Back to Australia with our Harley-Davidson

By Peter & Kay Forwood

Coming from the United States of America

Australia on our Harley, June 2012.

Our life is currently going through a change, as all good things must come to an end. We have been travelling the world on our motorcycle since 1996, a journey that
has now ended, at least for the time being, for who knows what the future will bring.

The motorcycle that has generally kept us mobile overseas for those 15 years is now on a ship back to Australia, arriving mid July, according to the agent.

Why are we stopping travelling? Well like most decisions it is not just one reason but a combination of many things that ultimately led us to this action. We feel we have been marking time with our travels since visiting the last country, New Zealand in 2008. We have not felt as enthusiastic since then to go to the effort of breaking through border paperwork and shipping hassles and whilst we have thoroughly enjoyed our revisits of places and catching up with friends it somehow now feels a bit hedanistic and meaningless to continue indefinitely. There has also been a diminishing window of opportunity to continue travelling as our now elderly mothers are becoming more frail and with two grandchildren on the ground and one due later this year life at home seems more valuable. We are also enjoying our piece of rural Australia about an hour's drive north west of Brisbane. It is 64 hectares of bush, where the challenges we used to enjoy in travelling are now being applied to returning this piece of Australia to its more natural state. The block contains some rainforest gullies, some wet eucalypt and dry eucalypt forests, harbouring koala, wallabies, pythons and goannas, along with less enjoyable biting insects and lethal snakes. We are currently living there under canvas with solar powered electricity. A creekside location, alongside some rainforest while we contemplate future plans for the block that include having minimal impact whilst removing introduced weeds and allowing nature an opportunity to restore itself. We haven't really become greenies but did notice in our 15 years of travel that the world was losing what we think it should value most, nature.

We still plan to be riding the Harley in Australia once it returns, and perhaps we will again take it overseas to new countries, like South Sudan, but not for a couple of years, but again, who knows what the future will bring.

We hope you have enjoyed our years and years of what is now called blogging but in 1996 when we first started it was just a web page. This web page has introduced us to many great people, some of whom opened up their homes and lives to us, many who remain friends hopefully for life. It has been a great ride through the world, a lifetime of memories. Thank you.

Peter and Kay

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