Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For so long I'd been looking forward to everything that was waiting for me in
Australia. But now, for almost the first time, I turned my thoughts to reflect on what
I was leaving behind. I looked across at Tim and realised that this was very nearly
the end. Soon we'd both be packing up our bikes and heading for our respective
homes. Tim would be in Gippsland, down south in Victoria, and I'd be starting out
on my new life with Nat in Canberra. We'd made a lot of tentative plans for big
talks and presentations in the new year, but in reality, we were both returning to a
good deal of uncertainty. I acknowledged, with a weird kind of pang, that it could
be a long time before we saw each other again.
I reflected on the year we'd spent together. 'Friends' was the best word I could
think of to describe our relationship. But at that moment, it wasn't exactly what
sprang to mind. Our relationship had been unique and indescribable. Sometimes it
had seemed more like a business partnership than anything. We'd come together
- for better or for worse - for a single purpose and we'd stayed together to see it
through. It had been 24/7 for most of the year and often we'd had no one to talk
to but each other. Almost everything that either of us had done had had an effect
on the other, and in that sense - in its intensity - it had been more like a marriage
than anything. Yet there had been very little love lost on either side, and at times
our relationship had been a hell of a stormy one.
So many times during the past year I'd decided that Tim and I simply rubbed
each other fundamentally the wrong way. So many things about him pissed me off
and yet there were so many things about him that I couldn't help but admire: his
unflagging drive and his unshakeable optimism, to name but a few. We'd had so
many explosive arguments and early on, especially, I'd sometimes hated him. A
sad reflection of my intolerance, I guess, but then, I don't doubt that his feelings
for me had often been the same. Over the long, rough course of time, we'd both
learned to live with a thousand little compromises, and the learning had changed us
both. That change in each of us had been for the better, of course. But it had also
changed the nature of the friendship that we'd started off with, too. I remembered
back to the beginning of the trip and a poignant prediction I'd made in a letter to
Nat:
This journey will either make or break our friendship for good and all
.
I looked wanly at Tim. I decided that it had come pretty close to being both in
the end. We'd had definite boundaries during the year, privacies that our conversa-
tions did not touch, but despite that, I probably knew Tim and all his weaknesses,
ambitions and dreams better than anybody else alive. Tim probably knew me better
than anyone else as well. My weaknesses at any rate. He definitely knew my weak-
nesses better than Nat did.
