Hi there, and welcome to my travel blog!
My name is Caitlin and I’m a twenty-something year-old Australian girl who loves travel and animals.
I’ve been told your first blog post should be about yourself and about your blog so here it is:
There must be some kind of travel bug gene
Travel has always been a big part of my life. My first overseas trip was to the UK when I was about 18 months old. Obviously I remember none of it, but I’ve heard my parents took me on an excellent tour of all the duck ponds in England. Clearly both my animal and travel obsessions started early. Every year growing up my family and I went somewhere together. We still do, actually, even though my sister and I are both real adults (just kidding we still live at home). Most years as kids we just went to the beach but sometimes we went overseas or elsewhere in Australia. For a while, I even had my own “travel agency” and I’d plan all of our trips (before taking said plan to a REAL travel agent). It’s not even just my immediate family that’s obsessed with travel – a lot of my aunts and uncles and cousins travel a lot as well! Clearly there’s a gene that dictates whether you’re into travel or not and we all have it.
A big turning point for me was when I got to university and decided I wanted to go on a six-month exchange. My Mum wasn’t super keen on the idea because I would be alone on the other side of the world for SIX WHOLE MONTHS so to test me we booked a three day trip to Sydney where I stayed in a hostel and had to go around and play tourist on my own. I hated the idea and was absolutely terrified. (Why I thought I’d be able to survive six months alone was beyond me…) I think Mum was hoping I’d hate it and give up on the whole exchange thing but much to our surprise, I absolutely loved it! I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted without having to worry about whether anyone else would want to go to the zoo or whether everyone would find something to eat at the sushi bar, and it was fantastic. Since then, I’ve enjoyed travelling solo not only on my exchange, but to other places like Africa and places around Australia (mostly for job interviews – how fun.), but I still travel a lot with my family or with friends.
Next stop: travel blog!
And so we come to the next part of my travel journey. I’ve been thinking about starting a travel blog for over a year now, because I really like to share my experiences with others. I mean sure, usually when I say “share my experiences with others” I mean talk their ear off about animals but I’m sure I can share travel experiences too. The only problem is I’ve always thought I’m bad at writing. Luckily for all of you (I hope), somewhere along the line I was inspired to read some of my own writing (they were fanfics how embarrassing) but aside from the content the writing wasn’t actually that bad. So here I am, writing a travel blog! I must say, I’ve chosen a much better subject this time around.
My life doesn’t actually revolve around travel
Some days I want to just buy a one-way ticket somewhere cool. But then I remember my animal friends and think “hmmm, better not”.
Unlike the vast majority of travel bloggers, I’m not on a world trip, or planning a world trip… I don’t even have a trip BOOKED anywhere at the moment! My point is I’m not a full-time traveller and I don’t see myself becoming one any time in the near future. While that’s partially because I got sick of sitting in a bus after only a month of travelling through Africa, it’s mostly because I have a serious passion for working with wildlife! I started volunteering at my local wildlife sanctuary 3 years ago when I was still at university because I couldn’t find a job and needed to fill my two days off doing something! At the time I hoped I would find an animal species that I cared enough about to spend a whole year researching for my honours (spoiler alert: I did) but I never imagined I’d also find my dream job. The longer I spent volunteering the more I realised I could see myself looking after animals every day, which was cool because I’d never known what I wanted to do with my life. Seriously, in grade 6 when we graduated primary school we all had to make a poster about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I had no idea so I just said I wanted to travel the world (which, I mean, is not wrong)!
Anyway, so I did my research year (which is actually still going two years later…), graduated from my degree, signed up for then finished a TAFE certificate and now I’ve moved to volunteer at a different wildlife sanctuary. It’s a bit further away but it’s worth the drive for the awesome experiences I’ve had so far (for example, I got to feed a croc the other day!!!) and my research is based there too, so that’s convenient.
In summary, my life revolves around animals. But that suits me just fine, so long as they keep being cute.
So why is this blog different from any other blog?
I’ve already touched on a couple of things, like:
- Not a full-time traveller
- Loads of cute animal content
- Random mix of travel styles (solo vs friends vs family)
But I also (like to) think my writing style is different from your average travel blog. When I started writing posts for this blog, I could only motivate myself to write “funny travel stories” (I think they’re funny anyway) like about that one time an Elephant walked into the campsite bar in Africa. But as I got more into the whole writing thing, I’ve been able to write some posts that I hope will actually be helpful. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that this blog will have a bit of a mix of posts: while they’ll all have helpful tips, some will be more focused on my experiences, and others will be more focused on said tips.
I’m also thinking about having a section where I write about my blogging journey and what I’ve experienced in setting up a blog to help other people like me who are thinking about setting up a blog, whether it’s for travel or something else entirely.
I’m not really sure how to finish this but I guess I should say thanks to anyone who actually read this far! If you’d like to follow me on my blogging journey, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube (@globalpawprints) and of course here on this site! I hope that you all enjoy reading about my travel experiences, and that maybe I can help or inspire some of you to embark on your own travel adventures.