The Traveling Print
I brought a huge print home from my trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji
A recurring backache wakes me up. I trudge to the bathroom bent over my walker with the pain.
I get a glass of water in the kitchen and when I enter my living room, I light up when I set eyes on the oversized print on my wall. It prompts me to remember the full freedom of movement I once had when we took our “trip of a lifetime” to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in 1987.
I had a debilitating stroke in 2005 when I was 55. In consequence, all travel had stopped.
“Life is short. So do the things that make you happy. Look for the good in every day.”
I don’t know who used this quote first but many people have. A printout of it is taped on the wall above my desk.
Nothing could go wrong on our trip, or so my friend Brenda and I thought.
On our fourth day there, the travel agent in Toronto who did all our booking screwed up — she’d never been to Australia and didn’t realize how far places are from each other. We went to the Sydney office of the Canadian Automobile Association or CAA (AAA in the U.S.), to get maps. We were told there that she’d reserved a rental car for us to drive from Sydney up the coast to Gladstone in one day then to Cairns the next day — it’s about 2400 km! Brenda and I hurried down the street to the Qantas Airlines storefront where the agent booked us a flight from Sydney to Cairns for the next day, a rental car to drive from there to Port Douglas — a thirty minute drive — and a hotel in Port Douglas.
“What a close call!” I said to Brenda.
A wonderful error — if we never went to that particular hotel in Port Douglas or the art gallery there, I never would have bought the print.
It was a brand new hotel in Port Douglas and when we entered our room, our breath was taken away. Hanging over our bed was a vibrant print by a local artist. “If I can buy a print by that artist, it will awaken memories of Australia, don’t you think, Brenda?”
“It sure will.”
At an art gallery in Port Douglas, Brenda bought an opal ring and I spent $400 AUS on a humongous limited edition print by a female artist, Jess Hutchinson, who had been commissioned to create the piece over our bed. The gallery owner put it in a mailing tube that was more than waist-high. I’m only 5 feet tall!
“I’m not helping you carry this,” declared Brenda.
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to.” I never did.
The tube was 3 feet long, light but unwieldy to carry with my overweight suitcase and the nylon, foldable Le Sak bag with my daily use belongings. Suitcases didn’t have wheels like they do today. Schlepping it by the handle meant the task was substantial. It held a month’s worth of clothing and got heavier by the day as I added books and other souvenirs. And this was only Day 4!
I hoisted the tube with the print in it into the overhead bins on four planes, one train, one bus and two rental cars as we travelled around Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. I didn’t intend to lose a $400 souvenir.
I had it framed back home in Toronto. It’s the width of my loveseat and half as tall as the wall. It’s been moved to four houses, been in storage twice, in one apartment and now it hangs here in this apartment. Each time it takes two people to affix it to the wall.
If the travel agent in Toronto hadn’t made the miscalculation, we wouldn’t have ended up in the gorgeous hotel in Port Douglas with a lagoon outside our balcony and a spacious marble bathroom. It started us taking photos of bathrooms at every hotel where we stayed — we cracked up every time!
At one point we took a bus from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs. The four-hour journey meant I listened several times to a cassette by a local Australian on my Walkman. Of course, I had earphones on. And I still have that cassette.
On an overnight sleeper train called The Ghan from Alice Springs to Adelaide, we had a compartment in which the beds were pulled down from the wall.
Before leaving on it, we’d bought a bottle of wine but forgot to get a corkscrew. Ensconced on the train in our roomette, we spent half an hour using a fork to dig out the cork and ended by shoving the rest in. We chuckled as we toasted each other with wine that had bits of cork in it.
The train went slowly and had to stop many times during the night to let another train going the other way get past. We woke up every time to look out the window but saw nothing but inky black. Needless to say, we had almost no sleep that night.
I could go on and on — the print conjures up a unique memory every time I look at it.
Friends know the story behind it and newcomers always notice and ask where I got it.
It holds a lot of meaning for me. The trip reminded me that the best plans can go awry but have wonderful consequences. Be open to change.
This was meant to be an adventure and it was. Today when I can’t do things because of the stroke, the print and our trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji serve to remind me that I AM an adventurous person. I CAN do some things still. And I CAN DO what I consider a risk.
As I get older, memories have become even more valuable to me.
Every time I look at the print, I grin (it’s so big I can’t help but see it) and feel overjoyed as I remember different episodes from our once-in-a-lifetime trip and its impactful experience.
When I move, it’s the first picture I hang and it has pride of place. For me, the print means adventure, freedom, curiosity, flexibility, positivity, planning, and openness to all things and people. I travelled to learn — and that’s what traveling is about, isn’t it?
