Up And Down And Back Again...

TOWNSVILLE, the town I was born in, is about 1335km away by road from Brisbane. It is 2214km to Mildura in north-western Victoria.
Impressive figures, and only noteworthy because Brisbane and Mildura are where Mum and Dad's families resided at the time. Certainly a long way to travel just to catch up with my parent's nearest and dearest.
Given that cheap flights at the start of the 1980's generally cost an arm and a leg (and possibly an ear as well), it's not surprising that we did a lot of travelling by car, especially as the family increased in size and Dad's job took us along the Eastern Seaboard.
Obviously you can't do these trips without some form of entertainment - screaming children not really classifying as entertainment unless you're into getting your hand caught in a chainsaw on a regular basis. Sometimes we'd (generally Matt and I) would sing Australian folk songs, but for the other 15-odd hours of the trip we got the best of Mum and Dad's cassette tapes. Aaron, Phil, Leith - you now know who to blame for the Elton John/Paul Simon/Jimmy Barnes et al that I'm so strangely fond of blasting your eardrums with.
To me there was something so compelling about travelling through the countryside with the music to keep us company. When old favourites came on (Hotel California for Mum, Crocodile Rock for Dad), we'd crank the music up and sing along before going back to the bickering that accompanies all large families on long road trips.
This in turn set me up for my current job as a tour guide, where large stretches of the journey are watching the world go by while listening to music.
Mention you're a tour guide and people will generally describe it as a dream job. To be fair it does have its perks - you meet a truckload of people, get to travel an area extensively (in my case Europe), and generally help people enjoy the trip of a lifetime.
There are downsides to everything though.
Talk to Dad and I'm sure he'll tell you he doesn't regret his time in the military: yet that same time also took him away from his young family for long periods of time, leaving Mum to deal with four constantly bickering sons.
Likewise, as Mum is very fond of telling people (while I'm standing next to her no less), if she had her time over again she wouldn't have married and had children so young (19 and 20 respectively). Even though I'm the child she had at 20 I can see her point: getting settled down so young meant there was very little time for exploring the world.
For me, while many think tour guides (especially male ones) are Hugh Hefner wannabes on wheeled Playboy mansions, if you're not close to your driver you really can be on your own when the faecal matter hits the revolving blades. I was lucky that I had a few friends among the passengers I was ferrying around when that happened to me last year.
It's even impacted me in the time I've been in London. I can think of at least three times in the last 12 months where I've been questioned (interrogated would be closer to it) by females about my plans post-touring. Tell them you're not sure (visa issues and the need to pay at least a fleeting visit back home) and that's pretty much where the conversation stops. Which, again, is fair enough - who wants a six-month long-distance relationship with someone who's in a job that's traditionally about as compatible with monogamy as George W. Bush at an al-Qaeda meeting?
But them's the breaks. On balance, I'm more than happy doing what I do during the northern summer. Just don't be surprised though when I give a little wry grin when someone tells me I have the best job in the world.