…I embarked on a trip that changed the course of my life. The day the physical voyage began was on the evening of the 31st of May, 2012, as I boarded the 20:00 Emirates flight from Sydney. In actual fact, my journey had begun in late August the year before, when, at a loose end on a Sunday morning waiting for a pretty ordinary coffee (in a cafe that is now, incidentally, an Italian restaurant), I picked up a Vogue Australia magazine and by chance flipped straight to an article written by Joanne Fedler, A Room Of One’s Own. A few months earlier I’d moved to Mittagong and had spent a small inheritance from my German grandmother on building my very own “Room” in the form of a jewellery and art studio. The timing and place of the article really hit my woo woo spot.

I jotted down the author’s name and later searched for her online, to discover she was holding a three-day workshop in a week’s time, 5km from my house – across the road from my high school. There was one place left, and I took it.

That was September 2011. Also participating in the workshop was Marika from Women’s Own Adventure travel, and she was armed with a brace of glossy travel brochures titled, Writing and Walking in Tuscany.

I said yes.

*I’d bought the hiking shoes (pictured) from Ebay a couple of years earlier when I had been keen to walk Hadrian’s wall with Dad, which never happened. Instead, they were walked high and low throughout Tuscany, until they fell apart in 2015.

To Italy And Beyond

First published 31 May, 2012

In thirteen hours time, I will be on a plane and bound for Italy. I will be joining a Women’s Own Adventure with Joanne Fedler, writing and walking through Tuscany for ten days before Ryan joins me for a tour around the rest of the country for another fifteen days. The final three days we will slum it at Lake Como. Hard life.

I made the decision to go to Italy after attending a writing retreat held by Joanne Fedler last September. Marika from Women’s Own Adventure also attended and at the end of the retreat she handed out information on the writing and walking tour of Tuscany. I knew immediately, down to my bones, that I would be there.

That was nine months ago. The prospect of Italy has been gestating all that while, and I’m due today. Like any mother, not having met the country before, I have created my own fiction about how it will be, all the while knowing it will be very little like I’ve pictured (aside from the gratuitous Tuscan Castellos of film and photographs and Jamie Oliver cooking shows). The expectations and the actual will eclipse when I land in Italy and begin the journey and, at the end of the holiday, it will be difficult to recall what those imaginings were. If I do remember, they’ll probably seem ridiculous, uncoloured, too bright, narrowed – but they’re as necessary as breath.

About mid-way, I went through the the anxieties of travelling on my own to a country I’ve never been to: how will I cope/I’ll be leaving Ryan for two weeks/ how will I understand the language/what if, what if, what if. I quickly discarded all worries as vain and ridiculous and instead allowed myself to enjoy myriad levels of excitement. Today my stomach is a little knot of squeeeee…I’m going to Italy to write and walk – two of my greatest loves!