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Travel Brave - by Michelle

Travel Brave - August 2007

Truman's Cage

August 31st 2007 20:51
In the movie, 'The Truman Show' there is a scene where the young Truman is at school, a geography class I believe and he wants to know what is beyond the fringes of his town, Seahaven. The teacher assures him that there is nothing important, nothing exciting beyond Seahaven and that the place he currently is is the best place, the safest...anything else would be a disappointment in comparison to his current life. For the young Truman, the only world he knows is that of his town but even as a child, his curiosity about the wider space of 'beyond' beckons. He was one of us, a brave traveller. Even within his gilded cage, the young Truman was pressing his face against the bars.


As you follow the road around the bay, onto Evans Bay Parade and further to Cobham Drive, you will find the terrain flat but you will still be fighting the wind. The motorway runs along this stretch and you will be buffeted on one side by the ocean and on the other side by the cars tearing past but if you continue on your rental bike, you come across an old, now mostly abandoned Air force base, the Shelly Bay Air force base. You can 'drive' through it, although it's not officially a road. I have memories of riding through the base and feeling the people that must have lived there, perhaps for World War II but now the halls and accommodation sit quietly, peeling in the wind and the sun. If you continue past, you will come to Shelly Bay and here it's quieter. The cars that drive through are normally not the tearing type but have slowed down and will spend a moment taking in the view. You should do the same.
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Outside the routine

August 30th 2007 07:38
Travel is not about the A and the B. It lives comfortably outside of any routine and will always defy our own definitions because travel is really all about possibilities. Every field or home, jungle or city we visit is merely a reflection of all the possibilities that exist in the world and when we walk out of one world, into another, we can live that possibility and make it our own. 'This is what my life could feel like,' we think as we experience our first Flamenco in Spain, float on our backs in the Dead Sea or as we watch children begging for food along the highways of Africa.

Travel is our passport to another personality, another 'you' that promises to forgive all trespasses, especially those on the current reality you may be living in your stable job or off-white four walls and when travel comes knocking, even for only a weekend, that passport becomes the most valuable possession we own.


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Taking on Wellington

August 29th 2007 09:05
Even as a brave traveller we run. We can run from others, from following the pack, from danger...and from those answers that will cause us reason to stop and rethink things. Things we were happy with and want to keep just as they are. The brave traveller understands that sometimes the cost for what we do is to carry with us a 'mind that looks in on itself' (quote from Oxygen, Andrew Miller). Yes, it isn't easy but we wouldn't want to be anyone else, or doing anything else. This is who we are. This is what we do. We search out the cracks and the beauty in our world and in ourselves. And then we celebrate it.

When friends need time alone, time away from family or need to run away from a particularly messy break-up, they inevitably ring me asking where to go. They want close but not too close. Safe, but not without an edge of excitement and luxurious but without the debt and I invariably point them to the island across the ditch, New Zealand


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Leaving the easy road

August 28th 2007 02:50
What do we do when answers perpetuate further questions? Does it mean a pause in our travels, pulling over for a rest stop or do we push on, perhaps disregard the answers? It's quite normal to do the latter. I know. Sometimes it's easier to hide in the nightclubs of Bangkok and become lost in the crowd in Rio than to listen and be forced to hear the insistent whisper of our ephiphanies. But in the end, the whisper cannot be drowned out and in the end, we realise it is peace we seek, even in our adventures and hair-raising encounters with the world. Peace, rather than oblivion. If we'd wanted the cushions of an easy road, a comfortable seat, we would have stayed home.

In the many accommodation options in the Hunter Valley, a personal recommendation is the previously mentioned Crowne Plaza. The property, located in Lovedale, opened late last year and when I stayed, still had that new smell right around the property. The rooms have space and are naturally toned but the Restaurant, Redsalt, and the Vista bar are especially good. The first couple of nights we stayed, we couldn't even get a table for dinner, it was fully booked. The property has Golf and tennis courts which we took advantage of. Best of all for parents is that they are the only property in the Hunter Valley with a children's recreation area apparently. It doesn't close at any time during the year and there is no additional cost for using it. There you go, no reason not to go off to the Hunter for that long weekend coming up


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The Hunter

August 27th 2007 05:28
The more one travels and face the questions from within and without, the more the brave traveller comes to realise that the answers may often not be the ones we are secretly hoping for. As we seek out the truth, the truth can hurt and we may find that the answers can break up a relationship, cause a longtime companion to drift off onto another path and see the disintegration of a dream but that is the sweet and the bitter of our journey. The answers may shock or haunt us, but they will compel us onto new roads and into new territory. And that's why we travel brave.

The drive through the Hunter Valley reminded me of parts of France or of one of my favourite cities, Geneva. The vineyards, the streets lined with stately trees and the smell of moist earth and distant undergrowth. It causes you to slow down on your drive through, to become a 'sunday driver' and you remind yourself...'hey, I'm on holiday. I can drive slow if I want, dammit.' And of course, you're right


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...and not all who lost wander. It's worth a moment's thought. A moment that follows in the wake of the brave traveller. The type of question that may flit through this traveller's thoughts on a long train ride through Europe's forests or India's plains. At the heart of this musing is the most primitive, yet engaging question of them all:

Why does one travel?

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