well, i dont really know how to begin this post,
i know that my last few post's havent really been written with the for want of a better word, "flair" that the first few had. So i think for this post im going to give an insight to the entity that is mcfear.
i dont know whether i should put the lack of "flair" within the posts down to general tiredness, from all the stuff that i have been up to, by the time i went to write the last few blog posts it was generally midnight local time, and i was trying to put posts up so that they didnt build up.
Or could it be attributed to the fact that im not a writer? sure sometimes i can whip out a bloody nice looking and reading post but not all the time. im not sure, im slightly leaning towards the latter of the two options while keeping in mind that the first would have a fair amount of play in the writing.
anywho. enough about my lack of writing skills, the honest reason im even writing this blog, is that it for me is a form of diary, but unlike a conventional diary, it is on the interwebs so that others can enjoy my experience too, maybe not to the same extent haha, but given the right viewer it can be used to maybe strike the flint in someones inner fire to give them the travel bug too.
I got my travel bug when i was just 17, living in a backpackers hostel after just failing highschool.
now i know a lot of people fail highschool and dont seem to give a shit. I however had been getting A's ever since i started, both at a normal school and a top of the line boarding school.
the kicker came when i changed high schools for the final 2 years of my senior schooling.
The school was not a standard school by Queensland standards, it had been set up for the academically gifted, it was there to support the nerds, geeks, technofreaks and everything inbetween.
when i started i liked to think that i was a combination of nerd and freak haha.
The major difference about this school is that it was based on a european stimulus called the International Baccalaureate. Now this system is a very good system, but when compared to what the Queensland governments idea of a curriculum is, it is a massive step up.
Being the fact that i was actually a foundation graduate, meaning that myself and all the rest that were within my class were the first group of students to go through that would graduate we werent sure what lay ahead of us.
The teachers even didnt seem to know what to expect as they had all come from teaching the queensland curriculum they were some of the best teachers that there could be within their fields, but all thats pointless when both teacher and student are new to a curriculum.
hence why i think i failed, it wasnt that i didnt try, f*cking oath i tried, it wasnt that the teachers were shit, they were brilliant, it was just a completely different system to what everyone was used to and as it turns out wasnt the system for me and i ended up dropping most of my classes and focussed on maths and english as they are the 2 most generally needed courses that you can get.
End result. I failed highschool and when offered a resit told them to shove it. i was burnt out, i wasnt used to failing. I had become massively depressed to the point where it was affecting the relationships with my parents and family, friends were getting pissed off at me, i just hadnt become a person i liked.
so i did what every normal teenager would do, i escaped. i went somewhere as far away and remote as i could possibly afford and then i stayed as long as i could without becoming dependent on others.
i went to cairns.
In all honesty i cant remember why i went to cairns, i dont know if it was that it was as far away from home as i could go while remaining on the eastern side of australia.
All i know for certain is that after spending 8 weeks in a backpackers hostel with basically no contact with the place i had just left, i was a lot clearer then i can honestly say i had been for a long time.
A combination of no contact with the world i had just upped and left, and also living with backpackers, living like a backpacker, hearing about all these other places and doing it on a shoe string budget. It kinda just gave me a new way of seeing the world.
after 2 months i was still having a blast in cairns but it was time to go and i worked on a farm for a few months driving tractors. while this is not a job that i wanted to do for a lengthy amount of time, it was another 5 months of basic isolation, it didnt pay too badly either i might note.
so all in all, it took close to 7 months of isolation to get back to a state of mind that was normal.
i went back to brisbane, i found myself a traineeship and i started going to college.
but all the while i was there, i was thinking about traveling, about the good times i had with the backpackers in cairns.
so after 16 months in the trainee-ship, i decided amongst a few other points which need not be discussed here, although i liked the work, it wasnt for me and i left for adelaide and got as close to what i wanted as i could without leaving the country.
I became a tour guide.
i was finally doing something i really enjoyed.
driving the backpacker tours from adelaide to alice springs is still my lifes highlight. even when im sitting here in a hotel room in amsterdam after just having my 21st birthday party last night.
i drove the busses for close to 2 years, doing a multitude of different tours, from driving the toyota Landcruiser troop carriers and shaking up to 10 backpackers around the real australian outback for 10 days to changing scenery of sorts and driving the mini busses along similar routes but on the highway with up to 21 backpackers.
it gave me the feeling of being a backpacker, it gave me the travelling aspect and it also gave me a putz load of friends all over the world many of whom i have remained in constant contact with.
so when i finally got the chance to come to europe and experience proper travel first hand of course i took the opportunity.
I hope that the above text isnt too monotonous or boring, especially as it has nothing to do with my actual travel so far, but i feel it makes this blog a bit more personal, and gets a few things out there in the open that currently only a few people know about.
My last post was a few days ago so later on today or tomorrow when im on the train to london i'll try to get another post up thats more related to the actual trip itself.
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