Around the World with Hardy(T)

Australia

My epic journey started in my adopted home town of Melbourne on 21st April 1996. My friends in Melbourne gave me an excellent send off, as the photo shows.
I weren't p*ssed, you know...

By a strange quirk of fate, I ended up on the same flight as my honeymooning friends, Melinda and Peter, which was great, because the three of us got upgraded to Business Class! They hopped off at Hawaii, but I went on to Vancouver, Canada to start my great adventure.

[This is where you go off and read seven months of travelling tales - just follow the links - but you'll be back...]

Interlude...

[...see, I told you you'd be back!]

I eventually flew back into Melbourne from Singapore in the early hours of November 22nd. I spent Christmas and New Year in Australia, travelling up the Victorian and NSW coasts visiting my friends Alison in Sydney and James in Armidale, both of whom I'd met in India. The New Year was spent availing myself of Melinda and Peter's most generous free accommodation offer whilst trying to get a visa and/or a job, before I headed off to New Zealand on January 27th to follow Mike Atherton's Barmy Army!

I arrived back in Sydney on February 27th 1997, just in time for the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and then headed back down to Melbourne, back to the real world of flathunting, jobhunting, blah, blah, blah. The Round the World epic was finally over :-(