If you started digging a hole in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in Madison, Wisconsin and passed straight through the centre of the Earth, you’d come out in a patch of open water in the southern Indian Ocean. There’s no land there at all. The nearest is a pair of French specks, Île Saint-Paul and Île Amsterdam, home to little more than a research station.
But if you went looking for the furthest place from Madison where people actually live, you’d have to shift your hole angle slightly to come out about 2,500 km to the southwest corner of Western Australia. That’s where I live.
It takes special friends who would travel that distance for a short visit. Dan York and Margaret Bowman are very special friends from Madison and made the journey to visit Padma and me. Dan and Margaret fulfilled a three-decade old dream of visiting us as well as their friends Claude and Maritta in Melbourne.
Dan and I have been best mates since 1968 when I moved to Wisconsin from Southern California. It’s not the first time he’s travelled to visit me. In 1982, he made his first international trip and flew to Costa Rica to visit me while I was serving as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer. Like this current trip he had a dual purpose. His girlfriend, Margaret, was living in Costa Rica as part of her university studies. The three of us travelled to the beaches and volcanoes of Costa Rica. At one point Dan and Margaret left me gazing at some flowers in the cloud forest while they ran to the lip of a volcanic crater and Dan proposed. A year later they were married.
Padma and I tried to pack in a sampler tasting of Western Australia in their eight-day Spring visit: a drive through the wheatbelt in rural WA; a stroll through King’s Park Botanical Garden; a climb up the 242-step Jacob’s Ladder; a roadtrip to the Margaret River region which included whale watching and swimming in the Indian Ocean; kayaking on the Serpentine River; biking along the coastal bike paths of our island; hiking through forests teaming with Spring wildflowers and chatty birds; and searching for Thomas Dambo’s Giants.
It’s a super long way for anyone anywhere to travel so Padma and I were tickled pink that we could share our adopted home with such special friends who so readily immersed themselves in the wonders of Western Australia.
There is so much more to experience here in the near-antipode of Madison. But we had to sadly bid our visitors farewell last night as the commenced their journey to their home nearly exactly half way around the world.
Thank you Dan and Margaret for making the journey.
