Interstate Man of Mystery
This is how it goes:
Me: I’ve never been overseas.
Person: What!?
Me: Yep.
Person: But you’re from Tasmania.
(Person laughs for eighteen minutes.)
Me: True. I guess I have then.
(Person continues anecdote of how they caught a train from Paris to Berlin, and then ended up in Amsterdam and fell in love with a New York girl, who they lived with for a while, before moving to London via Tokyo.)
Me: I’ve been to Broome.
You’ve heard of The 40-Year-old Virgin; now meet The Twenty-Nine-Year-Old Travelling Virgin – oft attracting the same kind of playful derision from friends and colleagues that Steve Carell’s character does. I am as sheepish, yet matter of fact about it, as he is. It just never happened, and now I’ve left it for so long that it’s become too big a deal. I’ve missed the Contiki boat. Just as Steve’s friends assure him that it’s not too late and start an intervention, I want someone to get me drunk and set me up with Thailand.
Travelling’s that thing that everyone does where they escape their life to feel the most like themselves and become more interesting through stories you can’t relate to. Travelling is an opportunity for people to come back to Australia and strut around like explorers, with their Spanish fighting sticks, London hangovers, Vietnamese snake wines and American gusto. They can waltz around their home ‘village’, safe in the knowledge they’ve seen outside the square and have an unbreakable bond with the rest of the world that has been forged through a quickie in a Bolivian backpackers.
I was raised with the philosophy of ‘We have no money,’ and jetsetted around Tasmania in a caravan. I loved every minute of it, but didn’t think outside the triangle. As an adult, all my money was spent keeping my artistic ball in the air. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was work to be done here before running off to Scotland to crack a fat over architecture. As a comedian, I was blasted with orders to go to Edinburgh Fringe and do a show, only to watch colleagues return screaming about what a great experience it was, only to break down a month later with $10,000 credit card debts. C’mon, I can lose that kind of money here.
When you’ve never been outside Australia, you spend most of your energy convincing yourself that you haven’t made a huge mistake with your life. Here goes – part of me wants to wait until I pass the black belt of my personality so I can get better value for money, like rereading your favourite book and getting more out of it. I get my adrenaline rush from performing; I’m proving myself all the time. Touring Australia gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction, and perspective, cruising through airports with loner superiority; I meet plenty of foreigners after gigs – at least one!
Me: New York seems amazing. From what I could tell from the Ninja Turtles movie, it has a lot of interesting characters.
Person: Where will you travel to first?
Me: (Thinks for eighteen minutes.) Uh, New...
Person: York?
Me: Zealand.
I think I’m going to break the ice with India. The sitar is my favourite instrument; Indian is my favourite food; I think Indian women are the most beautiful; and, apparently, Bombay is stuck in the seventies and you can get cheap custom-made flares. I figure that if I’ve left it this late, the only way in is the deep end. A massive dose of food poisoning, brutal scenes of poverty and a complete culture shock will shake me loose of this tiring precociousness. I can finally join the ranks of real adult mavericks who have taken the plunge, delving through the world’s chapters with glee – from the Apple Isle to the Big Apple!
Person: Where should I go in Tasmania?
Me: The airport.
This piece originally appeared in ‘Frankie’ magazine.
Justin Heazlewood performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and will be touring nationally August 12 - September 5 in support of his album ‘Songs From the 86 Tram’. Click here for a full list of dates and booking info.
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