with sparkles blogoversary!

Today

with sparkles is turning one today and to celebrate I thought it might be fun to take a look at my travels over the years. On Wednesday the boy informed me that I was turning 10,000 days so I guess, in a way, this is a celebration of that too. Here are a few of the travels from those days.

We start with the picture above which was my first trip to the Blue Mountains as a baby. Back then I liked to eat stuff. In fact, I still do!

This was taken on a visit to the llama farm near Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains of Australia. I wanted to take Pierre home but they wouldn’t let me. Also, how awesome is my fashion sense.

All our early holidays were in Australia and they usually involved skiing in the winter and beach in the summer. This is obviously the former, taken at Mt Blue Cow ski resort.

This is from a trip down the coast to Mossy Point where my dad’s step family had a holiday house. Since reading “Sebastian lives in a hat” as a child I had always wanted my own pet wombat. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me take him home either.

This was where it all started for me really. Our school organised a camping safari which involved travelling around Australia for three weeks in a bus full of hormonal teenagers, a tattooed, cheerful bus driver called Bingo who had the most amazing buck teeth and an old tour guide called Warbo whose favourite phrase was “Isn’t this just tops”. Lying under the stars one night, feeling the most sublime happiness I realised that I wanted to keep doing this for the rest of my life.

My first trip overseas, when I finished my last year of school my parents bundled me and my sister up for a 7 1/2 week trip of Europe. After this I swore never to travel in an ugly secondhand parka again.

A geology field trip to New Zealand plus an extra week of roadtripping around with my boyfriend at the time. White Island was the sight I most wanted to see and it was totally worth the 3 m swell and two day wait once we finally got out there.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to travel for work too. I spent a number of stints in the Lady Annie mining camp 200km outside of Mt Isa. The days were scorchingly hot or swelteringly humid, the nights warm and filled with beer and thousands of insects, a green tree frog called Henry lived in my toilet and it was wonderfully remote and achingly beautiful. And I got covered in dirt every single day which is always fun.

With university finished I headed off for the RTW I had always dreamed of. Hong Kong was the first stop and a bit of a culture shock but once I found the giant, super cheap beers I was all set.

Back to Venice with my sister and we managed to accidentally arrive in time for a huge festival. The best fireworks I’ve ever seen.

After leaving my various friends and relatives from the start of my trip I was on my own for the first time in my life, travelling around Norway. I learned to fend for myself, stealing bread and jam from the hostels to eat and fighting off the wasps. I took this on a sunny day in Trondheim.

Catching up with my family in the US at the end of my RTW we roadtripped around spending time in Vegas on the way. In my opinion this is one of the best places on earth. Where else would you find such a smorgasbord extravaganza of tacky. Here I am getting my fortune from the Old miner.

As per usual making friends with reptiles on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Finishing of my RTW in Hawaii with ridiculously beautiful flowers, black sand beaches, drinks in pineapples with little colourful umbrellas and my first glimpse of actual lava (squeee!) I headed back home to Oz to try and tackle the weirdness of moving home again.

Back in Australia I was lucky enough to return to my old job who sent me straight to the Flinders Ranges where I searched for copper and cared for lost lambs.

Most of the Summers of my life have been spent at Hawks Nest beach two hours north of Sydney. I have spent countless hours exploring the beaches, the rainforest, Myall lakes, the giant sand dunes, Black’s point and Mt Yaccaba. Who says you can’t travel close to home?

In 2006 I moved to Sweden to be with the boy and look at a crystal of salt. Now I’m an expat. It sounds cool. Like I’ve been in a war or something.

Summer 2008 I fulfilled my dream of visiting Iceland. I was not disappointed. It really is the most beautiful place on earth.

I headed off to Vanuatu on a side trip from a visit home to Oz, once again chasing volcanoes. I saw my first erupting volcano and found out if love is forever. The chief of the tribe pulled two leaves from the love tree, one for me and one for the boy. He held them close and told me if they stuck together so would we, forever and ever. The reason I look so ridiculously relieved in the photo is that they did. It may have helped that it was raining .

Since living in Europe I’ve taken every opportunity whether for work or play to travel around. Especially to the Netherlands, where my sister currently resides (our poor parents). Here I am visiting the flower fields.

And here’s a rather recent picture from April this year and my latest big trip travelling around Turkey with my family. Who knows what’s next? Well me in fact, I’ll be off to Singapore in August on the way home for a visit.

Related posts:

1. Cats around the world