From infancy my parents read to me and my sisters — C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series on long drives to Queensland for summer holidays, Paddington Bear in bed with Mum on Sunday mornings— and encouraged us to read to escape, to learn, to laugh. No book was off limits and all three of us are life-long voracious readers.
Two very different books profoundly influenced the teenaged me: Wilbur Smith’s When The Lion Feeds, the first of his multiple adventure novels set (mostly) in colonial southern Africa, and Jane Goodall’s In The Shadow of Man, detailing her ground-breaking study of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. (Jane Goodall's recent death, in her sleep, aged 91, while on a talking tour, made me sad but also made me re-examine, remember and celebrate the extraordinary life and works of the woman who David Attenborough called "the conscience of conservation".) Together and separately, those two books ignited in me a romantic fascination for Africa and determination to go there, a dream that I finally realised at the age of 26, when I joined an Exodus Expeditions London to Johannesburg overland adventure. I had reached London by overlanding with Exodus from Kathmandu to London (11 weeks of ups - close encounters with rhinoceroses in Nepal, sunrise on the Taj Mahal, the wonders of Istanbul - and lows - five weeks of Delhi Belly that, surprisingly but thankfully, left me with an iron gut), and explored Egypt for several weeks, but my 17 months away from home were predominantly about finally experiencing the extraordinary continent that is Africa.
When my passport (containing multiple visas) was stolen from my daypack on the London Tube the day before the tour departed, my dream was all but dashed. But the passport was newly issued in London and, faced with my near-hysterics, the efficient and compassionate Australian Embassy staff issued me a new passport in one hour!
And so, the adventure of my life began.
P.S. I have edited excerpts for poor grammar and to protect the innocent and the guilty.
P.P.S. Most photos in this blog are scans of prints - and I didn't take many before reaching Morocco.
