Eco Lesbo Vego

Spotlight: Local Travel

January 26, 2009 at 12:02 am 5 comments

I like going overseas. I’m not one of those folks who are all like: ‘Why would I want to go to another country, when there’s so many beautiful places right here?’ Don’t get me wrong – there are loads of beautiful places in Australia, many of them less than a day’s drive from me, but I can’t handle the whole ethno-centrism of never wanting to travel outside your own nation. I want to go to other countries. Australia is home, and I always want to come back here – but beautiful or no, if I don’t go overseas sometime, I’ll feel stifled and limited. I won’t get to experience the different cultures, people, food, architecture, religions and landscapes you can find in the world.

Travelling overseas, at least from our island nation, means flying or taking a mega-boat. I’m more apt to go with flying (have done, in the past), but we all know the impact air travel has on the environment. Just one measly flight will mess up your low impact lifestyle. That doesn’t meant I’ll never go overseas again. It does mean that overseas travel won’t occur until I’m wealthy enough to offset my carbon emissions. I know offsetting isn’t a sustainable option that can absolve all eco-sins. For that reason, I’ll also wait until I can take a good long time off work so I can go to lots of places at once. I’ll fly to either Asia, Europe or South America and then use land or sea transportation to get me around the continent. I wonder if I’ll feel a bit freaked out in the Chunnel, under all that water?

What to do in the meantime though? Clearly, I can’t work without a holiday for years at a time, until I’m ready to go overseas. I’m sorry, but I would go insane, and possibly end up going on a murderous rampage. Ok, not a murderous rampage really. But crazy, for sure. The work I do? Definitely.

So I go travelling around the countryside, which, as mentioned in the first paragraph, is indeed beautiful over here. I can’t recommend local travel enough, not as a replacement or even a supplement to international travel, but a valuable addition to your experience of life. Didn’t that sound sappy? But it’s true.

You can travel to local locales in a variety of ways. By car – the ubiquitous road trip – is the most common. Car travel has the advantage of allowing you to stop when and wherever you like. You can take a side road if it takes your fancy. Without it, you wouldn’t get the chance to see crazy things, like the Teepee Motel we Elves saw in Gulf Coast Texas, when we lived in the area. You can also see beautiful places, like Byron Bay.

Byron Bay lighthouse

Admittedly, Byron is also accessible by train and bus, so car travel is back to seeing crazy stuff. Like Mooball. But other places without public transport access need a car.

Mooball Madness

Another more eco-friendly method is public transport. Yes, this could be a Greyhound bus. I’ve never been on one, but I think there are more fun types of mass transit, like long-distance travel trains that go all over Australia. Those are pretty awesome. I took a tilt train to Bundaberg a lot of years ago and it was a pretty pleasant way to travel. I imagine the sleeper trains like The Ghan are even more comfy. You could get standard public transport though, it doesn’t have to be all special and holiday-esque. You can catch a regular train to the Straddie ferry, for example.

You could sail or take a ferry to local islands. We have a trip to North Stradbroke Island booked for later this year, and we went sailing to Peel Island last year. I learned that I don’t do so well with sailing. Motion sickness. My friend Jho didn’t pass me the bucket fast enough. Yeah, not fun.

This is not me. I am not so relaxed when sailing.

Don’t feel restricted to holidays and long weekends, either. With local travel, you can go any spare moment you have. Last summer, we went to Cedar Creek Falls at Mt Tamborine on a hot day. The water was glorious. I did fall rather ingloriously at the top of the lower fall when the strap on my overstuffed bag broke. I learned not to take so much stuff when rock-climbing. Jho had been there before and could have told me that before we started… I’m sensing a theme here. Don’t get her talking about the incident with the olive. Really. Don’t.

Cedar Creek Falls at Mt Tamborine

The next place we want to go is Tallebudgera beach – there’s an off-leash dog exercise area there, so Loodle will love it, and the salt water is good for him. Where after that, and Straddie? I don’t know. The Daintree appeals, but that’s quite a trip. I do know, though, that thanks to local travel, I get to relax and see new things and new places and spend time with my family. I like that.

One of the 'new things' I saw at Cedar Creek Falls

Where do you go, if you’re travelling locally? How do you get there?

Entry filed under: Spotlight. Tags: low impact, pollution, public transport, transport.