Solo travel and relationships are perhaps two of life’s most transformative experiences.

Each is like a mirror, reflecting the deepest and most hidden parts of you back to yourself.  For the past six months, I have found myself simultaneously in both of these situations. 

I met Giovanna while visiting Perth for a funeral just a few weeks before departing on this trip (the old travellers romance, eh; book a trip and you’re almost guaranteed to meet someone). For the past six months, she has visited at least once a month; sometimes flying after work on Friday, then taking the red-eye express home on Sunday night, sleeping an extra few hours in the airport lounge before driving back to the office. 

I guess she really likes me, hey. 

I do too. And for me, Giovanna has also been a divine compass, pointing me back in a direction I was deliberately heading away from. It is because of her I am thinking seriously about returning to Perth: a place with a history that terrifies me. Family breakdown and ice addiction and violence and juvenile detention. To return there is to return to memories of that. 

I’ve had plenty of time to think about that out here alone on the road though. Sure, moving away from Perth has given me time and space to grow away from who I once was and helped me find a sense of home within myself.

But if I keep this up, am I running away? 

Is surfing and travel just becoming the same escape that drugs once offered me?

In the age of the boat charter, it’s still possible to reach a version of paradise on two wheels.

All the Indonesian people I meet keep asking me, why are you alone?  Where are your friends? Where are ...