Australia with Love

It has been a very long time since Pam Forbes and I have been able to sit down, just the two of us, and have a chat. It had been over 40 years!

Pam and her husband, Gus, came from Victoria, BC to Tacoma for a wedding on September 14th. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to return her Australian photo albums which she'd loaned me over a year ago. Scott and I had dinner with Pam and Gus last year, but this was a special visit. Scott wasn't up for the trip to Tacoma and Gus was kind enough just to let us reminisce by ourselves. I realized after the fact that this really was the first time we'd been alone in over 40 years.

Forty-four years ago, Pam and I sailed away from the pier in Vancouver, BC (on a boat, not the plane in the picture) for adventures on the high seas, Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand ending our voyage in Sydney, Australia. We both had work visas and planned to stay as long as our heads, hearts and bank accounts could afford. We also talked about continuing our trek around the world, but our hearts won out and we both came home with Australian blokes (not the two in the picture; that's another story). Pam married hers, but I shied away and went on to other adventures of the heart.

Last Saturday we poured over the photo albums together laughing and talking about the crazy things we did alone and with the other young, single women who populated our flat (apartment) at one time or another. Pam reminded me looking at one photo that both Sharon and Charlotte were wearing my clothes.We were all about the same size: tall, slender and definitely into clothes swapping. (There were also a couple exchanges of men friends, as I recall).

One of these days, I will get around to writing my Australian memoir, From Australia with Love. Pam's photos, of which I made some copies, will definitely help to dust the cobwebs from my memories and bring back those wild and crazy days from so long ago. No, we didn't have much luck lifting the rock we found on our bus-camping tour of the continent, but we tried. We were game for just about anything. :-)