The Long Road Home: An Accidental Aussie Odyssey

In 1992, I was 24 years old and what you might call a “counterfeit Aussie.”

Born in Sydney but raised among the hedgerows of Devon, England, I had returned to my birthplace feeling like a permanent tourist. I was plagued by crippling anxiety, a profound sense of displacement, and my life had reached a complete stalemate.

It eventually culminated in a visit to the ER, where a doctor offered a rather radical prescription:

“You need a holiday. A proper one.”

So, armed with a hand-me-down tent, a box trailer that bulged ominously with “essential” gear, and an absolute lack of bush survival skills, my laconic mate Mark and I set off. The plan? A reckless circumnavigation of the continent in a battered Subaru. 55 days. 20,000 kilometres. In a world before GPS and mobile phones, we navigated by paper maps the size of bedsheets, just hoping the car wouldn’t give up the ghost in the middle of a 500-kilometre stretch of nothing.

I went out there looking for a cure for my anxiety, but the Australian outback is a profound, if somewhat chaotic, teacher. It doesn’t offer gentle, meditative healing; it offers rapid, undeniable perspective.

For instance, I learned a lot about staying grounded during a ninety-minute boat cruise on the Yellow Water Billabong in Kakadu:

“Spotting your first Salty is less an ‘Aha!’ moment and more a slow, dawning realisation that a particularly gnarled, mud-caked log has, in fact, got eyes. And teeth. Lots of teeth.”

I also received a rather humbling introduction to the sheer unpredictability of the bush. It didn’t come from a venomous snake or a spider, but from a much more iconic source:

“As I was leaning on a railing, a koala appeared right beside me, having made a break for it from its enclosure. With surprising speed, it promptly grabbed onto my arm. I thought I’d be helpful and simply ‘pop’ it back into its enclosure. Bad idea. The koala seemed to prefer my arm to its tree and promptly dug its claws into my skin. It had surprising, vice-like strength. It wasn’t malicious, but it was incredibly firm – the grip of a creature that has spent its entire life... well... clinging on.”

Sometimes, the landscape taught me that appearances can be incredibly deceiving. Take the Quokka on Rottnest Island, for example:

“Just when you’re ready to declare the Quokka the official mascot for all things warm and fuzzy, you unearth a rumour. A rather shocking, ‘surely not!’ kind of rumour. It’s whispered in hushed tones, as if to protect the innocent, that these paragons of perpetual cheerfulness have a parenting technique that’s… well, let’s just say it wouldn’t win them any ‘Mother of the Year’ awards in most circles.”

But amidst the adrenaline, the dust, and the hazards, there were moments of pure, unexpected comedy. The Australian landscape demands your respect, but it doesn’t always take itself too seriously. As I observed regarding the Emu:

“The Emu, I have to say, is not nature’s finest hour. Picture a gangly, perpetually startled ostrich, one that’s somehow misplaced its fashion sense and rolled around in a pile of straw instead. Those beady orange and black eyes hold the sort of blank expression that suggests it forgot why it was running in the first place.”

Watching these seemingly absurd creatures navigate the harsh terrain, something shifted. The sheer scale of the landscape forced me to slow down. My anxiety simply couldn’t compete with the vastness of the continent.

That trip sparked a lifelong passion for the Australian landscape that eventually led me to write 14 books on our amazing wildlife. But my new memoir, The Long Road Home: An Accidental Aussie Odyssey, goes back to the very beginning.

It is a hilarious and heart-wrenching chronicle of that 1992 trip. It is a tribute to a friendship that survived 20,000 kilometres of dust, heat, and snoring. Above all, it is the story of how a young man got lost in the vastness of Australia and, in doing so, finally found his way home.

If you’ve ever felt displaced, or simply in need of a “proper holiday,” I hope this story resonates with you.

Copies of The Long Road Home are now availble to buy through my website store. I look forward to sharing the journey with you.

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