yr 12. I went to Newcastle then on to Sydney Uni and studied art for 4 years where I got an Honours degree in Literature. I had a great time living in Enmore, Newtown, that area. I really enjoyed those years.
My mate Tony and I took our bikes to Melbourne. We had planned to go cycling in Tassie. It was early 1981 and my girlfriend had dumped me. I was feeling sorry for myself so the trip was a good thing. Tony had a Penpal as lots of us did did back then. She was a girl living in Melbourne and they had arranged that we would stay with her for a few days before Tassie. Through her we met a group of people I really clicked with. I met some great people, a girl I had a crush on and a guy called Vince who really inspired me just by being who he was. I told Tony I didn’t want to go to Tassie, I wanted to stay where I was. He was ok with that and went on to Tassie. He had a great time and then a bit later Vince and I hit the road cycling. We took the train from Bairnsdale, cycled the highway over to Mt Hotham, down to Bright and on to Wangaratta. They were unsealed roads which made it a tough ride then but glorious country.
I got back to Sydney, met a girl and we were living together before long. She was my girlfriend for 5 years. We travelled together. My girlfriend had family connections in Sri Lanka and her father organised some great connections over there. We had a week staying in Colonial Raj luxury with servants who wore all white. The drinks trolley would appear with everything you wanted and then the magnificent meal would come out. We were very spoilt. We went on to India which was a whole other level of experience. Just recently I had an event in Bangalow with my daughter Anna. We both spoke and I asked the people in the audience if they’d been to India. At least 40 out of the 50 people put up their hand. I asked who loved it and lots put up their hands. I asked who hated it and a lot of the same people put their hands up..and so do I. That’s India! It takes you to heaven and hell, like nowhere I’ve ever been.
The Northern Rivers is rich with fellow India lovers, I guess partly to the hippy background of the Aquarius festival but also the alternative values the hippie movement brought along. So back to our trip. I was in South India for 2 months with my ex girlfriend Amanda and they were very challenging times for me. I saw very disturbing sights. Amanda went home after a month and I stayed on but didn’t cope very well with the pressures and the challenges such as the poverty and the attention. I was 22 and I was not sufficiently grounded in myself to be able to handle the attention. At that time there were far few foreigners around and when you are alone people are more likely to approach you, which normally is fantastic. Nowadays my preferred mode of travel is alone because you are more accessible to the place and the people but that was too much, too young for me back then.
I met some pommy backpackers in Madras and we went to the cricket to watch the England test match in Madras which was wonderful. The Indian crowd were particularly lively that day and the England Batters were doing very well. Because I was with the pommy guys we’d cheer whenever they hit a 4 or a 6. People assumed I was a pom and the people around us started pelting us with bits of fruit. I walked out like a fruit salad and had to basically find the nearest cow to lick it off.
I went back to Sydney and I just couldn’t get India out of my mind. If I met someone who’d been there I would want to talk to them about their travels. After 2 years I flew back alone into Delhi. I hadn’t been to the North before. I arrived at night, checked int a hotel, got up and walked out onto the street the next morning and felt like I’d come home. It was an incredible feeling that I’d never had before… or since. It was overwhelming. I was completely unprepared for that. I had a wonderful couple of months in India at that time. I was young and in my prime. I went to Nepal that trip as well.
The following year in 1987, I met Micky who became my life partner. Micky is from Copenhagen in Denmark originally. I had first met Micky in 1982 when I was with Amanda. Micky was here in Australia visiting a friend, Julie. I met Micky in a terrace house in Camperdown on August 2, 1982. Micky immediately enchanted me with her passion, her enthusiasm for life, the fact that she had travelled, because at that time I had not been overseas. I just wanted to listen to her adventures forever. We were both with someone else at the time but in 1987 we travelled together in Asia. We went to Denmark eventually, we went to the Americas where I worked in New York illegally as a night guard one block from 42nd street which was a little scary. During that time I started writing travel content. I worked on the Equadour guide book then later I wrote about the centre of Australia for another publication.
Micky and I travelled more. In ’89 we were in Latin America then back to Europe. I went back to India at the end of ’89 where I had a full on experience of getting bitten by a venomous snake and I nearly died. That was at Pushkar in Rhajistan. The snake bite took me to the edge of my existence. It was a Russells Viper. Back then about 10,000 people a year die of snakebite and now it’s much higher.”
I do have family connections to this region that pre date me significantly. My Grandma spent some years in Casino as a girl in the 1910s. She married in 1926. She remembered singalongs around the piano and lots of card games. My uncle was a Marist brother for 20 years. He taught at Trinity in the 50’s. In the 80’s my mum lived in Kingscliff and I loved visiting when I came back from Asia. She would give me all the food I love and pamper me. I could be a boy again which was really nice. I was very close to my mum.
When I was 3 we moved to Cairns, mainly because my father wanted to get away from his older brother who were both working in the family business which was, not surprisingly…alcohol. We moved to Cairns in 1966, mid summer. I spent all my years in Cairns. I loved it as a child because I could just lay in nature. This was mid 60’s and it was beautiful but when I hit my teens I was pretty much bored. It was a small pond.
I didn’t really value the values that surrounded me living in a country town at the time so I left very soon after I finished Yr 12. I went to Newcastle then on to Sydney Uni and studied art for 4 years where I got an Honours degree in Literature. I had a great time living in Enmore, Newtown, that area. I really enjoyed those years.
My mate Tony and I took our bikes to Melbourne. We had planned to go cycling in Tassie. It was early 1981 and my girlfriend had dumped me. I was feeling sorry for myself so the trip was a good thing. Tony had a Penpal as lots of us did did back then. She was a girl living in Melbourne and they had arranged that we would stay with her for a few days before Tassie. Through her we met a group of people I really clicked with. I met some great people, a girl I had a crush on and a guy called Vince who really inspired me just by being who he was. I told Tony I didn’t want to go to Tassie, I wanted to stay where I was. He was ok with that and went on to Tassie. He had a great time and then a bit later Vince and I hit the road cycling. We took the train from Bairnsdale, cycled the highway over to Mt Hotham, down to Bright and on to Wangaratta. They were unsealed roads which made it a tough ride then but glorious country.
I got back to Sydney, met a girl and we were living together before long. She was my girlfriend for 5 years. We travelled together. My girlfriend had family connections in Sri Lanka and her father organised some great connections over there. We had a week staying in Colonial Raj luxury with servants who wore all white. The drinks trolley would appear with everything you wanted and then the magnificent meal would come out. We were very spoilt. We went on to India which was a whole other level of experience. Just recently I had an event in Bangalow with my daughter Anna. We both spoke and I asked the people in the audience if they’d been to India. At least 40 out of the 50 people put up their hand. I asked who loved it and lots put up their hands. I asked who hated it and a lot of the same people put their hands up..and so do I. That’s India! It takes you to heaven and hell, like nowhere I’ve ever been.
The Northern Rivers is rich with fellow India lovers, I guess partly to the hippy background of the Aquarius festival but also the alternative values the hippie movement brought along. So back to our trip. I was in South India for 2 months with my ex girlfriend Amanda and they were very challenging times for me. I saw very disturbing sights. Amanda went home after a month and I stayed on but didn’t cope very well with the pressures and the challenges such as the poverty and the attention. I was 22 and I was not sufficiently grounded in myself to be able to handle the attention. At that time there were far few foreigners around and when you are alone people are more likely to approach you, which normally is fantastic. Nowadays my preferred mode of travel is alone because you are more accessible to the place and the people but that was too much, too young for me back then.
I met some pommy backpackers in Madras and we went to the cricket to watch the England test match in Madras which was wonderful. The Indian crowd were particularly lively that day and the England Batters were doing very well. Because I was with the pommy guys we’d cheer whenever they hit a 4 or a 6. People assumed I was a pom and the people around us started pelting us with bits of fruit. I walked out like a fruit salad and had to basically find the nearest cow to lick it off.
I went back to Sydney and I just couldn’t get India out of my mind. If I met someone who’d been there I would want to talk to them about their travels. After 2 years I flew back alone into Delhi. I hadn’t been to the North before. I arrived at night, checked int a hotel, got up and walked out onto the street the next morning and felt like I’d come home. It was an incredible feeling that I’d never had before… or since. It was overwhelming. I was completely unprepared for that. I had a wonderful couple of months in India at that time. I was young and in my prime. I went to Nepal that trip as well.
The following year in 1987, I met Micky who became my life partner. Micky is from Copenhagen in Denmark originally. I had first met Micky in 1982 when I was with Amanda. Micky was here in Australia visiting a friend, Julie. I met Micky in a terrace house in Camperdown on August 2, 1982. Micky immediately enchanted me with her passion, her enthusiasm for life, the fact that she had travelled, because at that time I had not been overseas. I just wanted to listen to her adventures forever. We were both with someone else at the time but in 1987 we travelled together in Asia. We went to Denmark eventually, we went to the Americas where I worked in New York illegally as a night guard one block from 42nd street which was a little scary. During that time I started writing travel content. I worked on the Equadour guide book then later I wrote about the centre of Australia for another publication.
Micky and I travelled more. In ’89 we were in Latin America then back to Europe. I went back to India at the end of ’89 where I had a full on experience of getting bitten by a venomous snake and I nearly died. That was at Pushkar in Rhajistan. The snake bite took me to the edge of my existence. It was a Russells Viper. Back then about 10,000 people a year die of snakebite and now it’s much higher.”