Chapter 38 - A New Life in the Antipodes
Just over a month later Cathy found herself in Melbourne.
Despite all the income from her former work, the furthest she had ever travelled before was to Paris, to which twice she had made day trips on the Eurostar from London. Her apartment in London had been her refuge from the world outside. She had chosen to stay there at all times except when she was visiting her family in Scotland. The only exception had been these two trips to collect items of jewellery.
This arose because she was given an item from a master goldsmith in Paris by an appreciative lover. The maker’s name was inscribed on the box. She had liked the style so much that she rang this man and ordered further pieces on each of her next two birthdays. Each time she had gone and collected them in person.
These trips also allowed her to have discreet meetings with her Swiss based financial advisor who was pleased to meet her there as part of the service of managing the funds she regularly deposited.
Despite numerous requests to accompany her clients on trips to the continent and beyond, she consistently said no to their invitations, they could visit her or she would go out and about with them in London, but that was the limit of her accommodation to them.
So, until this trip, she had never even been on an aeroplane, let alone gone over an ocean like the one which she could see below her.
She had decided to fly from Heathrow via the Middle East for no particular reason other than it was the most direct route. She chose Melbourne as her destination. It was a similar sized city to Sydney but with a lower international profile. She had a vague dread of meeting a wealthy client in an airport concourse where her avoidance options were limited.
She enjoyed the flight, being left alone in a crowd, with no unsought attention. She ignored the couple beside her. Instead she gazed out over the endless expanse of water as countless miles of oceans passed beneath her, revelling in the sense that, at trip’s end, she really would be on the other side of the world.
In Melbourne she stayed for two weeks in a comfortable self-contained apartment in the city. She liked this city; it had a comfortable old world feel, not dissimilar to London. However, on her fifth day, she glimpsed a former client walking down the other side of the Bourke Street Mall. That decided her, it was too well patronised by the jet set for her taste. She had her hair cut short with a red rinse, to reduce the chance of being seen by this man or others she had known from her former life.
That night she caught the train to Adelaide, deciding it was a far less visited city by the “Glitterati”. This time, rather than staying in a swanky apartment, she became one of the backpacker crowd, staying in a hostel in downtown Adelaide.
She found it liberating to be surrounded by a crowd of travellers from all corners of the world. So many pasts and futures intermingled, she was just plain Cathy, now a reddish brunette with a short bob hairstyle, almost boyish looking, though her body belied any idea she was asexual.
A few hopeful men from the hostel tried it on. She was so practised at deflecting unwanted attention that she barely noticed.
She had no clear idea where she would go or what she would do now.
Two weeks passed as she drifted in and out of this place, walking around the city streets, shopping, catching the beach tram to Glenelg, having drinks and exchanging tales with other backpackers.
After a week she sent a postcard to her parents, feeling she should let them know where she was in order to spare them worry. She told them the address here to allow them to write, saying she expected to stay for a least another month before she moved on and, when she did, she would give them her new address.
She had never indicated she was not planning to return home, there would be time enough to let them know this when she had worked out a plan for her future.
She liked Adelaide. It was a comfortable city, not too big, with nice Victorian era houses, similar to those found in many parts of London. It made her feel safe and at home. She thought that, perhaps, in a month or two, she would look for a place of her own here. A two bedroom cottage in one of the suburbs near the city was something she could afford with her savings. Then she would find a job where she used her brain and organisational skills to support herself, but a job that did not include supplying favours in return for advancement.
She enjoyed listening to the tales of travel told by other backpackers, but found little desire to go off exploring the cities and other famous places around the coasts of Australia. The one place she wanted to visit was the inland. It seemed to be a vast area, loosely termed “The Outback”.
Her plan was not well formed. She remembered, from long ago, reading a book by a man called Neville Shute called, “A Town Like Alice”. From this memory came a vague desire to see this place. She knew it was in the middle of Australia. The train line north from Adelaide to Darwin ran through it. So she could go that way. It was something to do before she found her own place, a job and settled into life in Adelaide.
Lost Girl Diary Page 41