Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp.

200–218, 2004
 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0160-7383/$30.00
www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
doi:10.1016/j.annals.2003.10.005

TRAVEL AS TRANSITION
Identity and Place
Naomi Rosh White
Monash University, Australia
Peter B. White
La Trobe University, Australia

Abstract: This paper examines how mid-life and older long-term travelers describe their
motivations for and their experiences of journeys through the Australian Outback. It studies
their accounts to discern whether these can be illuminated by the notion of “transition”:
that is, whether their stories provide evidence that long-term travel provides a neutral, tran-
sitional zone sandwiched between voluntary or imposed endings and new beginnings. The
personal “endings” that provide the impetus for undertaking long-term journeys and the
travelers’ anticipations of new beginnings are considered. The significance of place
(specifically the Australian Outback) in these transitions is also explored. Keywords: tran-
sition, long-term, identity, Australia, Outback.  2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Résumé: Le voyage comme transition: identité et lieu. Cet article examine comment les
voyageurs cinquantenaires et plus vieux, qui font des voyages à long terme, évoquent leurs
motivations et leurs expériences à travers l’Outback australien. On examine leurs comptes
rendus pour discerner si ceux-ci peuvent être illuminés par la notion de « transition » - c’est-
à-dire, si leurs récits donnent des signes que les voyages à long terme produisent des zones
neutres et transitionnelles qui sont prises en sandwich entre des fins voulues ou imposées
et de nouveaux commencements. On tient compte des « fins » personnelles qui donnent
l’élan pour entreprendre des voyages à long terme et les attentes des voyageurs pour les
nouveaux commencements. On examine aussi la signification du lieu (l’Outback australien
en particulier) dans ces transitions. Mots-clés: transition, long terme, identité, Australie, Out-
back.  2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
Long-term travel has a rich history. For aristocratic men and women
of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Grand Tour offered rehabilitation
after illness, respite from domestic difficulties, “finishing” for women
or opportunities to experience the exotically “foreign” with or without
the safety net of companions or chaperones. The tour offered sightsee-
ing, adventure, and education (Adler 1985). For young working class
male artisans who began to travel in the 19th century, the journey was

Naomi Rosh White is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Inquiry,
Faculty of Arts, Monash University (Caulfield East, Victoria 3145, Australia. Email
<naomi.white@arts.monash.edu.au>). She has written on childhood, youth, and the tran-
sition into adult and parental responsibilities. Peter White is Associate Professor in the Media
Studies Program at La Trobe University with an interest in media sociology and remote and
rural communications services.

200
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driven by the search for training and work experience with skilled trad-
esmen. These young men followed set routes, staying at inns and lodg-
ing houses run by guilds. “Tramping”, as this form of travel was known,
provided a flexible laborforce that was responsive to the peaks and
lows in local and regional employment. The word’s modern meaning
arose as the training function of the tramping system declined in the
early 20th century, when tramps were more likely to be unskilled and
unorganized migrant workers. As economic conditions improved, both
the demographics of travelers and the meaning of “tramp” changed.
“Tramping” came to connote the less instrumental, more romanticized
recreational vision of modern tourism. That is, it became “aestheticized
as a form of play”, a highly individualized reaction against its more
organized structured forms (Adler 1985). However, the various threads
of work, recreation, personal development, and exposure to the new
that at different times provided reasons for travel remain integral to
the experience today (Pearce 1988).
Travel also functions as a rite of passage. Young long-term budget
travelers have been found to be at a “life juncture” when they begin
their journeys (Cohen 1973; Graburn 1983; Riley 1988; Vogt 1976).
That is, those who have recently completed university studies might be
unsure about careers. Others already in the workforce may feel dissatis-
faction with their jobs. There may be a desire to escape routine or
defer decisions about marriage. Travel provides a way of postponing
the assumption of adult responsibilities. For those in early mid-life, the
long-term journey has also been found to offer escape from routine
and a path to personal growth. For example, single women in their
early or mid-30’s have been found to use travel to find “a new meaning
in life”, as “a process of transformation”, as well as to mark a break
and change in their habitual patterns of daily living (Ateljevic and
Doorne 2000). In all these instances, the long-term journey offers an
opportunity to escape from everyday life, a space for reflection (Muller
and O’Cass 2001). It appears to act as a transitional time, providing
an interval away from social pressures and new or different responsi-
bilities and roles.
William Bridges (1996) has written extensively on transitions. He
describes the experience of transition as the occupation of a neutral
space sandwiched between a voluntary or imposed ending and a new
beginning. In this zone, significant social contexts have been removed,
and alternative or new institutional supports for a renewed sense of
self or identity have not yet been identified. The idea of the transitional
zone derives from the notion of “liminality”, the state of being between
successive participations in social milieux. The experience of being
“between” is a rite of passage, a “transition rite” that accompanies every
change of state, social position, or particular points in the life cycle.
These transition rites are marked by three phases: separation, margin
or limen (the Latin for threshold), and reintegration or re-aggregation
(Turner 1976). The first phase comprises symbolic behavior signifying
the detachment of the individual from either a position in the social
structure or from an established set of cultural conditions. According
to Turner, the individual becomes a “passenger”. During the interven-
202 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

ing liminal period, the “passenger” is “neither here nor there”. He or

she is between all fixed points of classification, passing through a sym-
bolic domain that has few, if any, of the attributes of a past or future
state. At this time, the person is in a state of “outsiderhood”, situ-
ationally or temporarily set apart from the social system, either as a
result of a voluntary decision, imposed circumstances, or both (Turner
1976:234). In the third phase, the passage is consummated and the
“initiand” or “neophyte” re-enters the social structure (Turner
1976:231).
The Australian Outback is an ideal environment for people to
inhabit this liminal, transitional zone. As Griffiths writes, “In Australia,
the closer one gets to the Center, the further ‘outside’ you are.” He
goes on to say,
Being “outside” mean[s] being beyond the limits of established settle-
ment, a land as yet unredeemed by the hopefully advancing frontier,
and therefore full of the freedom, promise, and danger of such limi-
nality. The “inside country” [is] nearer the coast and the capitals, it
[is] civilised, populated and tamed. It [is] possessed. The outside
country [is] a metaphor for everything the inside country [is not]:
inconvenient, uncomfortable, insecure, unproximate (2002:23).
Griffiths distinguishes the Australian Outback from the expanses of
sparsely populated country in places like the United States of America.
Unlike the American frontier, which was declared “closed” in 1890,
there is no sense of a closing point in the Australian Outback. This
means that rather than being seen as a place outside traditional social
structures, travel in the American wilderness and the touring of
national parks has been seen as a ritual of citizenship, embedding and
locating the individual within his or her social context (Shaffer 2001).
This paper studies how mid-life and older long-term travellers
describe their motivations for, and their experiences of, journeys
through the Outback. The terms “traveler” and “travel”, rather than
“tourist” and “touring”, have been used because the paper documents
the parallels between people’s internal and external journeys, and
because these terms more accurately capture the meaning of these
journeys for those undertaking them. The travelers’ accounts are
examined to see whether they can be illuminated by the notion of
“transition”: that is, whether these accounts provide evidence that long-
term travel provides a transitional zone sandwiched between voluntary
or imposed endings and new beginnings. The personal “endings” that
provide the impetus for undertaking long-term travel and the parti-
cipants’ anticipations of new beginnings are considered. The signifi-
cance of place (specifically the Australian Outback) in these transitions
is also explored.

LONG-TERM TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

This study of long-term travelers was conducted using an ethno-
graphic approach to the data collection. Ethnography entails overt or
covert participation in people’s daily lives over time: observing, listen-
 WHITE AND WHITE 203

ing, and asking questions. It draws on “whatever data are available to

throw light on the issues that are the focus of research” (Hammersley
and Atkinson 1995 cited in Walsh 1998:217) Usually, an ethnographic
study is located on a single site. In this case, multiple equivalent sites
were used over a period of three months. The observational sites
included caravan parks, camping areas or campgrounds in national
parks and roadside stops and at various iconic tourism sites. The data
collection methods included participant observation, conversations
and semi-structured interviews with long term travelers in the central,
northern, and western Outback areas of Australia. Long-termers were
defined as those who planned to travel for more than three months.
The resulting sample of 45 interviewees were Australian citizens who
were traveling in caravans (campers), motor homes, or converted
buses. A few were only three months into their journey, others six
months, while others had been traveling for a year or so. All the
respondents had plans to travel for at least a year, although some had
no specified ending dates.
The selection process meant that the respondents were older than
those discussed in other studies of long-term and budget travelers
(Ross 1997). The respondents represented three major categories of
mid-life and older people. These were parents with children, people
approaching retirement, and retirees. The respondents’ prior occu-
pations included shopkeeper, bus driver, police officer, tradespeople,
as well as people in senior managerial positions in computing, teaching
and nursing. The conversations and interviews, which ranged from 20
to 90 minutes duration, were either taped or recorded in note form.
Where tapes were made, the interviews were transcribed. The topics
covered in the interviews and conversations included reasons for
undertaking the journey, the choice and meaning of the Australian
Outback, the experience of being on the road, and anticipated futures.
The data were analyzed thematically. The themes were guided by the
conceptualization of the study, as well as issues emerging from the
interviewees’ accounts. The transcripts and notes were read twice in
their entirety, recurring points of view noted, and exemplars of these
repeating themes or points of view chosen for citation. While no claims
to representativeness have been made, the interviews yielded insights
into the meaning of long-term travel in the Outback.

Endings as a Motive for Travel

The decision to take to the road for an extended period was usually
precipitated by an awareness of something having ended: changed fam-
ily circumstances either through death of a partner or as an “empty
nester”, the end (or anticipated end) of good health, the end of a
phase in working life (or, indeed, the end of working life itself). Along-
side these lifestage endings was a disconnection from community
bonds and networks and an undefined dissatisfaction with the repeti-
tive routines of everyday life.
Changed Family Circumstances. The degree to which people felt disen-
gaged from meaningful social networks was a factor relevant to the
204 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

decision to travel for an extended period. The relevant networks were

either familial, friendship, or community networks. Changed family
circumstances were often cited as reasons for taking to the road. The
end of parenting roles or feeling marginal to their adult children’s
lives contributed to the decision. Others felt that their absence would
help their children grow to independence. With young adults staying
at home longer sometimes the parents, not the children, have to leave
home (White 2002).
We had our kids young so that we would be young enough when
they’ve grown up to do what we want to do… There’s no reason for
us to stay in the city with them. They’ve grown up and we’ve looked
after them. They’re not reliant on us for their livelihood. And [with
us going away] they’ll realize that Mum and Dad won’t always be with
them, and they need to work together as three adults. They’ll grow
up while we’re away—get to know about themselves. They didn’t really
want us to leave. I think kids always need you, even when they’re
grown.…
We’d done everything all our lives for the girls, and they were happy
for us. We’ve got eleven grandkids, and they miss Mom and Pop, so
that’s pretty sad.…
We’ve been on the road for seventeen years. We sold up everything
after the youngest of our four daughters married. They’ve got their
own lives. They’ve got husbands, children. We thought, what’s the
point of staying?
For some, the death of a spouse left them feeling deeply dislocated
and alone. Taking to the road was a way of grieving and distancing
themselves from a way of life that had ended. For others, there was a
sense that marriages were drifting apart because of the demands of
work and individually pursued interests and social lives. Long-term tra-
vel with a partner was a way rebuilding old bonds: “Without realizing
it, you start to get separate lives. And the years go on and before you
know it you’re on different tracks”. The younger travelers who had
taken their children with them spoke about “extended travel” offering
an opportunity to rediscover and rebuild relationships that had been
marginalized because of work and other pressures: “I wanted to spend
time with the kids. It’s been a good year for the kids. We can do things
together that you don’t normally do at home”.
Choosing long-term travel meant weighing up potentially conflicting
needs of various family members: independence of young adult chil-
dren and increasing dependence of ageing parents.
My parents retired and wanted to come over from England and spend
some time with the kids. Being in the extended family group [with
my parents] means we help each other out, and they can look after
the kids. And traveling with the two vans means that we have some
independence.…
I’d studied hard and had a great job, but found that I was taking on
the role of a parent for my ageing parents and my brothers and sisters.
I was the one who sorted out everyone’s problems. I felt trapped. I
needed some personal space. This trip was the only way to escape.
 WHITE AND WHITE 205

Further, there is the issue of how well integrated people felt in their
local communities. The absence of a strong sense of community or
friendship networks in their permanent places of residence was men-
tioned by some, though not all of the travelers. For some, these weak
or non-existent bonds were the outcome of moves to new towns in
later life; for others the absence of a sense of social integration arose
from the move from rural to urban settings, with an accompanying
sense of being out of place.
We didn’t really have a great number of friends, not really close fri-
ends. We lived in an area for eight years, and you hardly get to know
your neighbours. Seven doors down and you wouldn’t even know their
name.…
We didn’t have such a close friends in town. The closest are in the
Motor Home club. We moved to a new town 10 years ago, so we left
close friends and relatives behind when we moved.
It could also be that some long-termers have always preferred mar-
ginality, a certain distance in their relationships with others.
What’s good about being on the road? No unwanted knocks on the
door, and if there are unpleasant people around, we can just move
on. You can’t do that if you’re at home. You have to stay there and
put up with it.
Work. All interviewees aged from the late 30s through to early 50s
expressed a sense of fatigue, diminished interest in, or serious dissatis-
faction with their working lives. As one interviewee said, “I wanted a
real break from work.” For all of them, the economic imperatives of
work were less urgent, as they had consolidated sufficiently secure fin-
ancial bases. This middle-aged group talked about their jobs no longer
providing them with a sense of satisfaction. Work had ceased to
engage. For others, there was an awareness that their age made them
targets for retrenchment.
We’ve worked very hard through our thirty years of marriage, paying
off one mortgage after another, because we wanted to get ahead. So
it was work, work, work, work. I wanted to do another nursing course
that would take two years. I was very heavily stressed at work. I wasn’t
coping. The course would have helped me because it would give me
another focus, other than work. I know that if I had just stayed at
work I wouldn’t have coped. I needed a change. I’d been there five
or seven years. It was getting me down.
I’m a self-employed tradesman; I work at home. I talk to furniture all
day. I wanted to get out and meet people. I felt I was getting too
isolated. Any time I’d meet someone I’d talk the legs off them.…
I’d had a business for eleven years. I worked really hard. We’d had a
mortgage, our kids were still young, my wife was working. Working
that hard at sixty, like my dad, wasn’t really something I wanted to
do. I wouldn’t want to get up at five or six every morning, work twelve
hours a day. I wanted to sell up. There’s more to life than just work,
work, work, work, work. Money, money, money. Money doesn’t bring
happiness. You can work less hours and achieve more money or what-
206 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

ever personal things you want. We’d been thinking about it a long
time. We felt we had to make a choice.
The reported responses of others to the decision to undertake long-
term travel were generally of three types: horror, bemusement, or envy.
Long periods of absence from a permanent home and frugal
approaches to living arrangements clearly violate social norms and
expectations of stability, permanence rather than mobility, and tra-
ditional forms of consumption. The more negative responses tended
to be directed at people who are at an age where working at a regular
and enduring job is the norm. As other research has shown, the
decision of people at this lifestage to travel for long periods was seen
to indicate an unwillingness “to settle into a sedate, routine and urban
way of life” (Cohen 1973:91), and as “delaying the transition into
responsibilities associated with adulthood in Western society” (Riley
1988:326).
For those approaching retirement age, the evaluations were not as
manifestly critical. In their case, the move from work to travel rep-
resents a move to take control.
When you get to a certain age, they start to pencil out your name at
work. After traveling like this for a while, as far as I’m concerned,
pencil away, Sam. I’m outta here!
Non-specific Need for Change. Underlying many of the reasons people
gave for undertaking their trips around Australia was an unarticulated
but implied search for a new beginning, a non-specific need for
change, a sense that there was more to life than the everyday routines.
As one of the older interviewees said, “We don’t know what’s in the
crystal ball, do we? We don’t know. That’s in the future.”
I wanted to get away from the usual everyday routine. Getting up,
going to work, coming home. You try to vary your life, but basically
you’re doing the same thing, seeing the same people. Depends on
what your priorities are. Ours have never been material things. We
like nice things, but it’s not a priority.…
Where we live, it’s a good community, but when you’ve got kids at
school and you’re working, you can get caught up in the routine. Now
we have a different routine… I needed time to smell the roses.
The broader social forces underpinning long-term travel have been
explored by various writers (Cohen 1973; Vogt 1976). The cultural
roots of its contemporary long-term form have been attributed to a
postmodern world characterized by individualism, the loosening of
communal ties and obligations, and diversified lifestyles. Economic fac-
tors such as an affluence that makes competition for careers less
important or urgent are other contributors. Long-term travel enables
those who feel “pessimistic about the economics and lifestyle of the
West, (who feel) the pressure of globalization, a loss of control over
their lives, and uneasy about restructuring, competition, environmen-
tal degradation, big profits, greed, stress and consumerism” to move
away from them (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2000). Younger backpackers
have articulated similar concerns, citing personal crises and social
 WHITE AND WHITE 207

alienation as major motivations for travel (Spreitzhofer 1998). While

the interviewees in this study did not speak about their concerns in
these terms, their remarks about the encroachments of working life in
particular point to an unarticulated awareness and dissatisfaction with
their everyday lives.

Being on the Road: The Transitional Zone

Bridges suggests that in pre-industrial times, a person in transition
left the village and went out into an unfamiliar stretch of forest or
desert. There the person would remain for a time, removed from old
connections, bereft of the old identities, and stripped of the old reality.
This transitional time was a “time between dreams”. It was a place with-
out a name within which a new sense of self could gestate (1996:12).
The forest or desert are powerful metaphors for the neutral limbo of
the transitional zone. However, as the views of the people interviewed
for this study showed, it has a literal, material force as well. People in
transition tend to seek physical and psychological distance from the
routine and familiar. This may be because it permits new aspects of
the self to be revealed or “performed”. Or it may be that the new
physical and psychological surroundings provide an environment in
which aspects of oneself can be mirrored or reflected back in a new
light. Journeying is an ideal way in which to achieve this distance from
the old and exposure to the new. It enables one to be alone while in
the company of others. It offers a period during which it is permissible
and possible to self-consciously and deliberately remove the signs of
one’s old identity and to temporarily assume a new or anonymous
“non-identity”.
Why the Australian Outback? The decision to travel through the
expanses of the Outback landscape—with its vast tracts of rugged, spar-
sely populated land—mirrors the need for physical and psychological
distance and space. As was evident in the interviewees’ responses, it
also offers space for self-redefinition. When the participants were asked
why they chose to travel in the Outback at this time in their lives,
two sets of reasons emerged: both connected to nascent or emerging
identities. The first set of reasons referred to the physical and cultural
challenges presented by the Outback. This was an environment where
travelers could test themselves. The second set of reasons alluded to
a search for a revitalized sense of self.
The desire to achieve a sense of mastery over nature, and the search
for adventure and physical challenges were evident in the reasons for
deciding to travel in the Outback. It was also evident in interviewees’
choices of travel modes and routes. The group of people providing
the clearest expression of this search for adventure were those who
chose to use unpaved roads and camp in solitary isolation in the bush.
One couple who had traveled extensively in Europe spoke about the
difference between tourism in the Outback and Europe.
Our Four Wheel Drive [car] has become a passion for us. In Europe,
you can’t do Four Wheel Driving. Here, there are the tracks. You can
go off the road, have the campfire. This is magic; this is what I’ve
208 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

dreamed of. In Cooktown we met some people. They wanted to go

pig shooting. They checked it out at the Police Station and the police
said “Fine, you can go wherever you want”. There’s much more free-
dom than in Europe in that respect. In Europe if you shoot you might
hit someone.…
I always thought about Four Wheel Drivers as a bunch of cowboys, big
toys and all that stuff. But I love getting off the road, the places you
can see. And the thrill, adrenalin rush of crossing a river.…
In the Outback I am free of everything. I can’t rely on anything but
me and my car. Back home I’ve got the supports and creature com-
forts, but here it’s different. I’ve arranged food and fuel drops in the
bush and I’ve got my gun, so no-one can give me trouble.
It was also evident among those who took the less rugged motor
routes and accommodation options, but who tested themselves by inde-
pendently navigating physically challenging walks and living for
extended periods—sometimes years—with minimal domestic con-
veniences. As other research has shown, these older participants talked
about travel as a way of challenging and extending themselves physi-
cally and intellectually (Golik 1999; Muller and O’Cass 2001). These
challenges were integral to the extended interval of novelty, sponta-
neity, risk, and independence offered by long-term journeys (Goffman
1967; Vogt 1976). Previously familiar boundaries were no longer rel-
evant and new ones as yet unformed. This sense of absent boundaries
characterizes the transitional zone.
The sense of testing oneself in rural settings may extend across cul-
tures. However, it has deep roots in the Australian consciousness.
Conquering and subduing the Outback was integral to a colonization
that required the subjugation of what was seen to be an inhospitable,
harsh environment. This subjugation was supported by legend-making
that idealized the Europeans who made the attempt. The idealized
image of the Australian bushman, whose fate was inextricably connec-
ted to an unforgiving land, also dramatized the process of colonization
and ultimately, nation-building (Rickard 1996). Therefore, while the
desire for adventure might be part of the generic experience, it has a
particular resonance for long-term domestic travelers.
Journeys through the Outback also bring to the foreground white
Australia’s troubled relationship with the Aboriginal population. Since
the early days of colonization, Europeans have had an ambivalent
relationship with the Aborigines. In the early days, the Europeans were
frequently dependent on them for their knowledge of the land and
for labor. This dependence coexisted with views of white racial
supremacy, the seizure of Aborigines’ land, their displacement, and
the inadvertent or deliberate decimation of their population. The
relationship today continues to be complex and challenging, with the
legacy of this past expressing itself in contradictory threads of mar-
ginalization, commodification, retribution, and assistance. Australia’s
colonial past is relevant to an understanding of the significance of the
Outback as a transitional site. With the exception of a few confined
urban areas, the Aboriginal presence is most strongly felt in the Out-
back. Apart from cattle stations that cover thousands of acres, yet for
 WHITE AND WHITE 209

the most part offer no real point of contact, the Outback powerfully
evokes centuries of habitation by peoples who today still remain the
unknown “Other”. The peopling of the Outback by different Aborigi-
nal cultures is a striking revelation for many domestic travelers.
The newly acquired awareness of Aboriginal Australia permeates all
contact with the Outback landscape, particularly given the history of
Aboriginal–European relations, and the deeply felt, conflicting
emotions this history evokes. The land is both “of us” and “alien”. It
is an ‘in between’ site. As one writer has put it, if one feels a sense of
not belonging to the land, it could be because “the bodies over which
we tread and whose tissue has merged with the earth” become “the
dead weight of the past in the minds of the living” (Richards 1994:59).
Those bodies and past are spoils of a particular history. For some of
the people interviewed, their journey involved coming to terms with
this troubled past. The middle-aged group (rather than the retirees)
spoke about how they felt their journey to the center and north had
extended their knowledge of, and sensitivity to, Aboriginal issues.
And I’ve learned so much about the Aborigines. Before I left, my view
was that there are three things you can’t give an Aborigine: a big nose,
a fat lip, and a job. I worked in Fitzroy, where there was a large contin-
gent of outcast Aboriginals that were drunk in the street. Now, having
gone around almost two-thirds of the country, I have completely dif-
ferent views of Aborigines altogether. I realize that the ones we see
hanging about in the streets, they are not the majority, that they are
the outcasts, the minority. And I have a little more understanding of
their culture, their religions, and their life experiences.… So I’ll go
back to Melbourne with a lot more respect for them and I won’t toler-
ate anyone who says the wrong thing. I have a greater awareness and
understanding of the way the Indigenous people live. The dates keep
shifting, but they say they’ve been here for 60,000 years. They did a
darn good job looking after the country till we came here 200 years
ago. They were very clever with the way they burnt the land. They
would strategically burn and the Rangers are learning from them.…
The kids have played with Aboriginal children. They’ve interacted with
them and seen them in different ways: the ones in the street and the
ones in the playground.
This experience of “seeing in different ways” and the contact with
the “unknown Other” can be seen as part of the overt and personal
or intrapsychic journey through this transitional zone.
Despite the contradictory feelings evoked by Australia’s social his-
tory, the interviewees were emphatic about their preference for Aus-
tralia rather than other countries as the place to visit. As related
research has shown, the Outback was the place where they could come
to understand the “real Australia” (Loker-Murphy and Pearce 1995).
I want to know my own country first. We haven’t been overseas. Well,
we’ve been to Tassie. I want to know the flora, fauna, the landscape,
geological formations, differences in climate—the Tropics. The high-
lights have definitely not been the touristy things. I like to just get out
into the bush—walking with nature. It’s a relaxant for me, it always
has been. Not the hyped up things where you’re with a lot of people.…
210 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

We wanted to see all of Australia, the diversity of Australia, the scenery

and vegetation. …. I’d rather see my own country first. Traveling in
Australia makes you proud of your own country. I wanted to see my
own country.…
I’ve seen the world but the Australian landscape is something else. He
threw away the rule book when He made this place.
Several of the middle-aged participants had been tourists in Europe,
South America, and Asia. For them, the distinctive character of Aus-
tralian rural towns and Outback landscapes was initially confronting.
When you travel overseas, there is always someone nearby. You can’t
escape people. They are everywhere. But in the Outback I can go for
days without seeing anything except my wife and kangaroos.…
It’s very different from Europe: the history, culture. You have to learn
to appreciate different things—not churches and architecture and the
villages of Europe. It’s so different from anything I’ve ever seen.
Their pre-trip concerns, reinforced by the comments of friends and
family, also illustrated a deeply held anxiety about the isolation and
potential dangers of Outback travel.
Before I left all my friends could think of were me dying of thirst if my
car broke down. It got to the stage where I was becoming worried too.
These remarks illustrate contradictory and somewhat ambivalent
responses of urban White Australians to the native landscape. While
“the bush” is regarded as a source of pleasure and “recuperative rev-
erie” (Richards 1994), it is also seen as potentially unsafe, menacing,
and inhospitable. These conflicting responses have their origins in sev-
eral sources. One is the stark contrast between the vast tracts of sparsely
populated and uncultivated dry land of the Outback and the lush
green cultivated fields and picturesque villages of English landscapes
that, until relatively recently, dominated the Australian school curric-
ula and cultural imagination. The second source is the legacy of colon-
ists’ responses to the landscape. They regarded the land as a resource
central to the task of nation building. While some were struck by the
beauty of the more forested areas, they also projected the desolation
of exile onto a landscape that was deeply unfamiliar, alienating, and
seemingly undifferentiated to the untutored eye (Hall 1985) As one
visitor was reported to have exclaimed in protest: “Toujours gum”.
Finally there was an oppressive sense of “antipodal inversion”:
The seasons were reversed… Swans were black, not white; trees shed
their bark, not their leaves; there were egg-laying mammals, scentless
flowers and birds which did not sing…. (Rickard 1996:48–49)
Early artists and writers used these notions of harshness and inver-
sion to depict the bush as a site of “weird melancholy”. With the emerg-
ence of the Heidelberg School of painters in the late 1880s, represen-
tations of rural landscapes changed to more accommodating pastoral
images of bush, beach, and sea (Rickard 1996).
This history of attraction to, and alienation from the Outback land-
 WHITE AND WHITE 211

scape, with its significance for personal and collective identity, was evi-
dent in the reasons expressed for choosing the Outback as the site of
travel. For some, a trip around Australia was the realization of a dream
of a lifetime. For others, it was a continuation of a long history of
vacations spent exploring different parts of the country. Initially trav-
elers’ remarks appeared to indicate a continuing nationalism. While
this may be a partial explanation for their choice, the intense emotion-
ality and fervor of responses to the landscape suggested something
else. Irrespective of their level of familiarity with the bush, for most
this journey was generating a deeply integrated personal sense of place.
I feel much more of a connectedness to Australia, appreciating the
landscape. You feel that more and more as you move away from the
city. In Australia, your ties are to the land and the landscape rather
than to buildings.…I love the wide open spaces. Put me in a city where
I’m rubbing elbows with a million people… Nope. You see things like
Uluru in pictures. The pictures don’t tell you what it’s like. It fills you
with awe—the beauty of it. You fall in love with the country.

Some writers have argued that there is a deep connection between

a sense of place and a sense of self. For example, international tourists
visit places in order to rediscover in themselves an identity not found
in their everyday lives (Lanfrant 1995). Richards takes this link between
travel, place, and identity further by claiming that at an unconscious
level the land we inhabit represents ourselves, and that feeling “at one
with the land” is connected to feeling “at home with oneself” (1994:52–
3). Rhapsodic accounts of the Outback landscape appear to give subst-
ance to this view.
Freedom, Social Distance and Proximity in the Transitional Zone. Along-
side the need for distance and space in which to establish a new sense
of self was the pull of social contact. Most long-termers were with a
partner or friend. Most tended to move between low-cost free camping
in roadside stops or on other public land where they could experience
“partnered isolation” on the one hand, and national parks and caravan
parks that were more populated on the other. For most, periods of
solitude and isolation were punctuated by interactions at various
communal overnight stops and tourism sites. The distinctive feature
of these more populated sites was that they offered easily controlled
and managed sociability, a welcome relief from permanent residence
with what one respondent called the “background influences of family
tensions, phone calls, work responsibilities and worries”. The balance
of freedom and managed social distance seemed to be an integral part
of the experience.
Being on the road also meant freedom. As one long-term retired
person put it, you are as “free as a bee”. For retirees in particular,
there is freedom from time-tables and a pre-specified return date. Nor
is money a concern. Retirees on the road report that when they have
“run short” of money for fuel, they can stay in a caravan park very
cheaply (or in free camping areas) till their pension cheque arrives.
People who are able and interested can always pick up work along the
way. But the sense of freedom that comes with long-term travel is not
212 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

only a freedom from pressures and constraints. It also offers alternative

ways of living, the chance to do things differently and most significantly
to live spontaneously. Long-termers are not tied to one place; they are
not bound by time. They can stay in one place for extended periods,
or “just up and move along”.
We just came up with that figure of two or three years for the duration
of our trip. But we don’t know. A rough idea. We could be somewhere
and love it and stay twelve months. We’ve got a rough itinerary that
we’ve already changed. So we don’t know. Anything could happen.
That feels real good.
Relationships with Fellow Travelers. In addition to the freedom to stay
or move on, there is the freedom to preserve one’s anonymity, main-
tain distance, or to engage socially. Caravan parks and free camping
areas play a significant role in permitting the preservation of anonymity
while at the same time providing opportunities for transient sociability.
These places can also impose an unexpected, though impersonal, inti-
macy. Travelers experience a significant attenuation of the boundaries
that normally separate public and private domains. The absence of
familiar public-private boundaries in caravan parks was described with
astonishment by one interviewee.
We know what socks they wear. You see people get out of their cara-
vans with their pink fluffy slippers on, and sometimes they don’t even
wear their dressing gown and all this wobble, wobble going down. I
mean, would they walk around their own house with people they know
like that, let alone with total strangers. So it’s amazing how a caravan
park just subdues all those feelings. It’s the fact they are strangers.
They’re not going to see you two days on. So who really cares if your
hair looks a mess.…
You don’t have the privacy. Occasionally during the day I want to shut
off and not converse, and that can be a bit hard. You can segregate
yourself if you want to, but if someone pulls up next door to you and
their door is only that far away from you, you’ve got to say, “How yer
goin’, mate”.
The disadvantages of these incursions into private space are bal-
anced by a greater freedom to choose and in fact control social interac-
tions. Caravan parks and group camping offer proximity, a bounded
intimacy with no continuing responsibility.
Here you get to know everybody very quickly. We’ve got to know more
people than in our own street and we know about their lives in
depth.…
If we didn’t travel like this we wouldn’t have met some lovely people.
Some are a bit feral, but you can get into your car and just drive off
tomorrow. If someone’s hanging around when we are staying out in
the bush, I can just jump into the seat and drive off. On the whole
you don’t find many of them. We speak to people all the time. People
on the road tend to be easy going.…
You don’t go down the street in the city and just talk to anybody.
Come here and you’ll go up to talk to just about everybody. It’s a
 WHITE AND WHITE 213

different atmosphere. There was a couple parked here the other

night. They’re from Port Hedland. They’ve invited us to stay at their
place. We only met the other night. So you do meet some wonder-
ful people.
Being on the road also makes possible choices about how, when, and
where contact is made with family members. Some contacted family
members by phone at pre-specified intervals; others punctuated their
journey with visits from various family members either as “in-caravan”
guests, or as independent vacationers.
Our kids meet us at different points on the road. Now we’ve got our
daughter, our son-in-law, and our 8 year old grandchild spending a
week or so with us. They’ve got their own caravan, and they’ve come
for a holiday.
The sociability of fellow travelers offers some a sense of community.
This sense of community arises from the interchanges at overnight
stops, or from more formal institutionalized connections such as mem-
bership in tourism associations and clubs. For instance, 4WD clubs
offer their members information about places to stay, and fellow mem-
bers at different points in Australia on whom they can call for help.
People in motor homes have similar clubs, newsletters, magazines,
and rallies.
There’s motor home rallies on the road and you meet a lot of people
there. There’s a monthly motor home magazine, that tells you about
rallies.…
The people you meet at rallies are so helpful. If you had any little
problem, there was someone there that could help you, tell you how
to improve things.
Long-term travel for older people in particular often commences
after they have reached the end of their working careers and their
children are rearing their own families. It provides a substitute for the
absence of the regular social and mental stimulation offered by work
(Golik 1999). Seniors speak about the opportunity to revisit significant
people or sites or to re-establish ties with partners (Golik 1999; Muller
and O’Cass 2001). For pro-social seniors, the travel experience pro-
vides structures and opportunities to make new social contacts or to
renew old ones, to participate in social camaraderie, both with fellow
travelers and through reactivating geographically dispersed social net-
works.
Irrespective of the source of, or motives for seeking or avoiding
social contact, it is evident that the long-termers are engaged in a
movement between social distance and social contact. Richards (1994)
argues that solitary periods in rural settings propel people into a search
for social contact. He cites the practice of greeting strangers met en
route as evidence of how gladly one enters the social when in the
countryside. He further suggests that this sociability marks a nostalgic
reference to a sense of lost or desired community. This movement
between social contact and isolation, when combined with the distinc-
tive physical environment of the Outback fulfils the functions of a tran-
214 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

sitional space. It enables one to be alone while in the company of

others. It makes possible the shedding of old identities, and through
a heightened sense of place and connection to the landscape provides
a new foundation for personal reintegration.

New Beginnings
The sense of having come to the end of a life stage, and the choice
of travel as a way of dealing with the transitional time between the
“old” way of life and the “new” was accompanied by anticipation about
what life would be like when the peripatetic life ended. There were
imagined changes in relationships, in places of residence, and in work.
For some, there was a string of unanswered questions.
I’d love to move to the country, but do I have to travel to the city to
work? How can that work? I hate traveling. I don’t want to stay in the
city for a few days at a time. Do I study? Do we get an apartment in
the city? But then what about my husband’s work? There’s a problem
for him of setting up on someone else’s site. I’m more worried about
financial security than my husband is. If we don’t go back to the job,
you know you’re going to earn a lot less. So if you have to study to
get into another field, you have to support that in the meantime by
working extra hard. It’s a very difficult decision making a complete
change. I really don’t know what to do. You can go back to your old
field and work part- time and earn as much as if you worked full-time
in something else.
For others, there was a sense that individual rather than shared
activities would take over.
I think it will be difficult. We’ll all have to settle back. We’ll have to
go back to our separate lives.
Several of the interviewees had made the decision to sell their family
homes prior to embarking on their trip. This left open the question
of where they might live, or for some whether they might simply con-
tinue to travel after briefly visiting with family and friends.
We sold our house. When we get back, we don’t have to live in the
city, we have choices. From my point of view, there are too many
choices about what to do. The choice of going back and spending a
bit of time with the girls, and then maybe doing this trip in reverse.
That’s one choice. Maybe we do need to go back to work, to build up
money, but we don’t have to immediately. There’s the decision of do
we live in the city or buy a block in the country. We need to know
what to do in the end when the end of the trip comes.…
I think we might find a large degree of difficulty settling back. After
having it so good after this twelve months, and then you say to your-
self, do we have to settle back into that again? Life’s still life: you’ve
got to get up in the morning, go off to work, pay your bills. But you
can do that in the country or the city, but it’s still real life. It’s getting
back to real life, to the reality of not pulling up stumps every three
or four days and just going where the wind blows. This is a dream of
a lifetime, but you can’t do it forever.…
 WHITE AND WHITE 215

I don’t imagine we’ll ever live in a house again. It’s a really open
future. We don’t know what will happen. Family is important. But we
have lived our life for the family and its time to go. So when we do
go back in two or three years, we’ll stay there for the good times and
the nice weather and we’ll go south for six months. After that we’ll
see them every six months.
Many of the interviewees were still of working age. The type of work-
ing life they might have on their return was also a matter of great
uncertainty. Some had entertained various options, but were as yet
unable to place themselves into any of them.
I’ve thought of investing in a pizza pasta restaurant with one of my
daughters whose doing managing in that area. I know it’s going to be
a hard slog. I’ve though of changing my field of work. I might get
myself a little van and get a mail run. Just something different, rather
than slot back into the way it was before, with all the stresses and
strains. It wasn’t too bad, but when you’re free and you look back you
realize what sort of life you had. I think inevitably we’ll lock back into
our old careers. That’s what I know and that’s what I do well.…
I know I would have no problem getting a job if I went back to nurs-
ing. But I won’t. I’m feeling negative about going back.…
Hopefully I’ll do something different. I’ve done a Real Estate course.
I’d like to give that a go. But if that’s too much of a burden on the
family timewise, I’ll look for some different avenues. Sales, or if worst
comes to the worst, I can always buy another butcher’s shop. I can do
things differently, keep it smaller. Less work. Scale it down and have
a better life. It’s a bit scary, sometimes exciting, but it depends what
day it is. It’ll be an opportunity to try some different things. A change.
For almost all of the interviewees the prospect of returning home
or making a decision to settle for an extended period was approached
with some degree of trepidation. This anxiety was probably not mis-
placed. For example, young women who had traveled independently
for long periods returned home with a new-found sense of self
(Desforges 2000). They had become independent and self sufficient,
personal traits that did not fit well with expectations of the “feminine”
in their home environment. Some of the young women spoke about
feeling that their experiences were best kept secret on their return
home. If a goal of undertaking extended travel was to provide a space
between a known past and a new future, many expressed a palpable
reluctance to make binding decisions about what this new future
might be.

CONCLUSION
Travel in the Australian Outback appears to provide a neutral zone
for mid-life and older long-term travelers. Endings, or perceptions of
endings (with their potential impacts on personal identities), pro-
pelled these people into undertaking their journeys. Changed family
circumstances, either through death of a partner or as an “empty nes-
ter”, the anticipated end of good health and the conclusion of a phase
216 TRAVEL AS TRANSITION

in working life (or, indeed, the end of working life itself) were among
the reasons articulated by those studied. Alongside these life stage end-
ings were discontinuities of other kinds, such as disconnection from
community bonds and networks, as well as an undefined dissatisfaction
with the repetitive routines of everyday life. The accounts suggested
that journeys serve as a rite of passage between “old” ways of life and
the possibilities of “new” ways of living. Travel detaches one from the
everyday responsibilities and familiar interactions of life back home.
This all provides a set of routines and social contexts that offer diver-
sion without enmeshment in enduring social arrangements, an
environment in which people could test themselves, and a space in
which to search for a revitalized sense of self.
Some writers have considered the connection between travel and
evolving personal identities, arguing that the anticipation of, and nar-
ratives about, journeys on return are tied into imagined “perform-
ances” of the self (Desforges 2000). These “performances” enable trav-
elers to think of themselves as particular (or different) kinds of people.
Further, their narratives about risks and adventures can be seen as
statements about evolving identities (Elsrud 2001). While this study
focused on travel as a transitional experience, the connections between
this experience and the reformulation of identity emerged in the
remarks of the interviewees. The process of re-examining identity
occurred through a recognition that life stages or ways of living had
ended, and by imagining a range of possible lives when the peripatetic
period ended. There were imagined changes in relationships, in places
of residence and in work. It was evident that long-term travel provided
the opportunity for recreation to meld with this process of re-creation.
A promising avenue for future research is an examination of the con-
nection between people’s identity prior to travel, their experiences,
and the extent to which identities are created.
While long-term travel as a rite of passage is commonly associated
with younger, low-budget tourists and backpackers, the findings con-
firmed Aranas’ prediction that changes in post-industrial society will
produce youth-like travelers of an older age (cited in Loker-Murphy
and Pearce 1995:829). The findings provide some support for the
suggestion that “subjective age” (how old one feels), rather than
chronological age, might be used to understand tourist motivations
and behavior (Muller and O’Cass 2001). The role of long-term travel
as a rite of passage for younger and older tourists appeared to hold
true regardless of the reason for embarking on the journey. It offers
separation from all familiar distractions, a moratorium from the con-
ventional activity of everyday existence, a space in which the process
of disintegration and reintegration of personal identity can occur. That
is, the experience of tourism as a journey though the liminal appeared
to be common to the long-termers interviewed, irrespective of their
reasons for embarking on their journeys.
The distinctive social milieu of the long-termers, with its combi-
nation of social contact and isolation, together with the physical and
mythological features of the Outback, fulfilled the function of a tran-
sitional space. This physical environment, with its seemingly endless
 WHITE AND WHITE 217

rugged terrain, gave physical expression to the untrammelled, unclut-

tered psychological space in which old identities could be shed. The
heightened sense of connection to the landscape provided a meaning-
ful foundation for this process of personal reintegration. In choosing
to journey through the vast openness of the Outback, travelers may
be searching for the feeling of being “at home” both in the external
environment, and at a more fundamental level, with themselves.왎 A

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Submitted 18 September 2002. Resubmitted 18 March 2003. Accepted 25 July 2003. Final
version 16 August 2003. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Michael Riley