Going wild ... Barbara Harrison, 74, is the winner of the 2007 Get Up & Go magazine award. Photo: Bev MalzardKristie Lau meets a woman whose travels read like the Lonely Planet catalogue
SYDNEY (Sun-Herald), November 11, 2007:
At first glance, she's certainly not your average backpacker. No golden tan and grubby flip-flops; in fact, there's not a trace of sun on her milky-white skin and her shoes are new and almost clinically clean. At 74 years of age, Barbara Harrison is just about as far away from the stereotype as you can get.
But her looks are deceiving; she's familiar with even the most extreme of travels.
"Trekking the Inca Trail with an adventure tour was by far the toughest thing I've endured, but I came out of it somewhat better than the young ones did," she says. "From previous travels, I knew what to expect but these kids weren't emotionally ready and the altitude totally drained us all; you can't even think straight by the end of it."
Barbara, recently voted by Get Up & Go magazine as Australia's most adventurous senior for 2007, was 26 when she took her first trip overseas. It was to Europe on a six-week ferry ride and her early globe-trotting memories are from a world very different to today. "You would stay overseas for about 18 months to two years because it wouldn't be worth your while coming back any sooner," she says. "My return trip was during the very early days of overland travel and as you can imagine, a trip from Europe to Australia was pretty rugged compared to what it is now."
Once she had settled in back home, she worked as a nurse in Melbourne for several years but those itchy feet weren't letting up and before long she was off again. Barbara hitchhiked through England and camped through Iceland but these holidays weren't enough for Barbara and after becoming fairly bored with her so-called "conventional" travel, she began to seek out even more adventurous methods.
At 60 years of age, she eventually found Earthwatch, an environmental organisation that sends small groups off on international conservation projects. "A friend of mine was a member and recommended it to me because she knew I liked to get to the more out-of-the-way places," she says. "All these places blew my mind - what I'd seen in documentaries were now right in front of me and I could explore it all myself."
She completed 14 research excursions over 13 years, visiting 12 countries on six continents and remembers her first trip, an architectural expedition through Mexico, like it was yesterday. "We stayed in a town too far away from our base to travel to every day so we stayed in these little thatch cottages with all the archaeologists," she says. "We slept in hammocks and the worst thing was that I didn't sleep a wink because tarantulas came out at night and I'm an arachnaphobic!"
Barbara's most cherished trip was to visit meerkats in South Africa in 2005. "We had to make this humming sound to let them know we meant no harm and although I felt like a prize idiot, it was such a special journey. Being in the wild is truly incomparable," she says.
Travelling to unusual destinations with Earthwatch has forced Barbara to distinguish any travel fears she may have had. However, apart from tarantulas, she's never been scared by much. A trip to a cheetah conservation park in Namibia, where she found herself feeding wild animals, scrubbing pens and maintaining gardens, would frighten most travellers (if not for the wild animals, then perhaps purely for the cleaning duties) but Barbara was never fazed. "Going into the pens with wild animals is so exciting, seeing the cheetahs slam their front paws onto the ground in front of you and stick their rears up in the air because they don't know you is just fantastic," she says. "You get used to that sort of thing after a while and it becomes exhilarating."
Astonishingly, she can't recall the slightest bit of travel drama. "The worst thing that's happened to me was when I lost my luggage in Los Angeles but even then, I had all my essentials in my overnight bag and they returned my bags to me when I got back to the airport," she says. "I've never had anything stolen or lost anything for good, I'm quite lucky that way."
Barbara says that what she finds most satisfying about her Earthwatch trips is the knowledge that she's making a real difference. "I love doing something useful and putting things back into the country I'm visiting," she explains. "I work with locals and discover skills I never knew I had so at the same time I learn a lot about myself too."
One can only wonder if Barbara would ever trade her lifetime of adventure for a more stable sort, perhaps even the addition of a husband and family. But Barbara is quick to insist she has no regrets. "'I never even came close to marriage but it doesn't bother me and I would never go back," she says. "I have a brother who has six sons so I got to share the experience of his kids growing up and they've now got grandkids so I've even had the responsibility of being a grandmother!"
She is already planning her next trip overseas with Earthwatch and has plenty of ideas for future trips. "You don't need any experience or prior knowledge to go on these trips, which is the best part," she says. "There is such a wide range of options and something for everyone really."
Despite her extensive travels, Barbara still has trouble with how quickly technology is advancing and confesses to being completely hopeless at emailing. "I do have email but I have so much trouble with it disappearing into the airwaves somewhere and the other day I sent an email to one of my friends and it was immediately filed into the draft folder," she says.
"It actually amazes me that people are so desperate to stay in touch with reality when they're on holiday - I go to get away, my family know to leave me alone!"
TRIP NOTES
* Earthwatch is a not-for-profit organisation which sends small groups of travellers around the world on conservation projects. For more information see http://www.earthwatch.org
Source: The Sun-Herald
Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.
