There are places on Earth that do not speak loudly or burn bright. They are places laying calm but inviting. They are not overly burdened by the human world, our activities and our economic troubles mean little.
They are locations on the map that invite an escape and get lost in the world of which we have lost.
Cradle Mountain in Tasmania is one of these places.
I went there alone. Isolated and tranquil.
After arriving, on one somewhat cold morning for the summer, I began a hike around a lake and through the surrounding forest. No one else was to be seen in the beginning, it was an early start for an Adventurer.
I liked being alone. It was almost silent. Only broken sporadically by nature chirping or caressing the lakeside shore.
Dove Lake was the first body of water I circumnavigated as I walked. A simple but sturdy walk enveloped by Tasmania’s wilderness.
Through the day I went up and over to climb the mountainous landscape that surrounded. I was a unique individual in a place where being a unique human meant little to my up and over, down and through step after step on the landscape.
I met wombats and travellers, as I saw each and every leaf flutter in the blowing winds covering the island of Tasmania. Wuuuuuuf waffff fffffff ahwwwwwww ahhhhhhh
With each breath of nature, I felt closer to nothing in particular. Nothing unusual. Everything calm. Everything beautiful.
Tasmania has a wealth of history, with Australian Aboriginal populations over thousands of years before the English first comforted in the colder climate on this island.
I’ve been here twice before and each time I can feel the sense of loneliness, enveloped by wildlife and bush. The human loneliness seems to work well in this isolated place.
I currently work in the wind energy industry and I was lucky enough to travel to Tasmania to support our work. Tasmania has become a hub to build up Australia’s renewable energy sector, namely with wind and hydro projects.
I saw the lakes and forests creeping toward the sky over the land’s rolling hills. I drove around a lot on this journey. I only recently improved my driving ability, something I had only dabbled in slightly before my current job. I was a true City Kid and now I’m becoming more influenced by country life freedoms.
I wish everyone could hear Tasmania’s emptiness. It isn’t barren, like much of Australia’s centre. Tasmania creates a distant comfort and I was thinking about it when I saw many dead animals strewn across the roads I drove along.
I firstly thought about the atrocious death of these animals, by large and fast vehicles. Then I thought about how few animals you see around the gigantic highways that support the human populations of Melbourne or Sydney. Much of the wildlife near those cities has already passed away, left the metropolitan urban areato sense the homely comfort of the natural environment. Tasmanian wildlife are typically living in comfort, and for this sad reason, we often hit the larger fauna populations surrounding Tasmanian Roads.
Echidna, just wandering.
In any state of mind about nature in Tasmania, people will not be disappointed. I got to see Hobart, Lake Echo, the Tasmanian Central Plateau and the Central Highlands.
On my next trip later in February 2024, I am considering a trip to hike in the famous Cradle Mountain National Park area. Watch this space.
From Indian Oasis to Portuguese Colony to Indian Oasis…
After the recent wedding near PUDUCHERRI, we took a short flight across India to the West Coast.
We stayed one night in Panaji once we landed in the state. Panaji offered a few historic locations built during the Portuguese era of this land, perfect for an intro into the cultural dynamics of Goa.
The next day we headed south for a tranquil beach location. Nature beckoned us to Patnem Beach to enjoy the relaxing air, filled with Chai and Masala. A group of us came after the wedding to enjoy this slice of calm paradise.
Over the last few days we’ve kept it local from waterfalls to birds to beaches. I love seeing many Indian tourists here, it shows the attraction of not being a holiday destination just for foreigners.
This week’s experience was amazing in South India (near PUDUCHERRI).
The photos attempt to do justice to the wedding ceremonies and events. The physical vision of colour was vibrant in a depth unmatched by the eye of a camera.
I have also been drawn into the pollution challenge of the world’s most populated country. Waterways are areas where I’ve seen little salvation for clean, natural and pure. Water to me is an essence of life that has been scarred by India’s huge population explosion 💥
I dream one day where the rubbish and sewerage of this land’s communities are not destroyed by the irreversible damage of caring later. I think strategic care is in dire need.
A river through PUDUCHERRIThe PUDUCHERRI beachfront
My friends Hannah and Josef were married in Australia last year. They are now having an Indian wedding to represent the culture of Hannah’s mothe in the festivities.
Many know I’m writing a book about the recovery from an accident where I fell 15 metres off a building in 2014. It was no easy journey. Neither is the completion of a perfectly packaged book for a publisher to support printing and distributing the work.
Recently, I employed a professional editor to review a chapter and a half. She gave me a few pointers I will incorporate and felt I could revisit the story in a more logical professional manner – in a way separating myself to become the reader a little more.
So I am working on a memoir exercise book, gradually piecing the story back together, by pulling it apart.
The difficulty with the story is how it was not written as a recollection. I did not decide to tell my story after recovery in a thoughtfully clear moment.
It was written during the events occurring. For this reason it inhabits the mind and embodies the voice of a person suffering from Brain Injury, of me suffering from Brain Injury. I am trying not to lose that voice to who I am today. I didn’t write the book. Paul from 2014 after falling 15 metres off a building wrote the start of the book. That is the person I want to convey as the storyteller to future readers.
This week I looked at the theme of the story.
Here is a list of words I made that embody the story’s theme;
The exercise book had accomplishment, disappointment, victory, fear and gratitude as words to encapsulate the story I wish to tell. I felt ‘accomplishment’ was a word closest to the heart of the story. All the hard work I’d done paid off in the end. That is an amazing achievement when I read or recollect the worst stages of recovery.
I could combat struggle through confidence and strength. Strength in what I wanted in the end had to be overarching to influence me at the darkest times. Comparison and judgement were detrimental from an internal or external perspective. I had to follow my interests and passions to get through it. I learnt the value in focused listening to my needs for the first time in my life because if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be here today.
That’s a little summary of this week. It is good to lay out the story. Within time (7 more years maybe, who knows), I will get that publisher and review/edit the over 250 pages again 🙂
As a tender teenager I avoided the typical path of learning to drive. I was a City Kid. I walked and I couldn’t ride a bike either 😂
Now that’s another story.
The nausea in my stomach at the thought of me driving could possibly cause car crashes through my telepathic thoughts.
My Dad was trained as a Mechanic in his youth. He thought, as I understand now, that I was very silly/stupid to avoid learning to drive.
So, I went through my twenties without much practice as a ‘Learner Driver’ and continued to renew my learner permit when it would constantly expire.
I then fell off a building at my 28th birthday party. In the subsequent hospital period, I was told that my Brain Injury meant I couldn’t be cleared to drive for some time. I told the doctors I didn’t have a full driver’s licence anyway. No problem.
Recovery improved but my mental limitations lived on for several years. I over compensated with what I could achieve, be it study or ‘attempts’ at work. Learning to drive was not affected by my short term memory or need for fast and responsive attention to detail with communication or work documents.
Despite many challenges, I returned to practicing to drive. At 32 years old, I finally obtained my full licence – I COULD LEGALLY DRIVE!
I added it to my list of recovery over achievements, to prove I wasn’t only sane but unstoppable.
Then there was a real truth. Once I had my licence, I never drove. I never really practiced, despite the fact that I could legally drive. The few times I sat behind the wheel, the nausea resurfaced and I was like ‘ok where are the windscreen wipers and how do I put fuel in the car’.
Recently I obtained a job where driving to rural areas is an essential part of my work, to manage projects with communities surrounding infrastructure developments.
My latest car rental
So I quickly started to rent cars to practice before driving three hours into the countryside from Sydney. Think about working rurally and then add a big continent with a small population, my home Australia. It was daunting, but achievable.
My tiny steps over decades started a faster learning period. My confidence grew with…dah dah dah… PRACTICE. A LOT OF PRACTICE ALL AT ONCE.
I’m writing this after being in the Australian state of Victoria (where Melbourne is located). I rented another car and drove one hour here, lost on a highway with two hours there and made little trips from the country town where I stayed to buy food or visit project sites.
I overcame the nausea. I don’t get it when I climb into a driver’s seat now, I just pay attention, learn and drive. My parking is horrific, but not always.
We are all different and driving after an accident can be a major challenge for people suffering from brain/mental health challenges. The lesson of PRACTICE to achieve was proven to me once again. GET INTO IT, when you feel confident something can be done.
Uluru or named Ayers Rock by the colonial South Australians, is a spot on the desert map few have the luxury to see.
I had been here once before, in the summer of 2014, 6 months after my body plunged into a tree, awning and the paved concrete streets of Sydney.
It was a different moment in my life.
I was in a different headspace.
But I was the same person and all the moments in life form a new tapestry woven by continuation.
This weekend collided with the birthday celebrations of my partner and good friend. This was a journey influenced by the life moments of others. I thankfully got the opportunity to follow.
My path today is walked by a calmer, newer, thoughtful me and not the brain injured or accident suffering past Paul.
Two months ago I left a job as I was terminated, seen as a member of a business team that wasn’t required for the company. I was not fired and thankfully the labour laws meant I was paid a stipend for my push onto a new path.
Within two months I found a more suited role in the sustainable energy sector. I was not a lost man like the days after my accident on the first trip to this part of Australia. I now had a mission to improve community sentiments and experience with society’s need for energy solutions.
On the pale blue sky, orange bleeding red earth, shades of green leaf and vibrant yellow or violet flower lands of my country’s interior, to you I write these words. Life changes, though daily dreams may continue unabated.
My first trip here partly gave me an escape from a peril I had never known. A body ravaged by circumstance and protected by lucky laced hard work.
These unique colours of the land have been here for many moments more than mine. It is that almost endless reality of the land and earth that gives me peace.
Last night, I looked up at the star filled sky, while camping on the desert floor. I had that same experience in 2014. The star constellations slowly moved over the sky. This time I didn’t think of that past moment, or another in my world to be honest, I just thought of the universe, the stars and our immense existence.
I didn’t capture an image of this sky, it is something that requires your travel and eyes to truly appreciate it.
The time under those stars will occur again tonight. I love moments like this in life where I’m not thinking of me, you or our human world. I was and will admire nature’s expansive force. I will connect with awe, lacking much inspiration or desire. I will simply live.
My recent visit to the Iberian Peninsula, the solid ground of Spain and Portugal, has given me a reflective insight into power and change.
I’m now sitting on the far outpost of Cádiz, Andalucia. My solid ground is surrounded by water. A journey through these waters once made this little city a global centre of trade and commerce.
Now it’s a holiday spot, as I gaze over at La Caleta Beach filled with holidaymakers on one side of town while cruise ships anchor themselves on the other, past the old town that in the 17th century was a beacon of the Spanish Empire’s international influence and force.
La Coleta Beach
Today the Spanish I meet are calm, with a loss of their ancestors’ goals in their mindset. But it remains alive on the streets and old cultural flavours continue to make Spain unique today.
I see the cathedral poke out along the skyline. Many other residential buildings or hotels are against the blue windy sky, and yet it makes me see something I’ve noticed so vibrantly in each historical location I visit. Religion.
Islam and Christianity shaped this pocket of the world. It also went on to shape the wealth exploitation from the new world some centuries ago.
In Australia, the influence of religion is not so obvious, but it is there. Our modern world is a very unique time when we know so much and the vast confusion of it all leaves us with less emphasis on religion, as I sense in myself today.
Power is an intriguing force to watch. It is interesting when you look back on what has occurred because of it and what is happening with it today. To be part of it or to be enclosed and forgotten by it.
The ocean continues breaking on the rocks and stone walls around me. Push and pull. Flow and diversion.
I then look up at one bird floating on the wind. The same wind controlling the ocean. Everything in nature and in human existence is interconnected, that obvious reality in power or change has made me pause for a moment to take in the immensity of life.
Southern Portugal is peppered with beautiful places, dotting the coast and the small towns on hills behind it.
One place that opened my portuguese imagination was on the wharf of Olhão, a small town in the Algarve region. Restaurants and a fish and food market sit along the street adjacent to the port.
I went and bought my €2 ticket to visit one of the islands stretching next to the coastline. There are many elongated islands, separated from the mainland in this case by Rio Formosa.
I lined up on the wharf to join the other tourists, mostly from the UK, Spain and Portugal to visit ILHA DA ARMONA.
To avoid boredom, I placed in my earbuds and listened to the popular tunes of modern Portugal. It sounded like the country was influenced by the rhythm of its global history with the flavours of Africa, the Middle East and Europe intertwining.
The tourists in Olhão are bite sized when compared to Albufeira, the region’s big tourist town/city further west, but number in their hundreds all the same.
Olhâo
This part of the country is a sunshine paradise. However on this day it was cloudy. Overcast one day doesn’t stop the weather from shining at other times.
The heat pulsates through those clouds. I noticed in places like this, filled with the British and Irish, a red haze usually flowed over the crowd’s skin. It symbolised a kind of pride that people appeared to have to be burnt red hot.
It showed me the Australian influence in my life. Sun = sunscreen. I can’t recall the last time I had a whole of body sunburn like many of the people I saw, maybe 5-10 years ago? I’m in the sun often, but with safety precautions 🦘☀️🌞
Wear your sunscreen, it avoids pink skin and cancer. That’s my tip to northern Europeans 😉
Once on the ferry to ILHA DA ARMONA I sat in a seat with the hot sun beaming through the window, as we slowly made our boat calmly over to the island.
When we arrived I felt the calm portuguese air flow into my life. No towers or huge shopping complexes met me.
Armona is an island where you feel the expanse of Portugal’s south with a hint of traditional life in the old homes that line the main street.
I walked along that road to connect with more beach on the ocean side of the island.
Like many experiences in this world, it was the physical world surrounding me from the island that played magic and added calm to my senses.
Pablito...travelling mentally with you! 