How I Met My Husband by Christina Swift

At 29 years old I was leading a full and extremely enjoyable life, managing social hospitality opportunities for a major financial institution and regularly attending high profile events in England’s vibrant capital city. Despite this, I decided that my time working in the financial throng of the City of London had run its course, and I resolved to realise my childhood dream of travelling and working abroad. So, I rented out my house, found the best cat-sitter available, packed my bags and bought a ticketpermitting me to circumnavigate the globe. This rash decision was to influence my future in more ways than I could have dreamed possible, and had I been aware that I would never return to my life in London, I wonder whether I would have had the courage to embark on this adventure. However, in my naivety and blissful ignorance, I boarded a plane at Heathrow airport and arrived 17 hours later in Kathmandu, armed with a rucksack, water bottle, penknife, an openmind and without a friend within 8,000 km.

After 6 months of enjoying the never-ending hospitality of the Asian people, and pushing myself to my physical limits in the unforgiving but stunningly beautiful natural environment of the mystical east, I felt far from ready to leave Asia. However, my schedule had been set in stone upon the purchase of my airline ticket, so I reluctantly boarded a plane for Perth, Australia, and several hours later landed there with a bump. I felt an unsolicited agitation at being propelled back into ‘Western’ society, and far from providing the predictable blanket of comfort and safety, the advantage of easily understanding the meaningless chatter of strangers simply added to my sense of frustration and loneliness. Perhaps these unfamiliar feelings contributed to my willingness to converse with characters with whom I would not usually have socialised; perhaps this was ultimately necessary in order for me to meet my future husband. Several hours after landing, consumed by the trance-like exhaustion induced by extensive travel and lack of sleep, I found myself in the back yard of a hostel in Northbridge, Perth, participating in friendly banter with other travellers whilst absentmindedly sipping cheap wine from a plastic beaker.

Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 km away in Sydney, a young Dutch man, with very little money, was considering his rather limited options, having just learnt that the company for whom he had been working had a less than legal approach to dealing with customer complaints, and that his ‘bosses’ had suddenly found it necessary to leave the country without providing him with severance pay or a forwarding address! Feeling rather alone and vulnerable, he was pondering the wisdom of his snap decision to accept the offer of sharing a five-day car trip across the Nullarbor Plain, the great expanse of sand which separates Sydney and Perth, with an unknown, but friendly couple. The entire story of their journey was related to me the following evening, whilst sitting in the yard of that same hostel, drinking yet another plastic beaker of cheap wine.

Dagan, the young Dutch man, explained that he had embarked on the journey with his new friends with excitement and trepidation. During the initial two days of the trip, Dagan, Jane and Dave had had fun together, exchanging travel stories whilst drifting across the desert, passing through the occasional town. Dave did most of the driving and when the towns transformed into the expanse of the desert, they pulled the car over and slept for the evening; Dagan in his tent, whilst the couple slept in the car. The next morning the fun vibes experienced during the previous

evening had dissolved in the night air, making way for an altogether different, tense atmosphere. Dagan convinced himself that he had imagined the change in mood when, after Jane and Dave had taken a walk together, the light-hearted ambience returned. The journey of the third day began with the usual banter between the three travellers, but after a few hours, Dagan sensed an uneasy atmosphere once again. The couple insisted on stopping at a local chemist and after much secretive shuffling of papers and whispering, Jane entered the pharmacy and reappeared with a small white bag. The mood in the car lightened after Jane and Dave had taken another walk together; and Dagan made a mental note to keep his money and passport about his person at all times! This pattern repeated itself several times over the next few days; however, having very little money and not wanting to be stranded in the desert, Dagan decided to remain detached, but friendly towards his travelling companions, believing that whilst they clearly had their own problems, they would not project them onto him.

Five days after leaving Perth, the trio, two of whom decided to immediately go for a short walk, arrived at the hostel in Northbridge, Perth. The third member of the trio, Dagan joined a group of young travellers in the yard who were chatting, laughing and sipping cheap wine, whilst sitting at a long table! It could have been his friendly disposition, or possibly the unfamiliar mix of a slightly rebellious appearance and gentle nature which encouraged me to snap out of my sombre, selfpitying state and I spent the rest of the evening exchanging small talk with Dagan, and ultimately excitedly agreed to join the company on a trip to the beach the next morning.

The next day, we wound our way through the deserted early morning streets of Western Australia’s capital city, from where we boarded the metro to Cottesloe Beach. I spent the journey chatting to Jane, and trying to justify my instinctive apprehensiveness towards her and Dave to myself. Although she was nothing but friendly towards me, I could not suppress my instinct to mistrust, even pity, but not dislike her; feelings which contradicted the, as yet unjustified, overwhelming animosity which I felt towards Dave. Dave scared me, and I tactfully managed to completely avoid any form of contact with him during the journey. We spent a balmy afternoon lazing on the beach, eating chips and swimming in the crystal waters. I was attracted towards the strangely quiet, but friendly Dutch man, whilst becoming increasingly suspicious of the company he kept. Until this point in my travels I had avoided people who evoked such negative feelings in me, and rather confusingly I was now consciously spending time with them. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. That evening at the hostel Dagan cooked me a romantic dinner of vegetable soup and we were consuming it from plastic beakers, in our now regular spot on the elongated table in the hostel yard with the other travellers, when people began commenting on the sound of police sirens and shouts which had begun to echo through the otherwise silent neighbourhood. The sounds reached a violent crescendo before everything suddenly fell completely silent. The table’s occupants looked from one to the other for a few seconds before beginning to fire questions at a shell-shocked Dagan as to the possible cause of the disturbance. No explanation was forthcoming, and after a relatively short time, we all assumed that the pair would creep back to their beds in the early hours of the morning, and surmised that the disturbance had undoubtably been caused, or at least fuelled, by the extreme amounts of alcohol consumed by Dave and Jane, over the course of the afternoon. We did not let it disrupt our enjoyment any longer, and the subtle party atmosphere crept back into the yard.

The following morning, we were all awake early and it was obvious that Dave and Jane had not returned as expected. Along with wilder theories suggesting possible reasons for their absence, there was speculation as to whether they had been arrested for disturbing the peace or were simply too embarrassed to return. Dagan was distressed to discover the truth when he attempted to retrieve his belongings from their car and discovered it missing. He spent the afternoon faithfully explaining to anyone who would listen that his backpack would undoubtably be returned later that day. However, despite vain hopes that it would be anonymously thrown into the yard, Dagan never saw it again. His instinct to keep his all-important passport, money and the diving mask which he had borrowed from his sister with him had proved reliable; unfortunately, his faith that his travelling companions would not be capable of robbing him proved to be less so.

Having lost almost all of his possessions, Dagan proudly refused my offer of help, and insisted on re-equipping himself with essential items at a local second-hand shop. Consequently, one week later, an English lady with a rucksack and a long-haired Dutch man, carrying a suitcase of second-hand clothes, disembarked a bus in an Australian redneck town, known for its hospitality towards seasonal fruit-picking workers. And this is how I met my husband!