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Show AROUND Home again After a week and a half in Switzerland, she started off to Luxembourg, Lux-embourg, where she flew to New York City and began a four months' journey through the United States and Canada. Then she did something unusual, for her. She went home to Australia, where she stayed put for nearly two years. "I actually settled down and got a job," she smiles-operating smiles-operating a computer in the office of a chartered accountant. "After a year, I was ready (to travel again). I opened up a map of the world. I had a new confidence. I could choose anywhere I wanted to go and go there." She appreciated her new capacity to travel alone, "to please yourself." She had learned that "most countries coun-tries receive you warmly, if you're not obnoxious, if you be like the people, peo-ple, do what they do. You have to be adaptable, flexible. That's the essence of being able to travel a long time. You have to smile a bit. A smile goes a long way." Beaches, beaches everywhere Her next journey took her to the South Pacific islands three or four months to do some "beach research." In Fiji, she found, "you don't hurry anyone. When you board a bus, the driver waits for you to be seated, then starts." The houses have no windows. There are frames, but no glass. She recalls the tinkle of bicycle bells. "Nice people, Fijians." In Tonga, "people are as wide as they are high." She stayed in the northernmost of three groups of islands, sailing among them on a 12-foot Hobie catamaran. When Prince Edward of England sailed in for a visit, he was greeted by an entourage en-tourage of fishing boats and yachts. In American Samoa and Western Samoa, she found a lifestyle guided by strong traditions. And for a Sa-moan, Sa-moan, "it was almost prestigious to bring a visitor home to the family circle." She spent a week or so living with a family in the lush rain forest of Western Samoa. "You abide by the family rules," which include a 20-minute prayer before dinner. The house was built on a circular cement base and had a thatched roof made of coconut palm leaves and walls made of palm leaf blinds. It was "right on the beach, surrounded by coral cays." Along the edge of the lagoon, islanders could catch rock lobsters and crabs and harvest papaya from the trees. American Samoa was, well, "more Americanized." Cruise ships sail into the bay at Pago Pago. A tuna factory is the main source of income. in-come. Diane recalls "transvestites, thousands of dogs and rubbish bins." On Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, she found many traveling New Zealanders, who, like their neighboring Australians, Diane says, "have the itchy feet disease." She stayed with a family on a small island where "the strict church runs the whole show." To prepare for a feast, a pig was killed and roasted in banana leaves. Coconut cream made of grated coconut and the milk of the fruit is used as a condiment, poured over meat and vegetables. On her pre-arranged airline mileage ticket, she ventured to Tahiti and Moorea in the Society Islands, then caught a cargo boat to the island Bora Bora "renowned for its beauty" where she toured by bicycle. She was aboard the boat two nights and three days, sleeping on the deck under the stars . On Bora Bora, even "electricity is run by coconut husks. They use every part of the coconut palm." She stopped in Hawaii, spent some time on the northernmost island in the chain, Kauai, flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and then went home for four months. On a busman's holiday, she traveled her own country's west coast in a VW beetle, staying in youth hostels. "I used to pick up hitchhikers. I wanted to help other travelers." Alaska: a berry good time In the fall of '83, she returned to Vancouver, and with a friend, Kathy Love, an Australian, took a two-week two-week ferry ride north through the Inside In-side Passage along the coast of British Columbia to Alaska, visiting Russian-influenced Sitka in the Alexander Archipelago; Skagway, north of Juneau; and Valdez (near Anchorage) at the end of the Alaskan pipeline. She recalls the ferry as clean and convenient, with banana lounges in a solarium that was partly covered and heated, from which passengers could look out the back of the ship at the glassy water populated by whales and seals. For two months, they hitchhiked around Alaska and the Yukon Territories. Ter-ritories. "It was autumn. The weather was mild and the leaves were turning." They visited Denali National Park, surrounding 20,000-foot Mt. McKinley in south central Alaska, and Dawson, an Old West-like city on the Yukon River in the Yukon Territories, and stopped for a week and a half to earn money digging potatoes, picking raspberries raspber-ries and seeding wildflowers lupine and forget-me-nots on the Kenai Peninsula, which juts into the Gulf ol Alaska, south of Anchorage. She found that Alaskans "don't connect themselves to the Lower 48." Hunting and fishing are popular, and she recalls seeing many pickup trucks, dogs and rifles, and picking wild berries at the side of the road while waiting for the nexl ride. As they traveled further south, they became more skeptical aboul hitchhiking. But they were fortunate in catching rides with long-distance truck drivers hauling timber and asbestos. The drivers would pull intc scenic lookouts for their passengers' pleasure and even arrange rides for them by radioing ahead to fellow truckers. "It broke the monotony for them" to roll across Canada with the curious foreigners, Diane speculates. 1 1 11 i r-i ., ,n,mnm,n m mi., i. ... MJiwmmmmmmwwmmmmmmmmm. Mmmim, I m-fwP r v ' ' "l l 4' A "2 , . , . . , 1 ' ; . j : is.,...... - i - ! August 1983: Diane beside a pool in Buchardt Gardens, Vancouver Island, Victoria, British Columbia. : Welcome to Park City She spent Christmas 1983 in Van-! Van-! couver, working as a nanny, then in ! February 1984 to look up the friend I of a friend she came to Park City i for the first time and stayed two months before setting off for Southern Utah, Colorado (by train) and, finally, San Francisco. After another stop in Kauai, she went ! home for three months, and return-i return-i ed to Park City in August on a $499 round-trip ticket. Mexico: Surf's up She and a friend, Carole Fontana of Park City, went south to Mexico, where they spent two months touring tour-ing on public transportation. Along the Baja Peninsula, there were "pretty good beaches, good surf," Diane says. She spent Christmas 1984 and '85 in Park City where December is markedly different from back home in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are the reverse of ours. "We have salads for Christmas and drink beer on the beach. It's hard to find a pine. So our Christmas tree has always been an (everlasting) eucalyptus tree. Mom used to cook a hot dinner in shorts." Since last spring, Diane has put more miles under her shoes than most of us do in a year. She's been to Mexico, taken a houseboat cruise around Lake Powell in Southern Utah, gone north to Montana, dropped drop-ped in at Glacier National Park on the Montana-Alberta border and returned to Canada for more sightseeing. Off again Park City, with its circle of warm friends, is home now but not for long. "I have a feeling in my bones. It's time. I want to go off in the spring, spr-ing, May or June." Her next ports of call? The Caribbean Carib-bean and the West Indies, where she hopes to be hired on as crew on a sailing boat. "I want to travel a bit, then go home." For a bit. After that, she's setting her sights on Southeast Asia and Burma, eventually South America and Kenya, with perhaps a return trip to Europe. IV .... ' v..-'- ' fsi L Home on the range: Brian Dray, Diane's brother, tends beef cattle at the family "property" in Woolooga township, Queensland. -4 -My 4ti:,. : October 1984: Diane relaxes beside ancient friend at the Mayan ruin at Chichen Itza, Mexico. |