To Feel Alive

While on holiday at Melbourne we joined an overnight tour to the Grampians. This is the first tour guide in all my travels to different places in the world who is so animated, so excited and enthusiastic about animals, nature and the places he is bringing us. In every place of interest he captured the scenery with his professional camera as if it was his first visit. He showed us pictures of the same place in different seasons or time of the day. He knows the names and the different temperaments of the kangaroos hanging around the motel where we stayed and has many close ups of them. He pointed Gulars (Australian bird) perched on trees and eagles sailing the skies.

At 2 pm on the second day having covered the itineraries, instead of quickly sending us back on a 3 hour drive back to Melbourne he was super delighted when the bus of 9 youths and 2 baby boomers (my husband and me) were keen to experience what he termed as a surprise for us. He thus detoured and lo and behold after a one hour drive there was before us a lake all pink in colour. The lake is pink in colour due to the algae growing in the salt crust at the bottom of the lake. The young girls in our tour were wild with delight taking photos of themselves jumping barefooted in the waters. What a sight! After the detour I was actually hoping we would head back to the city, but the high spirits of  our young companions reinforced our guide's enthusiasm who brought us on a one hour drive back to a town where we visited earlier in the morning just to see a creek which he thought would be overflowing at that time of the day. Though he said it would be a 20 minute 'walk' up the terrain I knew enough that it would easily be more than an hour  to and fro. I joined them for a short distance 'climbing' the stones and small rocks and knew I would never be able to reach the top and back before the sun went down. So my husband and I decided to descend and wait for them at the foot. My son who went with the rest described how animated the guide was when they were at the top jumping from rock to rock across the creek to capture pictures of the scene as well as the youths.

Ok if in your mind this guide is a youth or someone in his late thirties or early forties, you are quite wrong. I think he is easily in his mid fifties. He has an engineering qualification in Australia and was an engineer until he changed career to be a tour guide cum photographer because the job gives him unlimited 'adrenaline' meeting people and catching changing scenes of nature. He again reinforces my belief that one must find a vocation that makes one feel 'alive' to really experience the joy of living.

Co-incidentally the other people who inspired me likewise are also Australians, the couple whom I stayed with in Perth as a Airbnb guest. The focus and the energy they poured into tendering their plot of land filled with fruit trees, and various types of plants showed me that to live with content one must be totally engaged in something one loves doing. For these Australians embracing nature keeps them 'alive'.

Though I have not found the activity that engages me totally, these 3 people have spurred me on my search to feel alive.

The Pink Lake

Him talking to the parrot

His photo of Joey in mummy's pouch