I’m currently on the verge of hitting the 5 year mark since I first left Australia and headed off for my big ‘OS’ trip. Coincidently I’m also counting the last few days before I make the long overdue trip home to see my dear mother before she disowns me.

These two things combined have spurred a little bit of reflection and soul-searching from yours truly. The common theme in these internal musings tend to center around the changes from who I was then and who I am now.

Now that I’ve spent the majority of my 20’s pissing my life up against the walls of bars in various parts of the planet, I’ve started and finished a few chapters in my life’s book. I could rabbit on about how I’ll return to Australia with the usual extra maturity and arguably having become a responsible adult, or give you a boastful list of all the weird and wonderful things I’ve seen and done - but I wont.

So instead, here’s a list of the various less tangible things that seem to stand out in my head when I think about all:

  • I’ve lived the London experience. And, like the masses of other Aussies who’ve done the same thing I’ve developed a deep emotional connection with the two songs London Still by The Waifs and Every Fucking City by Paul Kelly.
  • I’ve felt what it’s like to be an Aussie abroad amongst other Aussies. I’ve known both the celebration and the embarrassment that it brings.
  • I’ve ceased to discriminate against my own countrymen and woman just because I didn’t leave Australia just to meet other Aussies. Instead, now I try to avoid them because we’re fast taking the place of Americans and becoming the most obnoxious travelers in the world. Long gone are the days when we were seen as the most fun and easy going people to drink with. Now more often than not we’re the most drunk people in the bar that carry on inappropriately and piss everyone off…but then maybe that’s just me getting old.
  • I’ve seen plenty of churches, temples, museums, ruins, statues and enough cities that now they all just blend in to one (hence the appreciation for Paul Kelly).
  • I’ve been drunk in more local bars then I can remember through the next day, with people of more nationalities than I can find on a map.
  • I’ve willingly hung up my backpack and don’t automatically cart it everywhere, unless an occasion specifically calls for something that needs to be carried rather than wheeled. I have no hesitation in choosing a decent quality hotel over a hostel anytime. I even don’t hesitate to choose an upgrade to a more comfortable form of transport if it’s available, even if that means missing a ‘local experience’.
  • I’ve come to realise that absolutely no road I’ll ever walked down, nor anything I’ll ever do has been done before - by an Aussie.
  • I’ve been lucky enough to work professionally, develop a career and mostly earn decent money while on the road. Unlike many of my friends who’ve had to work in a bar for twice the hours for half the pay and just end up getting drunk every night (as apposed to me who has just ended up getting drunk being served by my friends).
  • I’ve succeeded mixing up my accent to the point where I’m not sure where the various parts of it come from anymore, let alone the terms and phrases I utter with it. Nowadays I can’t wait to move back to Australia not to be with family and friends but to start ironing out the English kinks and rediscover the joy of saying no wuckas without getting confused looks.
  • I’m starting to think that describing myself as “Ben Melbourne from Melbourne” is becoming a bit of a misnomer now that I’ve lived away from Melbourne almost as long as I lived in it (keeping in mind that I actually grew up in the country town of Wodonga three hours away from Melbourne).
  • I’ve lived an ongoing love story that has spanned several continents. In doing so I’ve succeeded in following my good mother’s hard earned advice of falling in love with a good Aussie girl so as to avoid having to make the choice of living on the other side of the planet from family (something that my Canadian Mother learned the hard way). On a side note, visiting Tina and trying to drag her to back to Canada with me is also another main motivation for the trip home…
  • I followed in many of my father’s widespread footsteps, as he is want to remind me upon arriving in a country he once visited…and eventually managed to start forging a few new paths of my own.
  • I’ve lost the need to regularly write lots of long winded emails keeping everyone I’ve ever met up to date with every little thing I’ve been up to.

And finally, I’ve developed an appreciation for a quote that a friend told me just before I left:

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - Gilbert K. Chesterton

…which is yet another expereince that, mixed accent in hand, I am about to embark upon.