Return to Oz

When I was four I had been to Australia with my parents. They had spent about six months in the country whilst they travelled the world with me on their back! It is amazing but the only memories I have of the whole trip are of Australia. Of course, I can’t even remember the memory being Australian, I just remember my father wading through a river up to his waist with me on his shoulders! My parents told me where it was, and they said that it was in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. It’s a strange memory for me, but for some reason it is one that has always stuck in my head.

I’m now twenty five, but I still sometimes stop dead and remember that day, and whenever I do, I wish I could see the place. The last time this happened to me, I suddenly thought to myself, that there was nothing really stopping me going to find this place. My job as a teacher meant that I had plenty of holiday and a decent wage. So I immediately started to investigate the possibility.

I started to hunt around on the internet and I found quite quickly some cheap flights to Adelaide which was the nearest airport to the spot my parents told me my memory was from.

When I arrived at the river, it was like a dream. Lots had changed from the memory, yet somehow it was all the same. I don’t know how much had actually changed, or how much my memory had changed over the years, but the strangest thing was that I felt like I had come home.