Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I can still vividly recall the resounding crack and the world spinning in a kaleido-
scope of pain. To correct the break a steel rod was inserted down the femur from
my hip to my knee; and despite a successful operation the leg has been a little short-
er ever since.
The following year, after some intense rehabilitation and training, I trekked in
Nepal with a group of students and my English teacher, Rob Devling. It was my
first time overseas and I returned home with a broadened view of the world. Up
until then I had naively presumed that the majority of people in the world lived like
us in Australia.
A pivotal friend who influenced my direction was Bruce Cooper. I met the tall,
athletic ginger-haired Scotsman while working at a children's adventure camp in
England. I was eighteen years old at the time and had deferred my Arts/Law de-
gree for a year to travel and work in Europe. One afternoon he introduced me to
the mountains of Wales, the first of many trips. I recalled the blue sky and the way
the peaks cut a jagged horizon. There was the crisp air, the pain in my legs and
our high-spirited discussion of dreams and hopes. The sweeping space and heart-
in-the-mouth views gave me a great sense of purpose.
I met Chris Hatherly the following year at Australian National University. He
was studying an Arts/Science degree and, like me, had deferred for a year. In his
year off he had travelled 20 000 kilometres by bicycle around Australia. We struck
up a friendship on the spot. As neither of us was comfortable with the prospect
of four or five years of studying, we spent much of our time musing over a world
map. We believed that dreams could become reality, and that there could be noth-
ing harder than working nine-to-five in an office.
Then, just three months into the first semester, an opportunity arose out of the
blue. Chris's father brought home an advertisement for an International Wilderness
Guide Course. It was a year long course based in Finland, including study place-
ments in Russia and England. There were sixteen places offered worldwide with a
scholarship.
We both applied and made it through to the final phone interview. As luck would
have it, I was accepted but Chris was not. A couple of months later, I deferred my
course yet again and was on a plane to Helsinki.
My interest in Russia and the north was fuelled during the wilderness course.
The first of a series of training journeys was a three-week hiking expedition in a
remote part of north-west Russia. The old-growth forest that spread out like a sea
to every horizon was a sight I could never forget. The only signs of civilisation
