I really don’t know how Guy and I got to the stage we were at. I first met him when I was nineteen. I had come to Sydney to visit family, which I had never met before. I remember being very nervous at the airport, with nothing but a photograph of a very happy, very smiley family of five who, I was told, were somehow related to me. I shouldn’t have been nervous, of course. They were lovely. Guy was a family friend and was at the family home when I arrived. He was ok looking, I guess, but to be completely honest, I found him a little weird and very annoying. He picked on me a lot and teased me about my ‘English ways,’ but for some reason, at the same time, I also really liked him. He was very easy to talk to, and we got along extremely well. I didn’t really know what he thought of me, but after we got together years later, he used to say to me he fell in love with me the very first time he saw me. All my friends, of course, now say, ‘Oh, he never loved you,’ and ‘He treated you so badly,’ but even now I can say, with an honest heart, that I know he loved me from the very first time he ever saw me. As he used to say, ‘She had me at hello.’ The problem only came when he fell out of love with me.
Of course, we didn’t start dating at that time as I was only on holiday, but the attraction was clear to everyone else around us. I actually didn’t even kiss him, mainly because he was a family friend but also because I couldn’t decide whether I liked him or found him annoying. I do recall one night that he drove me back to where I was staying. I had been out drinking with the younger half of my family and was meant to be staying at my cousins’ house (when I say cousins, I mean fifth cousins once removed sort of thing). The house was by the beach, and I thought it was very lovely. That was, until we got in about midnight, turned on the light and about twenty very large cockroaches ran across the kitchen floor.
Now, being from the UK, I had never really had much experience with cockroaches, but one thing I learnt that night was that I didn’t like them one bit. I can honestly say I was absolutely terrified of them. Of course, everyone else thought it was hilarious. Having grown up in Australia, those people were used to these creepy crawlies. I, however, was not and definitely did not fancy spending the night with them crawling all over me. That night, I begged Guy to drive me back to the safety of my aunty and uncle’s house. Of course, as I have learnt since, no Australian man can resist a damsel in distress, and he very eagerly obliged. In the car that night I was so grateful for him driving me home I think, in my immature drunken state, if he had asked me, I would have had sex with him quite willingly because I actually quite liked him. In spite of this, he didn’t ask; he didn’t even try it on with me. Looking back now (with thirteen more years of experience), I realise it was because he was inexperienced himself and was scared of rejection. At the time, of course, being only nineteen, I assumed he thought I was fat, ugly and generally unattractive. I went to bed that night feeling a little rejected.
The next day, my whole family were busy with work and their own lives, so I was dropped off in the city, where I was entrusted to Guy for an hour on his lunch break. It was clear he wasn’t keen on the whole ‘babysitting the tourist thing’ when he was meant to be working, but he went along with it anyway, and my family promised they would be back within the hour. I felt so sorry for him when I got so carried away that his lunch hour turned into a four-hour shopping and sightseeing trip around Sydney. Later, he told me he had never even taken a lunch break before. I can honestly believe that, as the man was a workaholic. Apparently, the men in his office spoke about ‘the time their boss took a four-hour lunch break with a ‘girl’ for years afterwards.
After leaving Sydney, I backpacked up the coast to Cairns alone. That was my first experience of real travelling / backpacking, and I adored it. The excitement and freedom were so different from anything my small town in the UK had to offer. During that time, I went to some absolutely breath-taking places along the East Coast of Australia, and it definitely gave me the ‘travel bug.’ My favourite place to this day is Fraser Island, a few hours north of Brisbane. It is the largest sand island in the world, and right in the middle is a place called Lake McKenzie. This lake is beyond breath-taking and, at the time, was not in the slightest bit touristy (I went back a second time years later, and sadly, it had become somewhat more touristy). As I stood alongside my small tour group at the edge of the pure white sand and fresh water lake, I remember thinking to my nineteen-year-old self, what an absolutely beautiful word we live in and I really must get out more and see it. I made a promise to myself that day to leave my small town in the UK and go and see some more of the world. It was the best promise I have ever made.
In Cairns I met a very lovely American man called Jake with whom I had a very short relationship (seven days to be exact). He was only the third person I had ever had sex with, after the boyfriend I had had when I was seventeen, whom I adored, and of course, his brother. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would not be the last time I would see Jake. Just like Guy and me, my new American friend and I got on extremely well, and they were so alike in so many ways it was kind of scary. I obviously forgot all about Guy for the time being and was very much enjoying being single on holiday without any family watching over me.‘Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer.’ — Unknown.