Infinity and Beyond

12 - Masterpiece

Emily

If there was one thing that never failed to grip my attention, it was photographs and the world outside. There was no end to it. The simple act of our Earth rotating and the Sun revealing then hiding a tiny bit of land at a time at almost the same time every single morning and evening, creating a spectrum of colours, from red to orange to yellow to pink to blue, twice a day without fail, amazed me. The hours between this offered even more opportunity for variety, with different landscapes and weather and seasons and human activities. And as if this wasn't enough, there was then a plethora of ways to capture these views; hundreds of ways that had been developed for us to take a snapshot of whatever tiny frame of the vast world we wanted.

Having, until recently, only ever travelled to a select few countries within my home continent, it was a given that I would be making the most of photographing everywhere we went, especially considering Australia was one country that had always gripped and amazed me. Everywhere used to grip and amaze me. I got my first camera when I was six and my parents handed me the disposable camera for me to take on a school trip. I used all of the photos on it in a couple of hours, filling the film with blurry pictures of the fields we drove past and my friends giving toothy grins next to me on the coach. My mum took them to get developed for me and they were there waiting when I got back from school that same week. They were a whole world away from being professional or even amateur but I fell in love with them. The concept that, with one click of a button I'd pressed with my finger, I had managed to forever capture one split second in the whole timeline of the universe blew my tiny six-year-old mind and I didn't stop after that. It was only the start of the countless disposable cameras being purchased for me until I eventually got my own proper digital camera and went from there. Like before, my photos were extremely far from being professional and I never strived for them to be, but if there was one thing I never left the house without in my teenage years, it was my camera.

For our road trip, I was well equipped. I had my digital camera with a full battery, my Polaroid camera with fresh films and my phone with as-empty-as-I-could-get storage. I also had a tonne of enthusiasm, which I think drove Ashton up the wall and lead to him complaining about what a long two weeks these were going to be as I took multiple pictures of him repeatedly.

"Emily, we haven't even left the city yet, do you really need to take any now?" he asked me.

"Yep, we're going to document and remember every moment of this trip," I chirped brightly. "Even if we end up in a fist fight!" - which, by the look of things so far, was seeming quite possible.

"I don't think we need to remember me running over a small child because you distracted me with your camera," he almost laughed, stopping at a cross road to let a mother with her two children over the road with not much to spare.

"Right," I agreed and put the camera down. Even still though, when we made it out of the city and Ashton took one hand off the wheel to hold my hand I couldn't resist taking a quick photo of us.

We drove for about an hour before our first stop, at one of the national parks just north of Sydney, then after this we kept stopping frequently. By the end of our first day my camera roll was filled with tens of photos of us together: at Norah Head, Lake Macquarie, Nelson Bay, Port Macquarie, Yamba and finally Byron Bay. It wasn't until eleven in the evening that we finished driving and parked up for the night, after making use of a 24-hour petrol station, exhausted but full of enthusiasm for the rest of it. We didn't plan on sleeping in the car for the whole trip - we were going to stay in hotels for a lot of it too - but we did plan on doing a lot more every day than we already had. Whilst we had managed to cram a lot into the first day, we'd already decided it would be the quickest and least 'touristy', since a few of the places we'd been were quite close to home and we could visit any other time if we wanted. We didn't spend that long at each (except at Yamba, where it took a lot of willpower to drag ourselves away from eating the most delicious ice cream on the equally beautiful beaches) and mostly just drove which, yes, could have been more interesting, but now we were far enough away from home that it was already starting to feel like the best holiday ever. The next day would be started by surfing and ended in Brisbane, our exploration of which would continue into the next day and maybe the day after that too - depending on how long it took us to get the hang of surfing, or how long it took to become apparent we weren't getting the hang of it then or ever. For now, though, we were laying out the blankets we'd packed across the boot and backseats, which we'd folded down flat so the whole of the back of the car was like a bed. To other people it might have made more sense just to rent a motor home or stay in hotels all the time, but this was our way of doing it and our way felt like home away from home.