Long Dark Night of the Soul Part 5
Honalulu. My one week layover on my way to Australia. I was on my own. Making it up as I went along. Had some beach time, travelled around the island to the North Shore, walked around the volcano, did touristy things for the week. I kept myself busy. There was no time to dwell on the past.
At the end of the week I went to Sydney Australia. Getting off the plane I had no idea where I was going to go. I expected to go to the local YHA. An Alaskan was on the same flight, John, and started talking with me while we were collecting our luggage. We ended up going to the Coogie Beach Hostel.
While there we met a couple of Swedish backpackers who had just bought a vehicle. They were going to travel down south. We all left in short order.
It took us 3 weeks to get to Melbourne. We took the scenic route. New places every day. Meeting new people along the way. Most backpackers I met on my trip didn’t like Canberra. Because of the people we met and stayed with it is one of my favourite memories.
Along the way we lost count of how long we'd been travelling. We did the tally and it had only been 2.5 weeks! It felt like more than a month with everything being new each day.
After Melbourne I made my way back to Sydney and stayed in the Glebe YHA. I had funds for another couple of months before I'd have to consider returning. I met a few other people and we spent the Christmas holidays in the Blue Mountains.
Early in the new year I found a job with the Electricity Commission of NSW. On the harbour, where Star City Casino is now. I was a lab tech working with an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer. There were two such machines in Australia. The other was being used for research at the university of Melbourne.
It was highly sensitive, measuring up to parts per trillion. My job involved testing water samples and calibration. I wrote a work report on it and got credit for it when I returned to Canada.
This paid the bills. I budgeted tightly, living off instant noodles, baked beans on toast and Milo. I joined a gym and became regimented in my workouts, dropping 20kgs of beer fat and getting super fit. And I took excursions, going to Brisbane, Cairns, bungee jumping, rap jumping, scuba diving off the Barrier Reef, hiking and camping, going to Thredbo on the first weekend of winter for skiing only to have it rain all weekend...
I learned more in the first few weeks of travel than I had in the 3 terms of university under my belt, and I only learned more from there. But most importantly my efforts took me beyond the depression. Saying I healed from it or got over it would not be accurate. I pushed it out of my life.
That isn’t accurate either. Direct action against the depression had no effect. The pushing was indirect, filling my life so full of other stuff that there was no room for it anymore.
Heaps more happened on the trip. If I ever meet you I'll be sure to bore you with the details.
I returned to Canada in August of 1991, a month before returning to university for my 2b term. I kept up with the workouts, aiming towards body building. Tried for years to pack on mass with little success. But it was a fantastic discipline and kept me in tip top shape.
My new class had had as much difficulty with 2a Phys Chem as my old class had. The professor made the class write the exam again. I pulled out my two year old notes and got stuck into it.
I didn't do great on it, but it didn't matter. I understood the work. The questions made sense. I enjoyed working on the problems.
I had my intellect back.
My marks jumped up by 20%. I graduated 3rd in my half of the class.
The worst time of my life was over.