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G'day
and welcome! Here's a little bit about me...
My name is Stephen Savage. I was born in a small farming
town in Queensland, Australia, the youngest of five boys. Yes, I know
"my poor mother!!". My father worked on a local fruit orchard,
and my mother ran the post office, which was in a room that my Dad built
onto the front of our house. I lived there until I finished secondary
school, then moved to the city to attend university. I was gonna be a
school teacher, or so I thought.
During the school
holidays, I would return to my home town for some good food (thanks Mum!)
and to work on the orchards. Often I would be working alongside visiting
backpackers, and the wild tales they told of their adventures in far off
places would distract me from my work. That is when the seed was planted!
More and more, I started to wonder about what was outside my little world.
So, I worked hard, and saved every penny, until in February 1992, I set
off with an old schoolmate of mine, Cosmo, to see what was out there.
We didn't always travel together, but managed to keep track of what country
the other was in, and often bumped into each other by chance. Like the
day I was walking past a pub in London, and Cosmo stuck his head out the
window. He was due to fly to South America the next day, and I was leaving
for the Middle East, so we swapped a few travel stories over a quiet pint
or two, and parted ways again. We both spent much
of the 1990's dragging our backpacks from country to country, stopping
to work wherever the opportunity presented itself.
Now in 2005 I'm currently footing it round the globe again. If you want to see what I'm doing, click on the 'this project' link at the top of this page, or to see my latest adventures, go to the 'journal' page. To read about my past travels, and see hundreds of photographs, scroll down and click on whichever picture looks interesting.
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Including my home country, Australia, my travels have taken me across five continents.I picked apples and stonefruit in New Zealand. In Israel, I picked avocados, and also worked as a DJ's assistant. In England and America, I earnt my keep by painting houses. I lived and worked in a hotel in London for several months, and picked up whatever odd jobs I could along the way; labouring, gardening, tour driving, even holding down a job as a cook in Athens...for two days!
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I climbed mountains and hiked trails, camping in some of the most beautiful places on earth. I hitchhiked thousands of miles, in cars, on the back of trucks, even on the back of motorbikes; often sleeping by the side of the road wherever my last lift took me. I hitched rides around the north of England and Ireland during a blizzard, across more than a dozen states in America, and into the Sahara Desert.
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I sailed on the Nile, floated on the Dead Sea, was thrown overboard on the Red Sea, kayaked under a waterfall in New Zealand, canoed through swamps in Louisianna, snorkled in the Florida Keys, went yachting off Santa Monica, and skinnydipped on half a dozen Greek Islands. I bungy jumped, jetboated and abseiled, and gave myself an embarrassing injury attempting to waterski. I drove across Paris without a map, clung to the back of a bus through the Phillipines, my train partly derailed in Africa, I tore myself to shreds in a motorcycle accident in Thailand, and talked my way out of several speeding tickets in the United States.
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I was thrown out of bars in Mexico, chased down by five patrol cars in South Carolina, followed the Whisky Trail through Scotland, and got stranded in Manilla with no money. I narrowly missed danger on a constant basis; I left Manchester for Israel just before the IRA bomb tore the downtown area of that city apart. I left Israel just before the suicide bombings resumed. I was on my way south through California when the La riots began, and Hurricane Andrew ripped through Florida just as I was heading there from New Orleans. I was standing on the rim of a volcano in Indonesia when it bellowed and shook, throwing a huge cloud of smoke into the air. I was the victim of an attempted mugging in Amsterdam, and the survivor of two rather nasty bouts of food poisoning in the States.
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I met wonderful and fascinating and strange and scary people. I made lifelong friends. I fell in love ...more than once, and had my heart broken....also more than once.
What I found was a
world so exciting and challenging, that since I stopped travelling, it
has been hard to settle into what we call a 'normal life'. Apart from
a couple of short holidays in Asia, I have been home in Brisbane now for
almost six years. In that time I have worked in hospitality, retail, construction
and earthmoving; all with the same result- terminal boredom. Last year,
I started my own fruit and vegetable wholesale business. It was an uphill
battle trying to start a business with no capital, but within a few months,
I was supplying fresh produce to over a hundred restaurants. The enterprise
was quite successful, but the workload was enormous. My average working
week was over a hundred hours, and towards the end of the year, I knew
I couldn't keep going. "There must be more to life than this",
I thought. I closed my business at the end of September of last year,
and since then have been working in a timber machining workshop. In my
spare time, I design and build furniture, and in my other spare time,
I go mountain climbing or bushwalking with friends, or lie on the beach! I rent a small flat, where I live with my cat, Dusty. When my nieces gave Dusty to me, they assured me he was a boy. I didn't bother to check, but started to have doubts when Dusty proudly gave birth to four kittens! 'He' has since been fixed, the kittens were given to a local pet shop, and so we are a pair of 'bachelors', living a quiet, simple lifestyle.
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I kept very busy, but still I grew increasingly restless,
and in light of recent world events, I feel it is more important than
ever to get out there, and prove that the good in the world is far greater
than the bad.
I missed the uncertainty
of travelling, the thrill of a new place, and the struggle to get by on
strange territory. I miss the spectacular natural scenery, and the strange
buildings, and the quirky little differences- differences in food, clothing,
customs, and lifestyle. But most of all, I miss the social interaction;
always meeting new and interesting people, and seeing life through their
eyes. I had thought I was getting too old to travel, being thirty-four
and all! But the travel bug is still in me, and in light of recent world events, I believe it is more important than ever, to
put our fears behind us, and embrace the world that is out there. That is why I have started
this project.
I love to
travel, and people love to hear about travel; to learn about the world
outside their own. That is what this venture is based on. With
your support, I plan to update this website regularly as I travel.
I will be keeping a running journal on-line, and will include photos of
the amazing places I travel, and the people I meet along the way. You
can follow my adventures, just as if you were there with me. You can even
help to tell me where to go, and what I do while I'm there. You can submit
your own travel
story, or post your favourite
travel photo, or join in a variety of competitions
and quizzes that I will be running along the way. There will be a
messageboard, where you can post a message,
promote your business, or add a link to your website. If you are interested
to follow this project as it unfolds, you must understand that I do not
have the resources to fund it alone. I will need your help. Although I
will largely be hitchhiking, and living as cheaply as possible, travel
is becoming more expensive, and also the added costs of running and updating
this website, will have to be met somehow. If you can help in even a very
small way, please
click here. A huge thankyou to all those who have helped. I hope you
enjoy following my travels, and perhaps I will meet some of you along
the way!
You can make a contribution on-line via safe and secure pay-pal by clicking the button below, or send your contribution, with your details, to Stephen Savage, PO Box 121, Clayfield, Q 4011, Australia | |
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