No machines guns, please. I'm an Australian bear.

Late Sunday afternoon

Canberra

I am seriously tired and my house looks like it’s been descended upon by rabid animal liberationists. The days of being able to put my life into a single backpack are long gone, it seems, as are the intervening years of being able to put it into the back of my car. Suddenly I have fridges, washing machines, coffee tables, TV units, bookcases, beds, bookcases, oh and then there’s my bookcases. Suddenly I’m doing inventories and insurance declarations and for the first time considering if I really need that sheet music from highschool band or the birthday card from that person I don’t even remember.

Yes, I’m a hoarder: guilty as charged. I’m thinking I might even throw out that love letter from my Year 9 boyfriend with all the spelling and grammar corrected and a mark of 2 out of 10 (I chickened out of sending it…I’m too nice). Oh, and I do still have that letter (also from Year 9, I think) with the declaration of undying love and the letters N O and T in various words underlined throughout (you know who you are). I laughed too much reading it this afternoon to chuck it.

So as my necessary trip down memory lane continues, I’m putting in one of my favourite photos of LRD. This was taken in Prizren in 2001 right down the road from a KFOR-protected mosque. Considering how tense everything was in Kosova at the time, you can imagine what a fruitcake I looked taking it. But a tradition is a tradition goddamn it.

Walking in Memphis or Conversations with Dead People

Otherwise known as a walk through the past.

My Mum is a scrapbooking fiend and she's been at me for years to give her my photos of bumming around Europe so she can scrapbook them. So I've been meaning to scan all my photos into my computer and send the hard copies to her.

My move to the tropical north has spurred me on (anything I don't get rid of, I have to move after all) and I've been sitting for two nights in a row scanning in old photos.

It's a strange feeling being here, in this little unit in Canberra, watching places long visited and people long gone dance across my screen. The music playing on my laptop makes it feel as though I'm watching my life with its natural soundtrack: I have it on shuffle so don't know what I'm getting until it's there.

Paris is 'Lemon Sunrise' by Powderfinger and 'Take Your Mama Out' by the Scissor Sisters, Canning Town is 'Walking in Memphis' by Marc Cohn, Hong Kong is 'Bad Day' by Daniel Powter and Ireland is 'Yesterday's Gone' by Bernard Fanning . And life? It's Stringmansassy, 'Beautiful Day'.

So, all this melancholy happiness has inspired me to start the Blog I've been meaning to for the last 5 years. Little Red Dave is my faithful travelling companion and though he's lazy, noisy, greedy, drinks too much and, to be perfectly frank, is kind of sleazy, he's been with me through thick and thin. Mostly because I keep putting him in my pack and forgetting he's there.

So hello to my old friends all over the world, smiling at me from my computer. A Guinness raised to you and to the memory of those who are no longer with us.