One of my mother's passports has "British Passport" stamped on the cover, even though she was born in Australia, has no British ancestors and married a New Zealander. Beneath the words "British Passport" is the Coat of Arms of Australia, followed by "Commonwealth of Australia" in a much smaller font.
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It's hard to fathom it was only in 1984, thanks to a growing sense of nationalism and declining importance of the British Empire in Australia, that Australian citizens stopped being called British subjects. In the decades leading up to the 1980s, God Save the Queen was sung at official ceremonies and events. Then a referendum in 1977 ensured Advance Australia Fair would be sung from thereon.
As a child my upbringing included a good deal of British culture. For many years there was just one commercial station and the ABC available in Canberra. Most of the children's shows on the ABC were from the BBC and a good deal of the books I was given to read were by English authors. Stories involving people accessing portals to other worlds intrigued me the most.
From Dr Who navigating time and space via a blue police box known as the TARDIS, to Lewis Carroll's Alice entering a psychedelic-like world after tumbling down a rabbit hole.
Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series followed the adventures of three children who disappeared for hours on end, into a whispering forest and up to the top of a magic tree. A different land awaited the children each time they went up the tree, some good, others a little scary. In any case, the storylines involving the tree's residents - Moon-Face, Silky, The Saucepan Man and Dame Washalot - were just as compelling as what lay at the top of the tree.
The Christmas I was 10, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden introduced me to Mary, a young girl who longed to know what lay on the other side of a gate that had been locked for as long as she had been alive.
Meanwhile the children of CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe encountered mythical creatures, a witch and talking animals, each time they entered the snowy world of Narnia via the back of a wardrobe at an English countryside house.
There was also Mr Benn, a cartoon character who took on different personas on separate adventures, each time he stepped into the changing room of a costume shop. Then at an opportune moment the owner of the costume shop would tap Mr Benn on the shoulder and show him to the back door of the changing room, allowing him to return to his normal everyday life.
My debut novel, The Changing Room, channels the idea of travel being a form of ID tripping. Only reality is a frequent intruder when the novel's main protagonist, Rachel, steps away from the safety of the world she knows, in search of dreams much further afield. Memories of her dad's work as an Egyptologist, among other influences, see her travel from Sydney to London and to the Middle East, where she is suspected of succumbing to a mysterious mental health illness known as Jerusalem syndrome.
Unlike Mr Benn, Rachel doesn't return to the predictability of her former life. Nor does she quite connect with the "costume" she puts on at different way stations on her journey.
This is a story about a young woman trying to come of age against a backdrop of exotic landscapes, people and cultures she struggles to understand. Unresolved grief over the loss of her father when she was young, loneliness and naivety make her vulnerable to exploitation, yet she is often helped by strangers too.
Set in the late 1990s, The Changing Room captures a time just before mobile phones, social media and the internet fundamentally changed the way we communicate. No longer do we need to queue outside a public phone box with a fist full of coins to make a call to a loved one back home. But are our connections with one another anymore fulfilling than they were back then?
The decades leading up to and including the 1990s was a time when many young Australians saw a prolonged trip to the United Kingdom as a rite of passage.
Is a working holiday in the United Kingdom as important to Generation Z as former generations? Or have ties between Australia and the UK slackened to the point where today's young Australians no longer feel the need to travel across the globe to trace their origins? For those mindful of paying off HECS debts and establishing their careers, shorter trips are possibly a wiser choice.
One thing that will never change is the multitude of reasons why people travel.
Are we chasing our dreams or an adventure when we go abroad? Do we just need a holiday or are we running away from ourselves? As my mum once said, you can run away from home, but at some stage you do need to come back.
- Belinda Cranston is a Canberra-based journalist and writer. Her debut novel, The Changing Room, is published by Transit Lounge ($32.99).
