Backpack Flashback: Let's Start at the Beginning...

Back in 2005, before travel blogging (or any kind of blogging as a career, really) was a thing, I started a Livejournal account to keep my friends and family back home updated on where in the world I was and the wonderful things I saw and explored along the way. I lived in Canada for a year, Australia for another, went to New Zealand for six weeks and hit up some places in Asia and the US too. It was an incredible, life-changing experience.

I made friends for life, did things I never dreamed I'd do and went to places I had previously not even heard of. Unfortunately the blog posts I wrote back then are no longer public and the photos I shared have disappeared as my Photobucket account is no longer active eiter. Even social media can't be a life-saver here as this was before the existence of Instagram, and Twitter only became a thing towards the end of my travels.

However, I do have hard drives full of photos and blogs and even drafts of posts that never saw the light of day, and feeling nostalgic for my travel years I thought I'd revisit them, capturing some of the highlights of my journey in the new Backpack Flashback travel series.

Within it I'll talk about why Vancouver is still my favourite place in the world, trying to sleep in a tent on Fraser Island while dingos roamed around the camp site, skydiving and glacier guiding in New Zealand, sleeping in a car for a week while exploring Tasmania with a fellow traveller I met in a hostel, crawling inside a real Hobbit hole, why I really did not like New York City when I visited for the first time (so much so that I refused to go back to the States for years), tracking moose in Nova Scotia, and much more.

There will be photographs galore alongside top tips for places to stay, eat and explore from my own experiences as well as recommended itineraries and advice from fellow bloggers that I will link to where relevant. If you have any specific requests for places I should cover first do let me know, if not I'll probably use a more random approach (as in, whichever hard drive I find first).

I hope you'll enjoy my indulgent nostalgia fest and it'll tickle your travel bug! To start on the Backback Flashback journey you can find a snapshot of photos below. Do you recognise any of the places pictured? Let me know in the comments :)



🎵 Listening to: Jason Mraz – I Won't Give Up
🔹 Mood: Nostalgic