Written on the 14th of September 2020
Probably in a free camp under the stars in the N.T.
Wednesday? A substack email from Jonathan McMillan, on a Wednesday.
Sunday evenings are our days. And they aren’t going anywhere.
But over the next few Wednesdays, I’m going to share my old blog post articles from my website that was built back in 2020 (jonathanmcmillan.com) and upload them to Substack, mainly for documentation purposes and more than likely cancel my JonathanMcMillan.com domain, as Substack seems to have it all for me, at a much cheaper cost.
The first edition to this Wednesday's list is from a location in the Northern Territory.
For close to 2 years I travelled up and down the east coast and to the remote outback of Australia living with my best friends, Luke and Jess. aswewander on instagram
We spent every minute of every day together. I still reflect and dream of them days.
Some of my personal favourite days exist with them 2.
We’ve laughed, cried, been in helicopters together, worked on projects and spent hours around a fire just talking about all the things. From love to life’s purpose.
They’ve shown me the ropes.
The ropes of photography.
The ropes of how to communicate in a relationship.
The ropes of living a life true to yourself.
The ropes of moving slowly and adapting.
The ropes of growing up but never losing that inner child.
I’ve said it before - but this time I think I mean it; I have found my favourite spot from this trip. I think what I love so much about it is the adventure it was to get to.
A lot of spots up here are well signed or there’s a nice path that you can just stroll on through, but this one wasn’t all that well signed or pathed. Butterfly Gorge is the name of the location, or what I call, The Adventure Park.
After walking through three river crossings knowing that freshwater crocs are in there, your heartbeat goes up a bit. But then I remind myself freshwater crocs won’t actually do anything unless you touch them? So we’ve been told…
The excitement that I get from life, especially when we arrive at locations like these, is what I thrive on. I thrive on my own hype to what I am able to discover and see. The feeling of freedom and gratitude that where I live is genuinely paradise.
A big kid just running around the top end of Australia. I also struggle to get into words of the feeling I am consumed with when we get to places like these. We see so many photos on Instagram of these ‘dreamy’ places and they just don’t do half of them justice. I can’t recommend enough the value of what travelling can do for someone and I struggle to comprehend why some people don’t want to travel or see their own backyard.
I’ve always been the first one to jump on a plane and forget about Australia. But I think just maybe it might be time to buy another Troopy and hit the road again.
The next few days we are parked up at a place called Robin Falls. A free camp an hour or two out of Darwin and again we have no service, perfect. It was our last spot before we headed to the ‘big smoke’ of Darwin City. This time was well used, editing and organising our lives a bit.
I’ve enjoyed the last 7 days. It’s been a wild adventure, and I’ve been enjoying writing the last few blogs. Finally. I was feeling overwhelmed with all that we were doing, as I said previously, and I enjoyed writing more on a single highlight or challenge of the week.
I hope this encourages you to go on an adventure or just do something you’ve never done, and remind yourself about what makes you thrive.
Geez these photos... trip north soon?