New Self Wales
The Sydney sulk followed me to the country.
I have lived in NSW for three years and the furthest inland I’ve explored the state is just beyond the Blue Mountains. Much the same as my peers, I had dreams of a summer holiday: visiting my friends in Brunei, or partying on a boat in Croatia. Getting out of the dreary cold would have been fantastic, but I couldn’t seem to motivate myself to plan my mid-year break, not to mention I could hardly afford a Euro-summer.
I was exhausted by the first half of the year. My life changed so much in six months that I forgot to slow down, and my mind got quite noisy. I didn’t allow myself the time to grieve the loss of my grandfather, the break down of my long term relationship, and a thousand other things. The easiest and most affordable way to escape the city was to drive away from it all: the solo road trip. The picture was poignant in my mind. How perfect the metaphor worked. For a few days, it would be me, my thoughts, and the open road.
I settled on travelling inland, to have the headspace to reflect inwards. Lucky for me, there’s nothing but space in the country. We are all familiar with the female solo traveller archetype: she goes somewhere new to rediscover herself when her life in the big smoke gets too overwhelming, often learning that she had what she needed all along: herself (and a European meet-cute). I was going to need to do some Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love (2010) level romanticising if this were to work. Except I didn’t even know what I needed to search for.
I wanted to see if it were true that solitude brings self-discovery. How dramatic.
I set off on the Hume Highway, the promise of the country’s best shepherd’s pie awaiting me at Trappers Bakery. That was the only place I planned on visiting, everything else I saw to fill the time between checking out of one hostel and arriving at the next town. Besides, of course, a crucial stop at Yass on the way to Gundagai. I got the postcard to prove it: I have officially been Yass-ified.
Naturally, I had a presumption as to what I would find in rural NSW on my trip. Definitely lots of farm animals; it was cow, sheep, and horse galore. However, when you’re road tripping alone there’s no one else in the car to be on animal-pointing-out duty. I had to drive and say “cow”, “sheep”, or “horse” to no one in particular.
It was miserable weather most days, either drizzling or just about to. Living up to the cliché, the pathetic fallacy really did affect my mood, I still felt disconnected. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for hours between Culcairn and Ando, so wrapped up in my own thoughts of impending doom that I almost slipped off the Alpine Way through the mountains into Kosciuszko National Park.
Maybe it’s possible that I was my own problem all along? Aside from the fact that I need to go to therapy again, I could feel a revelation brewing. The Sydney sulk followed me to the country. I was determined to bury it on a farm somewhere with no tombstone.
That place ended up being around my last stop. I had booked a stay in an old shearer’s cottage on a property outside Mt Cooper for three nights, my final place of relaxation. Except I did not relax. In fact, I convinced myself I would not make it home from there.
It was all idyllic on paper, with no other people for miles, my own fireplace, and a gorgeous view of the sprawling hills of the Snowy Monaro. However, I had been alone for a week without holding a conversation with another person longer than two minutes; I was stuck talking to myself, and had no one to contradict the delusion. I felt isolated. Don’t get me wrong, I can deal with no phone service and no TV, but that’s normally surrounded by other people. I had a massive freak out. I made sure to send my sister my address, phoned as many people as I could, and when I eventually decided to go to bed, I set an alarm every three hours to make sure no one had taken me in the night. On reflection, it was probably that I was very cold and so bored of my own thoughts that I imagined someone would murder me, for entertainment's sake.
I left a day early and had my epiphany on the way to Kiama: I can’t be more than an hour away from the coast all by myself ever again. That was the self-discovery.