Travel

Janet: Although I’m actually doing more travelling now than I did when we were younger. For instance we’re about to go off on a six-week trip to Italy and Malta and we did a similar sort of trip last year going to Turkey.

So that’s something that you can look forward to in your older years?

Janet: Yes, every year we seem to do a major trip and then maybe to Melbourne and other places in between but the one major trip.

How important is that for you?

Gypsy: I enjoy it.

Janet: Yeah, I think it’s important for him because he starts planning, he does all the planning before we go so he starts months early, has the reservations and flights in place etc so it keeps his mind busy, I just get on the plane.

Val: We haven’t actually done a cruise, that would be a change because I seemed to be seasick once but I don’t, I think these days that can be dealt with but again, mobility is a bit of a problem.

Austin: That is a solution, we can take a cruise for say a week or two weeks, you don’t move out of the cabin so you don’t have this business of changing all the time, you’ve got a comfortable room of your own and you’ve got – there’s facilities all around the place, it would be rather fun.

Val: It doesn’t, it means moving out of the cabin overnight, to a different motel.

Austin: Yes, that’s one of the problems.

Val: But for me it would be a problem getting off the ship and then a walking tour to somewhere.

Austin: But you’d be on a bus, somebody would take you all around the place. I think there’s something in that one.

Yeah, getting older was a place where I recognised that we could spend time together as a family. The wife and I used to go away, not consistently or regularly, but we had plans of travel which, thank goodness, we did do the travel in Australia. Straight after I retired, and of course I’m not a social person, and then the wife enjoyed life. So she convinced me that when we both retired that we jump straight into travelling and I’ve been ever thankful for that to this day and then we did that. And then we came back and did a bit of touring around Australia and then the wife got crook and, of course, I didn’t take up the threads then being, not anti-social, but I steer away from being social. So I haven’t been on a long trip for a while. We were married in 1965, so it’s 48 years.

A long time.

Yes, yeah. Yeah, she got very sick.

What was that like for you, Brian?

I suppose it was – yeah, a bit tough in the fact that I suppose I lost my travelling partner, but not bringing to mind that she would be there to organise things and then we did go – we didn’t leave Australia when she was sick, in a wheelchair. She had Diabetes and had to be on dialysis. So we stayed in Australia and we toured to different places and then to obviously South Australia many times, which had Diabetes Clinics and she could have her transfusions and that. So that was more or less our – but apart from that – going overseas and organising trips, it didn’t happen.

I do day trips on some of the buses. We have a few different buses that do day trips through parts of the country in West Australia; I’ve done trips with them. I’ve recently been away up to Mount Augustus, which is way up north inland, in Western Australia, and it was wonderful. I had a fabulous time; I was away for five days. I could have stayed there for another five easy, and I went to some places that I’d never been to before. I mean, I’ve done a lot of travelling. I’ve travelled through most of West Australia, quite a bit of South Australia, Victoria, I’ve been in to New South Wales, and last year, I went up to Alice Springs to Ayers Rock, and right through to Darwin, and went out to Katherine Gorge. That was eleven days, and that was a wonderful trip as well, so I get out and about still quite a bit. Of course, my family live in Victoria, so I quite often go home to Melbourne for holidays at Christmas.

So that is, what’s that through? Is that sort of you book a private bus through a company, or is that done through a group?

No, it’s done through a company. Because I’ve done trips with them before, they send you out a brochure at the beginning of the year, and then you just sort of go through it and see what you like to do, and then you can just book whatever trips that you feel like, so yeah.

Great, so travelling’s important to you?

I love Australia. I’ve seen nearly all of Australia. I’ve only ever been out of Australia once. I won a holiday. I went to Malaysia, but the rest of my time has been spent travelling round this wonderful country of ours.

And then she [my wife] organised a trip to Tasmania and we didn’t take the car, we went on a tourist trip. No actually, we went on the Tasmanian across the – Bass Strait and she’d worked out that you had these community bus tickets and they would take you from town to town. And so we would just spend a day, two days or whatever in a particular place – Launceston, Hobart or whatever – and then catch the ordinary bus to the next town with just minimal changing. So we didn’t have the baggage of trying to drive, you know, in different places.

About two years ago. We did something similar to that. The other thing we were going to do was to get the Ghan to Darwin through Alice Springs and then we’d have to get a bus back to Perth because she won’t fly on an aeroplane which makes it pretty cheap for me and pretty cheap for her. So we’re not jet setters, she got a fright once. She’s a bit older than me and she’s been around a bit more and I really quite like her.

I come here [Darwin], you know, up here is good. I usually come every winter.

So is it that it physically gets harder to travel or you lose that desire?

I think money wise is one thing, yeah physical travel, I’ve seen it and I don’t think I could be bothered. Coming up here is good, I like this. I come up the same time every year and hopefully next year I’ll be up. Yeah, it’s good.

I’ve done a lot of that. Last year I went to China in April with [my son]. When was it, in September we went to Alaska, Canada, Vancouver, in November I went to Singapore, that’s plenty enough and I was so tired after that and I vowed not to go anywhere again. But that’s not true either, I will. Last year was so busy. But they are all big trips, three weeks in Vancouver, Alaska and how many weeks in China, two and a half and that’s hard work, in China it’s hard work. It’s pretty, it’s enjoyable, you climb mountains and the scenery is fantastic, but you get tired, because you are older. See I wasn’t like that 10 years ago, I can assure you I wasn’t like that 10 years ago. But this year maybe I’ll just go back to Singapore and Malaysia, because now you can get the cheap fares you know. Because we can’t really afford to go places like that, we can’t, that’s a fact, but we can go to Malaysia as a couple, because board and lodging are free, but we pay our part. But I mean if you don’t have to pay for hotels you save a lot of money and yes we stay with relos [relatives]. Because they wanted us to, if we should go and stay in a hotel oh they would be very angry, it’s like why don’t you come home, that’s home, why do you go and stay in a hotel?

Well I really don’t feel a year older than at the time I married Brian. You don’t feel like that when you’re ageing. You feel just things are slowing down and that’s the part I don’t like is the slowing down part, because I’m the sort of person that likes bush walking and travel and doing exciting things. But it has slowed me right down because of my strokes have caused me to not walk so well at all. I have got to have some help to walk and that really ties me down.
Certainly, well we had planned, and we had bought a really nice caravan, air conditioning, everything you needed and we were going to join the grey nomads and travel Australia and then he had his operation and we just sold our caravan the other week. We just know we can’t do that anymore.

Look, it’s only been in the last 12 months that I have reached that. I think 12, or maybe it was 18 months ago he was diagnosed with quite a severe heart issue and that was the first time that I really thought – and it was severe to the point if it wasn’t treated, he could have carked it at any time. And I thought really that if we don’t have, you know, another 20 years together, and we’ve got five years together, and we’ve got a marriage that’s like everyone’s – it’s not perfect, but it’s been very durable and we have gone through some very difficult times, especially with our daughter – that I wouldn’t want to feel that I hadn’t given it my best shot and that I had to modify my expectations. You know, I thought we’d be running around, going on walking holidays to Provence or whatever. Well, we’re not, and we can’t. It was the finite thing that death can happen at any time that made me think that, you know, I need to modify my expectations, and we need to do more things together that he is capable of doing, simple as that.

Have there been more things like that?

Yes, I think there have. You know, we’re travelling in a different way from what we used to, and I often used to go and travel on my own anyway, or with friends and stuff. Like when the kids were younger, I’d go off and do something and he’d stay at home, and then sometimes he’d do things. So we do more of that together in ways that accommodate his, if I say limitations I mean physical limitations. We do more things. Like I’m conscious that, you know, I’ll say why don’t we go to the movies today, and make sure it’s where he can access it easily and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, we do.

Look, they’re modest. I hope that I would be able to, you know, the time that we have left together we’ll be able to live a fairly – look, the fact that our daughter has turned around has been an enormous weight off us, and it’s enabled us to live happier lives anyway to be honest. It also lowers your expectations when you have gone through all that. I hope that we’ll have enough health to do things that we – the modified things – that we want to do. Such as [my husband] wants to travel around Australia, fine. I want to go overseas every year, fine. At least once, fine. I mean, one of the things, and I really noticed this with my mother, that she had a number of health problems towards the end of her life. But the thing, she actually said to me one day, she had macular degeneration, she said I can put up with everything, but I cannot imagine not being able to see. And she was already having difficulty reading and all that sort of stuff. And she said I wouldn’t want to go on, and I wouldn’t want to go on if I couldn’t read. I’d find that enormously difficult. So assuming one has one’s faculties, to be able to live a life where knowing that your goals and lifestyle will close in, but you can still do the things that have been important to you all your life, which is read, and travel, and relate well to your friends, and have good relationships with your children. I mean, I can’t imagine what it would be like – and I do know some people who are estranged from their adult children – have positive and good relationships with that and your family, it’s a very modest set of things. Not always easy to achieve, but modest.

I’m amazed at – when you look back at the things you’ve done – I’m amazed that all that has happened to me. For a while, I got frustrated and irritable because I found, in the last couple of years, I had to give up going on trips. But I’ve been on lots of trips, so everything comes to an end, so get used to it.

Why did they have to come to an end?

Because my back. The trip that convinced me was we were only going up the Spit Hill and I thought ‘Oh my back hurts’, and we’d only been on the road, what, half an hour. I thought ‘I think this might be getting to the end’, and I get very, very tired. You don’t want to become a hazard for somebody else.

And how long ago was that, Dorothy, that the trips?

Oh three years ago.

So what helped you come to terms with the fact that trips really couldn’t be a part of life anymore?

You’ve just got to face up to things you can’t change. There’s no use whinging about it.

Yes, this year I’ve decided that I can no longer fly to Albury or fly to Canberra and do road trips, because I just run out of steam. I’m just too tired. I flew to Albury a little while ago, and we drove from Albury to Cowra to see a great grandchild, and then from Cowra to Bathurst, and I was just so wrecked we just came home. Because we were going to stay in Bathurst for an extra day and [my daughter] said “Mum you look wrecked – would you like to go home?” and I said “Yes please”. I don’t understand that, I just assume that it’s ageing.

I go travelling with my daughter a lot. We go to pictures or functions, all sorts of things, with my other kids. I went to Bali with my eldest son last year. Then later on in the year I went to Bali again with my youngest son, and I said to him “you should take your friend: I can’t cope with all the places you want to go” because he wanted to go on a surfing expedition. “Oh no,” he said, “Mum, no you can go, no I want you to come”. So we had a great time. I went on a motorbike first time ever in my life. Then again, I’ve learned another – I’ve been doing some series of seminars: one of them was enlightened warrior camp. All my life I’ve said “I can’t climb”. I never climb Eiffel Tower or Ayres Rock or anything like that. They weren’t for me, I just had this fear you know. And then in this camp I climbed a mountain, I climbed a tree, I walked on a line – with help – but I did them all first when I was just before 70. And then last year going on motorbike: always scared of motorbike, I wouldn’t even go near them, but everywhere we went we went on a motorbike, and I loved it [laughs]. So I found from these experiences that we put too much limitation on ourselves, and then our life becomes boring, tiresome. You just go for it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do bungee jumping [laughs], because I don’t think that’s good for your body. But I’ve tried many things that I never did when I was young, when I’ve been 70. So I hope the young people will learn and don’t put all these stupid limitations on themselves.
Last year I did about five or six [trips], within Australia and overseas travel. So to me, you’re not old. You’re not old until you feel old, or you tell yourself you are. Fortunately in Australia you can be who you want to be, you can fight the elements and just do what you want to do and not let these little – how can I put it? – barriers, real barriers, stop you from what you want to achieve.