Strange to be thinking about something so far away, when I have such wonders in front of my nose.
But I suppose it’s my equivilent of whistfully thinking about home, as I don’t particularly have a ‘home’ anymore (beyond ‘where my bike is parked’).

As my financial situation stands, having been taken roughly in the barn by BMW, I will have to work solidly in Australia to support myself; although I am sure with excursions at weekends and holidays!

I am really looking forward to a manual job.
It may not be a long term job, but I would love to know the feeling of coming home from work every day, physically exhausted rather than mentally.
When I got home from my desk job, I was mentally exhausted, that horrible kind of exhaustion where your muscles scream ‘hey, yeah, let’s go, we’ve got work to do!’ and your brain screams ‘Murr, let’s sleep’.
Even worse when you try and sleep, you can’t, you don’t have the simple pleasure of wearied muscles sinking deeply into the mattress and end up fidgeting endlessly.
My solution? At the time I drank to get to sleep most nights, worked quite well for me, although I eventually came to a point where I associated boredom with a very strong desire to drink, at which point I decided to lay off the booze for a while.

My attitude towards personal posessions has changed immensely in the past few months.
Having everything you own in the world in the panniers of your motorcycle can do that to you I guess…
I said to some-one the other day “I have a real hankering to build a bed” which naturally surprised them somewhat.
When I get my own place in Aus I intend to furnish it, electronics and all, for under £100.
If the second hand markets in Australia are anything like they are in the UK, simply putting an ad in the paper saying “Will collect furniture” should get my phone ringing off the hook with people glad not to have to hire a van to take it to the dump.
As for electronics? Provided I go a few generations back I should be able to get everything for nothing.
“CRT TV? Windows 2000 PC? Sure mate, free!”

It all sounds very hippyish but, I get the feeling I’m going to want to save as much money as I possible can to continue my trip.
As it’s always been my plan to go beyond Australia, hell, those of you paying attention in the photos will notice my panniers say “Travelling the world” rather than “UK to Australia!”.
If I can scrape together the money I’ll ship the bike to South America, I’ve heard tales of people spending 9 months in Latin America on a motorbike on around $1500 (including petrol, food, accomodation etc).

My other idea is to go to University after a year in Australia working.
Really these ideas are simply putting off working full time again for as long as possible, but there are still many things that appeal to me about university.
Mainly the congregation of people with some degree of interest in something in a single place.
The thing that irritates me about most people is they’re not interested in anything.
Oh they may have their hobbies, their topics of conversation, but for the most part they’re simply inane.
Really this is a very sweeping generalisation, and it obviously depends who you talk to and what circles you move in as to whether or not you can relate this to ‘most people’, but honestly I feel you can sum up a helluva lot of people in the world like this.

That’s one of the things that makes travelling appeal I guess, what other people from different countries and cultures talk about inanely is often of the greatest interest to a traveller!