Places That Will Change Your Life

I bought a National Geographic magazine a few months ago titled '100 Places That Will Change Your Life', in an effort to inspire me to travel overseas and see some places that looked interesting before I kicked the bucket list, to kill two/three metaphors with one stone:-)

Oops!
Not the Green Eyes issue, sorry;-)

The Joy of Green Eyes

This one above

I noticed that out of the 100 places listed in the magazine I have only been to two of them, one in my own country (Australia) and one in New Zealand.
And no, the Australian place to see was not the Great Barrier Reef pictured right at the top of this post in my home-state of Queensland, as I have never been up to the top of Queensland to see it.
I don't care if I ever do really.
I can't be bothered finding Nemo, unless I'm sent an Omen from above for me to do so;-)

I saw number 13 in the magazine was Cuba and the other day I saw my American friends the MacGregors had recently traveled to Cuba for a holiday and they wrote about it at their blogsite Synchrosecrets -
A Hemingway Synchro in Cuba

Rob MacGregor and Ernest Hemingway
 in a Cuban bar

I’d much rather read posts like the MacGregor's post about Cuba or read books like Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ where I not only get to travel in my mind, but also time travel back to Hemingway’s Spain.

When I saw the Yellow Cab in the MacGregors post about Cuba I thought about my father who was a Yellow Cab driver in Brisbane for most of his life and passed away on September 13th last year.
While dad saw more of Brisbane and its surrounds probably more than most Brisbanites and would tell me about and give me autographs he got from people such as Spike Milligan,
Diane Cilento and Craig Johnston to name a few, he never saw much of Australia himself.
He went to Sydney once when he was young and that was about it.
I've seen more of Australia than he ever did, but only since last year when I made the decision to do three major road trips.
They were life changers in a big way for me and I want to do more, hopefully this year.
But overseas travel just doesn't put a fire in my belly the same way that seeing my own country does.
I doubt if I'll ever go to Cuba and most of the places in the National Geographic magazine, but I do like reading photo-stories about places overseas that I know in my heart I'll never travel to in this life, because I'm not motivated to travel overseas.
I like how Trish tells of seeing a photograph of her friend Hilary Hemingway, who is the niece of Ernest Hemingway and wife of Jeff Lindsay, on the Cuban bar wall.
Reading the Wikipedia entry about Hilary I saw her father passed away in tragic circumstances on the 13th of September also.

Hilary and her family had visited Cuba 13 years earlier, when she was writing a script with Andy Garcia about Hemingway's last days in Cuba. 
Someone had photographed Hilary and hung the picture on the wall of the bar.
The last movie I saw Andy Garcia in was 'Ghostbusters', where he played the mayor of the city and Dan Aykroyd made a cameo as a Yellow Cab driver.
Ghostbusting/hunting ... or Whatever You Want to CALL It;-)

Well, I've been to Chinatown in Brisbane, but I don't know whether I would ever want to travel to China, even though I really love Chinese culture.
The Year of the Rooster is Here
I thought seeing the northern lights in Norway would be worth seeing, until I found out I can see the same lights in Tasmania, which is in my own country of Australia, so I don't need a passport to get there.

Mt. Wellington/Kunanyi in Hobart,
Tasmania, a place I have been to before

I do remember seeing the film 'Le Weekend' when it came out in Australia and thinking Paris would be nice to visit, but I Googled Jim Broadbent's character Nick Burrows at the time and I got a story of some Australians missing on flight MH370 named Rodney and Mary Burrows.

Mary and Rodney Burrows, who were on MH370

And later on, I would see this story linked below -
Queensland family struck twice by air Tragedy

That really put me off traveling overseas.
And now with all the senseless terrorism going on around the world, traveling overseas to me is like playing Russian roulette ... and I'm not that big of a gambler.

I'm sure traveling does broaden the soul, but living out of a suitcase and having to deal with airports and flying is something I can't be bothered dealing with.

 I guess I'm like a crow, content to explore the areas closest to me and not venture too far away.

I have no longing to climb any Everest just because it's there ... I've climbed Australia's tallest peak already and that was enough to satisfy my "climb every mountain" urge.
It's All Downhill From Here?

I'm no Eddie the Eagle trying to prove a point by putting my life and spine on the line, but I enjoy reading and watching films about real life people who do.

An Eddie the Eagle type joke
in the movie 'Everest' :-)

Maybe one day the overseas travel bug may bite me, but I don't worry too much about having to travel before I kick the bucket, as I'm sure that I'll end up where I need to be in the end.

I guess I just like sleeping in my own bed way too much to travel for too long;-)
Good night ... what it's morning again?!
Doh!

UPDATE: April 10th, 2017

Aerial surveys conducted this year show an
accelerated rate of bleaching in the reef

Great Barrier Reef: Severe coral bleaching hits two-thirds of reef, aerial surveys show

Maybe I should pay a visit to the Great Barrier Reef before it's gone forever?