Sharon Bulkeley:

All right. Good evening everybody. My name is Sharon Bulkeley and I'm the Assistant Director of Public Programmes here at the National Library of Australia, and it's my pleasure to welcome you tonight. Before we begin, can I just ask you to please check your phones are either turned off or on silent? So we're all in store for what I am sure will be an eye-opening discussion about travel, connection, and unexpected kindness. A bit of a warning though, this talk may result in a severe case of tribal bug, a not unpleasant, though often expensive ailment to cure. Before we continue, I'd like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the beautiful lands on which the National Library sits. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present. For tens of thousands of years, our first peoples have travelled across this vast continent and beyond its shores, discovering new people, places, and connections.

It is a legacy that today's travellers still follow today. So when Catherine first emailed the Library to talk about her new book, I was intrigued. But after speaking with her via Teams, what was supposed to be a 20 minute quick chat to talk logistics and ended up becoming over an hour as we shared travel stories, those experiences that are serendipitous and always memorable. I knew that our audience would love to hear her speak and that she had very important messages to impart to all of you. Before we introduce Catherine, I would love to first introduce Hugh Mackay, himself an expert on human connection and kindness to formally introduce Catherine. So please join me in welcoming Hugh to the stage.

Hugh Mackay AO:

Thank you very much, Sharon, and good evening everybody. 42,000 years ago, just before I began my research career, a catastrophic, cataclysmic event hit the planet earth and wiped out four of the five, or it may have been more than five, species of humans that had been roaming the planet for between two and 300,000 years to that point. Homo sapiens, that flattering title we've given ourselves, ours was the only species to survive. And that's been a mystery for a very long time for archaeologists and anthropologists and others. And quite recently, within the last five years or so, a group of British and German archaeologists working in Europe believe they have found the answer to why we survived and the others didn't. It turned out nothing to do with having bigger brains or being able to run faster or build better tools or create prettier rock carvings.

All the other species of humans could do all those things just as well as we could. The conclusion that these archaeologists have come to is that the reason we survived was that only our species had mastered the art of living together in small, mutually dependent communities. All species of humans had been tribal, but only ours had become communitarian, sharing resources, caring for the sick and injured, cooperating.

One archaeologist describing this said paradoxically, "It was our emotional vulnerability to each other that turned out to be our greatest strength." Don't you like that? Another archaeologist said, "This is an example of survival of the kindest." Now, there were two things that I took away from reading about that research. The first was that we've always known that kindness was a wonderful quality in human beings, but now we know something far more beautiful, far richer about kindness even than that. It turns out that kindness is a species survival skill. That's why I think it's a unique form of human love. All forms of human love are wonderful, of course, romantic, familial, companionate, etcetera.

But kindness is different from all of those. And this is why I think it's a species survival skill. It's got nothing to do with our emotional response to each other. Kindness is something we are capable of showing to total strangers about whom we know nothing. We are capable of showing kindness to people we don't like. What a lovely thing to know about our species. That's one of the reasons we've survived. We can get along with people we disagree with profoundly about all sorts of things, but we're capable of acting kindly. So that's one of the big lessons I've taken out of that research. The other is that although obviously the most interesting thing about us is how different we are from each other. The most significant thing about us is that we share a common humanity.

And nowhere will you find a better illustration of that point than in Catherine DeVrye's remarkable new book, 'Beyond Timbuktu'. This is much more than a travel book. If you were coming here for a travel talk, you're going to be. Well, you're not going to be disappointed. You're going to be amazed at how much more Catherine has to offer. It's true that this book takes us to more than 150 countries around the world. It's remarkable when you look at the list from A to Z. Well, it's remarkable how many countries there are and then remarkable that Catherine has managed to visit so many of them.

But it's not about that. It is in fact about our shared humanity and the implications of that for trust, for kindness, which is a recurring theme through this book, and for hope. It's a fundamentally optimistic book reflecting Catherine's own optimism about the human species, which I share, not just on the basis of what happened 42,000 years ago, although that's a very important demonstration of why our species has survived and can survive into the future. It's not only an optimistic book. It's not only an extraordinarily informative book. It's also very funny. You're going to enjoy Catherine's prose. There are laughs on many of the pages of this book. And it's also magnificently and lavishly illustrated with photographs taken by Catherine herself. And it's also sprinkled with brilliant, provocative quotations from the wisdom of the ages, not just about travel and about some of these countries, but about these underlying themes of shared humanity and kindness.

Catherine herself is a former academic, a public servant, an IBM executive. And also she's the author of nine previous books, none of them about travel. This is a departure for her. She's a former Australian Executive Woman of the Year. She's a current Australia Day ambassador. And she's addressed audiences at conferences and corporate events and other occasions in more than 30 countries. So we're very privileged to have her with us in Canberra tonight. To challenge all your prejudices about other people and places, please welcome Catherine DeVrye.

Catherine DeVrye:

Thank you so much.

Wow. Thank you so much, Hugh, for that amazingly generous introduction, which doesn't surprise me given that you are kindness personified in many ways, not just with the books that you write. Thank you so much. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional landowners on which we stand and the lands on many countries on which I've been privileged to stand around the world. And I'm extremely honoured to be at the National Library tonight because what Hugh didn't say, because he probably doesn't know, is I was expelled from English at high school. But having said that, I've always had a love of reading and books and a love of libraries because I think they share a part of a world that we would never otherwise know. And if you're an incredibly curious person like I am, I think that libraries are just wonderful. So thank you very much for the invitation to come here.

I guess I have been incredibly curious since I was a child. And one of the questions I would ask you and one of the questions that was preeminent in terms of writing this book is, have you ever wondered yourself, what if our world was kinder than the headlines suggest? Have you ever wondered that yourself? After visiting more than 150 countries, that's what prompted me to write this book. And though I'm delighted that I did get a jacket comment from Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet, as Hugh said, it is definitely not a travel guide in any way, shape or form. It's a blended genre. Because I believe going back centuries, and my research is not nearly as conclusive or as extensive as Hugh's, but going back centuries, St. Augustine once said, "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." And I think that that's very indicative of libraries wanting to learn, coming along on a night like this.

So thank you very much. As Hugh mentioned, it is my 10th book. The others have been on business, which has been quite a different sort of genre to travel. But those books gave me the entree to be privileged to speak in 31 different countries and to have experiences behind the scenes with people from those countries that I wouldn't have as a normal tourist. Do you remember anyone over 30 remember where you were on 9/11? I was the keynote speaker at the World Airline Conference in Brisbane on 9/11 to 1600 delegates. The topic was changed. You can imagine the mood in the room. About a year later, I was invited to speak in Bali after the bombings. And my friends would say, "Aren't you frightened going to these countries and all the bad things that are happening in them?" And I'm saying, "The companies that hire me to speak about customer service and change, they do their homework. They've got security. It would be really not that dangerous at all."

And subsequently, I got invited to speak a lot in the Middle East. And again, friends are going, "Oh, the Middle East. There are all those terrorists over there." And I worked for IBM and our motto was think. And when I arrived in Qatar, there was a sign on the foreshore, and that sign was about twice my height. And it made me start thinking of the stereotypes we have of people different to ourselves, especially Middle Eastern people at that point in time. And I think that some of those stereotypes were a little bit unfair based on some of our media that we listened to. I'm not saying the media isn't important. It's very important, but it just got me started to think. And a lot of things I thought about when I was travelling, I normally wouldn't think about the cultural side of things.

I'm sorry to admit that in a cultural centre like Canberra. I was more driven by seeing landscape than culture like museums and galleries and that. They're all beautiful as well. But I became more and more surprised. The more I travelled, I became more intrigued with the people, even though that wasn't what drove most of my travels. And IBM then posted me to Japan for two years. And that was in 86. And when I arrived at Tokyo Airport, all the signs were in Japanese except for one sign in English and it said aliens. And that was me. And yet across generations, I had nothing but universal kindness when I was there. And yet again, an elderly friend of mine at the time said, "I wouldn't go to Japan. I won't even buy a Toyota based on what happened in the war." I said, "It's different now. It's a different situation."

And I arrived in Tokyo totally unprepared, probably promoted beyond my level of competence, but they ended up being the best team I could ever have possibly imagined. But in the beginning, it was like trying to eat jello with chopsticks. That's how steep my learning curve was. And I ended up writing a book. My first book actually, commercial book was on Japan. And it was about 55,000 words. So as I'm thinking about this book with probably 150 countries, I though, how am I going to possibly condense it? And that was not an easy thing to do. How am I going to pack 150 countries into one book when I struggled to write about one country? So I thought, well, would I look at the most visited country in the world? And France is the most visited country in the world. I'm sure many of you have been there.

When I look at organising the book chronologically or by continent or possibly by flashbacks, but I'm not a creative fiction person of not clever enough to do all that flashback stuff. So I though I would focus on the road less travelled. And believe me, many of those roads less travelled are less travelled for very, very good reasons. And I thought, well, how am I going to look at what to do? And I thought, well, just like when you travel, you've got a limit on your luggage, don't you? A weight limit. Well, I thought I needed to have a word limit of some sort, but the book just kept growing and growing and growing. What do I leave out? Just like when you travel, inevitably you've got to leave out your favourite shirt or your favourite pair of shoes. You've got to pair things down. What do I leave out?

But rather than pairing things down, every time I travelled, it got bigger and bigger and bigger because I've kept a journal every night since I was 16 years old. And those journals are going to end up here in the National Library Archives thanks to Margie Vern, who is in the audience tonight. And it's really, when you travel, do you ever find when you travel with friends that you might come back and have quite different memories of a trip? But then you ask the question, what is truth? Is my journal true versus my friend who travelled with me? I don't know, but it was my truth at that point in time at that particular night. So it just kept growing and growing, but I was still overwhelmed with a format. How am I going to pare it down? And then I settled on an A to Z format.

And why did I settle on an A to Z format? Because to me, it was quite logical and I'm quite a logical person. But I loved the concept of the Olympics for big superpowers like China and the United States. Have to walk into the stadium and follow those tiny little countries like Andura or Brunei or Chemoris, places like that. And I also loved the concept of the Olympics that were founded back in 1896 as the modern Olympics, not the Grecian ones in 1896 by Pierre de Coubertin to try and bring the use of the world together in friendly rivalry, the emphasis being on friendly. Now, some might argue that sponsorship and money might have become subsequent goals to it, but I absolutely love that concept. And as a younger person, I represented my country in sport, but it wasn't an Olympic sport for women back then.

So I decided after the long journey and there's a whole bunch of things I won't go into now, I wanted to reset my dream of going to the Olympics. And I've subsequently been to five Olympics working sometimes with the Australian team, like the most important muscle they've got between their ears. But also on the day of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics, I was very honoured to carry the Olympic torch. And to me, the torch, it just symbolises the concept of international peace. It doesn't always happen, but it symbolises that. Now, I was so excited to be on my first Olympics in Barcelona with the Australian team. I was wearing the green and gold and I was just so pumped to be there. But I've got an absolutely shocking sense of direction. I almost didn't make it to the National Library tonight. I've been to Timbuktu too, but I almost didn't make it here because of all the circles and all the detours and road works that were happening.

But I've got a shocking sense of direction and I'm a little bit shortsighted. So I came out of Barcelona, the train station. I see a little Spanish guy. I said, "Excuse me, excuse me. How do I get to the Olympics?" He turned, he looked at me, he went, "Senora, practise, practise, practise." He could have just as easily said, "Senora, persistence, persistence, persistence." Because I think, isn't that what it takes in sport? And I think it takes that in writing as well. It takes persistence and it does take practise. And I've got a friend who wrote a fabulous song in Nashville. She said, "I am not lost. I am exploring." Janice Sandfield. You can find it on YouTube. So I decided on the A to Z format. So just quickly, I'll go through A for Azerbaijan. I mean, there's many other A's mentioned, but I chose that one because it's the roof of their art centre, which is probably the most beautiful structure I've seen to rival the Sydney Opera House.

It was absolutely stunning. So those people there have weddings just like we do here. For B, tonight, I randomly chose Bhutan because they have their celebrations and their parties like we do. And for C, what do I choose? No, not Canada, which was a possibility, but Cape Verde. Because nobody had heard of Cape Verde until the football, right? Three weeks ago. And that little nation really surprised a lot of people. But the quiet streets of Cape Verde off the West Coast of Africa, but A, B, C, A from Albania through to Z for Zimbabwe. And I thought of the great explorer, David Livingston, who once wrote, "It is far easier to travel than write about it." And as I kept writing and kept writing, boy, is that true? That is so true. But unlike Livingston, all I discovered was that few things, unlike zebras, are ever black and white when it comes to writing.

And the real challenge, apart from the word count, was how to ensure the book was non-political, non-religious, and non-egotistical. And it's not like a memoir where it's all about me, me, me. I am the narrator of the story, not the story itself. But for the context, because there is a narrative of arc throughout the book, I'd like to share a little bit of my personal journey because I did start life in Canada, but I never saw a polar bear. And that's one of the quotes from the book. And I never really wondered if the ocean smelled different on the other side of it. I started life in an orphanage, but I have absolutely no memory of that at all. I was adopted by loving parents, and I have absolutely no memory of it at all. We didn't have a lot of money, and we had no car, but we weren't poor.

We just didn't have a car. And my first memory of travel is holding my mom's hand on the number eight bus, secure in the grip of my mom's hand to go into the city. And I still remember the bus driver's name, Mr. Reynolds. I can't remember my pin number from yesterday, but it's just one of those things that just came to me as I was writing. But I never dreamed of travel because where we grew up, travel was for the wealthy, the wealthy people. And I grew up on the wrong side of the track, so to speak, which is a terrible terminology. But when I was 13 years old, we had a principal that used to stand up and go, "You kids are nothing because your parents are nothing or you wouldn't live in this neighbourhood." Like what a jerk. I mean, this guy had had a personality bypass.

But when you're 13, you wonder if the stuff adults tell you is true. And we went home that night to my girlfriend's home, Mrs. Allen. We said, "Is it true we'll never be anything because we live here?" And she's a Scottish lady. She says, "Aclassis, it's not where you live. It's how you live. I'm sorry I can't do a Scottish accent, but I've never forgotten Mrs. Allen's words. It's not where you live. It's how you live." And it's also how privileged one is in terms of the teachers that you might get along the way. Because the following year, I had a principal at the same school on the same side of the tracks. And he wrote in my autograph book, "Smiles or passports through deserts and visas to all foreign countries." Did anyone have autograph books here in Australia? And that became the opening line in the book.

Because at the time I went, "What's a passport? What's a visa? Foreigners? Who cares?" I didn't want to be a foreigner. I wanted to be, as a teenager, I wanted to be not foreign, but like every other person. I wanted to be sameness was the same to me. Not like my Dutch father with his Scottish or thick Dutch accent or my mother's grandfather, my grandfather who I loved dearly with his Scottish accent. And my parents and grandparents and many of yours travelled not as privileged tourists like I have been and many of you have been, but they came as migrants looking for hope on a distant shore. And I think that is so true. And yet on a subconscious basis, even though I didn't care about passports, I probably knew that an education, thanks to that principal, was a metaphorical passport out of my neighbourhood.

So I ended up getting a couple of scholarships to university. I also had a student loan. I had part-time jobs from the age I was 13. And my secure world sort of crumbled because my first overseas trip was not out of adventure. But the year I graduated from university, my mom died of cancer. Sorry, the year I graduated from Montana University. Sorry, I just digressed a little bit. I had a stereotype of Americans and yet I got, because in Canada we had Calgary, Alberta was an oil capital. So the only Americans I knew were rich Dallas tycoons driving around in Cadillacs. And I had the wrong stereotype. But the year I was at university in Montana, that stereotype changed completely because my friends in Montana, when my dad died, could not have been kinder people anywhere in the world. And it was just unbelievable. And then the following year, my mom died also of cancer.

And that prompted my first overseas trip, which was to Australia because my best friend and her husband were teaching at the time here. And being an only child, I though, I need a best friend. So I came with a backpack, $200 and a one-way ticket for a three month working holiday, and I've stayed over 50 years. But the biggest problem of my life, without question, became the biggest opportunity. And I'm so honoured to be an Australia Day ambassador. And it was just, never could I have believed that now I would be living in Sydney's Northern Beaches when I never even dreamed of going to a beach at one stage. And I never shared that story until I won the Australian Executive Women of the Year Award in 1994 because I had it all bottled up. I had all the grief bottled up. I was Presbyterian, we didn't wear our hearts on our sleeves.

We didn't go to council and we didn't do any of that stuff. And I think it was a mistake probably in hindsight. But when I won that award, journalists said, "How is it that a Canadian came to win the Australian Executive Woman of the Year Award?" And I shared that story. And I also didn't share that I was adopted because in the generation I grew up in, there was a stigma about being illegitimate. And let me tell you, there's no such thing as an illegitimate person. We're all legitimate regardless of the circumstances of our birth, the colour of our skin, our religion, whatever. We're all legitimate people. And life takes detours. Dreams take detours whether we like it or not, and we've just got to cope with it. COVID was one of those detours, yes, that all of us experienced. And so all of my conferences, corporate conferences on the corporate sector were cancelled around the world.

So I though, "Great. Now I'll finally get around to writing this book that I've been thinking of for 15 years about travel and common connection." So I started writing an armchair journey. And my literary agent unfortunately passed away and I spoke to a number of different publishers and they all rejected the book and said, "No one wants a travel book." I said, "All the more reason for armchair travel when you can't travel." But anyway, for whatever reason, it never happened. But what kept me going, and I keep some inspirational quotes on my desk or in my bathroom mirror or whatever. And there was a Maya Angelo who I really enjoy her writing. She once said, "If there's a book you'd like to read and it's not yet written, write it." And so this is my 10th book. I'm an accidental author, an accidental Australian, an accidental traveller.

But I think Hardy Grant has done an amazing job of editing it and designing it. Because to me, to travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. And there's over 193 nations in the United Nations. I've only been to about 155. And each chapter starts with a quote and some quirky facts, maybe a lesson learned. But I asked a few friends, what country should I talk about of those 150 some I've been to? So I asked three friends, I got five answers. So I thought, "Well, what I'll have to do is probably, because we all have different favourites of our countries, don't we?" And I though, "Well, maybe this country isn't my favourite place that I've been to, but it's logical." So has anyone ever been to Mali? No one's. You've been to Mali. Well, you're here to keep me honest, sir, because most people have probably never heard of Mali.

I remember when I said I was going to Mali at Christmas, people said, "Where are you going for Christmas?" I said, "I'm going to Mali." They said, "Oh, Bali, that's beautiful." I said, "No, no, not Bali, but Mali." which is in Central Africa, Timbuktu. Everybody's heard of Timbuktu, but few people had heard of Mali. Now, Timbaktu is about 1700 kilometres from Marrakech. It was probably the only place I could get frequent flyer points at Christmas that year. And my friend said, "Aren't you afraid of terrorists and bombing?" And I'm saying, "No. It was still okay on the smart traveller list, so I'm going to go."

But few people have heard of Mali, but we all have heard of the ancient road to Timbuktu, right? And that's what it looks like. I was mesmerised by that ancient city and it's very real. People say, "Is it really a place?" "Yes, it's very real. It's raw. It's hot. It's dusty and it's an ever changing landscape because does that remind you of the Australian Outback? Quite probably. When our four wheel drive broke down and we had to take camels and donkeys, the landscape was much like the outback in places. And when we finally arrived in Timbuktu, it was a city that's hard to believe. When you look at that picture of Timbuktu, it's hard to believe that that city was once a major centre of trade for the entire world. It was richer than Madrid or Moscow back in the 15th century.

Now it's a little more than a dusty outpost for people [unclear] living in the fourth poorest country in the world. Salt that was carried in the caravans across to Europe. Salt was once as valuable as oil is now. But I believe water. Water will likely be the true wealth of our world in the future. Because on the road to Timbuktu, it wasn't always a road. Sometimes it was the Niger River, which is the third largest river in Africa. And sometimes it's a lake and you can't even see either side of the shore. Sometimes it's narrow passages with children touching you on either side of a very narrow passage. That Niger River was once the lifeblood that ran straight through the city of Timbuktu and made it the centre of such trade. That river is now 19 kilometres away, gobbled up by the sand. So when people say to me, "There's no such thing as climate change," I say, "I'm not a scientist. I can't argue with that. I just know what I saw."

And I looked like I'm doing African Queen on that. Let me tell you, I've been fortunate enough to speak on cruise ships, but three days on that ship where we were baling water with empty bean cans was not my idea of a good time because I expected a little bit more upmarket than that. And we would camp on the side of the river and there would be hippos on the other side. And the guide would say, "Don't worry," because hippos are the most dangerous animal around. People said, "Don't worry. They can't swim." I went, "Yes, they can." I was wrong. Hippos cannot swim. They can only weigh in certainly deep water. So anyway, we finally arrived in Timbuktu and I made it. As an author, I wrote the littlest book I ever wrote was after 9/11 called Hope Happens, which is the opposite of shift happens, that shift with an F.

And I used to schlep that book around to libraries in third world countries all around the world. Some people take gnomes, so I take a book. At one stage in Timbaktu, there were 700,000 manuscripts, many of which have now been lost through Al-Qaeda about 10 years ago. It's very, very sad as an author to see that happened, even though the librarians often took some of the manuscripts and preserved them in the sand because it was so very, very dry there. But I also learned that much of the history of Mali is not written down, but passed on orally from generation to generation. And they say in Mali, when a old man dies, it is like a library has burnt down. And I think that is so true because oral history I think is important as written down history. And it's great that there's so much more of that happening now.

Much has been destroyed in Mali, but not the human spirit. Would I go to Mali now? Probably not, but not so much because of fear of it being in Islamic country, but because of fear of the terrorists that are there at the moment. So the question I would also ask you is, are fear of some places misplaced or valid? Right now, it depends on your own level of risk. Right now for me, that's very valid. But smiles, aren't they truly passports? I still believe they are. And that was in Mali. And then three years ago when Saudi Arabia opened up to women, I decided that I wanted to go there as a solo traveller. And it's the first time in my life I understood truly what it meant by smiling eyes when that was often all I could see with the women, the smiling eyes.

And it was an incredible experience. I swam, I drove a car, I played golf. I did all the things that women apparently couldn't do. And I had nothing but universal kindness and wrote an article for the Australian called Safer in Saudi than Sydney on Saturday night. And that's how I felt. Again, not saying I condoned the regime, but that's my experience. And that's exactly how I felt. I've subsequently spent a lot of time in the Middle East, primarily Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Republic. And I tell you what, being in the palace at Abu Dhabi is nothing like roughing it in Timbuktu in any way, shape or form. But I'm often asked, what's the friendliest country you've been to? And this would really probably surprise you because the friendliest country. I clicked out a little sooner than what I wanted to, but that's okay.

The friendliest country I've ever been to started on the Silk Road from China and it went through the stands and it ultimately arrived in Persia. And Persia is more often known these days as Iran. And that is the friendliest country I've been to, which I know some of you are probably thinking, really? Let me tell you, it may not be at the moment, but I went during the last administration of President Trump. And I went with a Jewish friend. We travelled independent, just the two of us. And I said to him, "Maybe you could change your name to Smith for the purposes of this trip with going through checkpoints and everything." But we never had a problem at all. Of course, I had my backpack. I had my Canadian maple leaf on. I had little koalas and kangaroos dangling off it because everybody assumes with my accent that I'm American.

But we saw when we arrived in Tehran, there was a 10 story building and it had huge banner on the side that says Death to America. And we're going, "This could be interesting." But what was more interesting to me is everywhere we went, people would come up to us and say, "Thank you for not believing your government and your newspapers. Please come to our home for dinner. Thank you for not believing your government and your newspapers. Please, you must have these cakes." And it happened time and time again. And as I say, I don't condone the regime of that country. I don't condone the regime of any country. That's beyond my pay grade. But the people there were just so universally kind and friendly. And people might say, maybe I'm a little bit naive to think that way. Many people I've spoken to have been there feel the same thing, but I wouldn't go there at the moment.

Nor would I go back to East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa in a hurry because do we view the world through a telescope or a microscope? This was in the Congo. And this was three years ago. We were in old Russian helicopters, military helicopters with Ukrainian pilots. And there were no seat belts and the chairs were just like garden chairs wiggling around. And the safety briefing, there were 17 of us in the helicopter. The pilot turned in his fatigues with a cigarette. Do not touch fuel tank.

I tell you what, everybody paid attention during that safety briefing. And as we skimmed over the treetops of the second largest rainforest in the world, we landed in the Congo. And people said, "Weren't you afraid of dying?" I said, "Well, I didn't really have time to think about it. It was an opportunity." And I so happened the prime minister of the Congo was on board. The Bulgarian captain of our luxury ship was on board where I was speaking at the time. And I thought if I go down in. I'm going to go down in style. I'm not going to be lying in a bed for months with tubes coming out of me because that's one of the things that I fear. And luckily that did not happen. In Uganda, which was not far away, we saw gorillas. We went trekking to gorillas in penetral forest.

So from here to where Hugh is, something would just jump out. And it was not like Disneyland. But I learned again from what Hugh just mentioned about how different species evolve. Gorillas and humans share about 98% of the same DNA. But then closer to, as in another place in, where was it? In this rainforest in the Congo, the chimps are the closest relatives we have. 98.8% the same DNA sequence as humans. I then did a little bit of research and what surprised me was all humans share 99.9% of the same DNA sequence. So if you look at it another way, there's only 0.1% that makes us different to our worst enemy, if you look at it that way. But again, I asked the question, are we more similar than we are different? And I've got to say, whether it's been a voodoo ceremony, travel has cast a spell on me.

And whether or not behind the mask, whether it be in Benin or Satom, behind the mask, behind the news, there's real people living real lives. They might be very poor, but where all kids should never have to worry about having enough food to eat, enough water to drink. Or even if you're not in Africa, if you're in Europe, or having to play in a playground with tanks in the playground, as I saw in Bosnia. A few days later, I went to next door neighbour, Serbia. And again, my conception, some of my own inbuilt stereotypes I had of refugees and that changed like that, because I arrived in a fairly comfortable three star hotel. And I looked, there was a park and it was at night and it was all lit up at night. And I said to the driver, I said, "Is there a party? Is there a festival?" He said, "No, it's Syrians that have come as refugees to our country."

So the next morning I went over to the park and I just started talking to some of these people because my perception of refugees, and again, it's my own ignorance showing, was all young men with beards and things like that. I went over to the park, I started talking to some of these people. They were real estate agents. They were doctors. They were lawyers. They were pharmacists. They were like my everyday middle class friends back here in Australia. And they were just extraordinary places, but ordinary people. And that was in 2015. So people say, "Well, why do you willingly visit countries that others are so desperate to leave?" Again, maybe it's just that sense of curiosity. Maybe it's a sense of living on the edge and feeling totally alive.

Or maybe it's just to appreciate home even more than I already do. But I also have a sense of adventure and I love skiing. So I also feel that when we go some, this is skiing in Lebanon. And I don't know how you feel, but I also often feel I'm more impacted when I see the news. If it's a country that I've been to. You've walked those same streets, you've had coffee in those same cafes, you've talked to those people. That impacted me much more. And I ended up skiing in Lebanon with a woman I met in Kuwait a week earlier, but that's another story. But as I'm standing on top of this mountaintop and being Canadian growing up in the Rockies, I just love mountains. And there was hardly anyone there, which I guess is understandable because on the other side of that mountain, there are bombs going off in Syria.

That's on the border of Lebanon and Syria. And again, all this stuff just brews away in my mind. And it's a very small mind. I have trouble assimilating why these things happen. But I love mountains and I never had a 21st birthday because that was the year my folks died. So I decided I wanted to celebrate my 40th in a really unique way by climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa. And they say life begins at 40. But as I began training, I thought, yeah, life might begin at 40, but everything else begins to wear out, spread out or fall out. And I'm not your real rugged outdoors type. And my idea of roughing it's when room service is late sometimes.

I do the camping thing when I can't do anything else. I hate sleeping bags. I just hate them with a passion. But my best friend said, "Isn't it great sleeping under the stars?" I went, "Yeah, the five stars." But every now and then we've got to step outside our comfort zone. So just come with me for a moment to Africa. Picture yourself standing on Kilimanjaro, 20,000 feet high or 6,000 metres if you're metric. 360 degree views, Kenya on one side, Tanzania on the other, the most beautiful sight I've ever seen on top of this glacier at the equator. Glacier that's melting unless we do our bit in terms of what we individually can for the environment. And we made the final ascent in the middle of the night. And they said they did that because of avalanche danger when the sun hit the peaks. But I know the real reason we did it in the middle of the night.

If we knew what we had to do in daylight, we wouldn't have done it, but we did. So for my 40th birthday, I did that. But life doesn't begin at 40. Life begins the day you're born and what you do every day since and the choices that you make. So for my 50th birthday, I decided to go to the Antarctic with Greg Mortimer, who was the first Australian to climb Everest. And that's our ship in the bottom and that is not digitised. And what's interesting about this photo was an hour earlier, I could not see my hand in front of my face. That's how quickly the climate can change in the Antarctic. That's how quickly things can change in our life if we don't appreciate every day. And the weather changes and life changes in a heartbeat. But so for my 60th, I had to find another mountain.

So it had to be Everest because Shredna Hillary endorsed one of my earlier books and I delivered, he's founded the Himalayan Trust, wasn't just the first person who put a footprint on Everest. He subsequently gave back to the community and built 26 schools and hospitals. So I took those books to deliver at the schools and hospitals along the way. I happened to be a John Denver fan, which isn't very popular, but I don't care. I love it. And one of his lines is, "In the eye of the mountain, all people are equal." And the subsequent line is, "In the eyes of all people, our souls we can see." And I think, again, mountains nature, they don't discriminate against anyone. And I feel fully alive on top of a mountain. I also felt fully alive at the lowest point on earth at the Dead Sea, floating on a saline solution that just separates Israel from Jordan.

So from top to bottom, but mostly in between. And again, that was almost the title for the book because I think sometimes we've got extremes of highs and lows left and right, but most of us live our life where? In between? In the middle. And I think it's a matter of understanding wherever we are, there's no place really like home. And we should be grateful for many of the first world problems we had because travel has certainly taught me gratitude of the things we take for granted, like clean water, clean air, freedom of speech. And there's nowhere like home, however humble it might be, and that might be in Mongolia. And yes, there's been fears and tears along the way, but one of my taglines now is a bad day in Australia's better than the good day in Timbuktu or many other places of the world, but we still need to deal with our problems, whether they be in Mongolia or wherever.

So I still had the problem of the A to Z, what am I going to do for the X? So the X is a cross section of things I wanted to say that didn't fit neatly into the narrative of other chapters. And I loved this quote by Von Humboldt, "The most dangerous view is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world." And so I've got the X, I've contained that, but I'm still missing the Y. The last country I'm needing is a Y chapter. And last year I decided I needed to see the Y. What was the Y going to be? Yemen. I thought of the former Yugoslavia and I thought, no, that's a cop out. But I thought, well, it's a bit dangerous to go to Yemen. But what do you think of when you think of Yemen? You think of war.

You think of poverty. You think of whothy rebels. Now when I think of Yemen, this is what I think of. Now, I know some of you might think I'm a little bit crazy. It's the only time I've ever ignored a smart traveller warning. Please don't tell Penny Wong. It's the only time I've ignored a smart travel warning, but I had done a lot of research beforehand and found a humanitarian flight to join. And imagine that the war in Yemen, the only one we see on the TV, imagine it's in the mainland of Australia. Imagine the war is between Adelaide and Melbourne. Where I was, was on a little island like Tasmania called Sokatra, a long way away from the war zone. And the only conflict I ever saw for awake was on the soccer field. And yes, they do compete for the Olympics, but they've never actually qualified.

And you can understand why that's some of the landscape. It was a very, very poor country. There's no question about that. But yet the children were beautiful and they never begged. Like many other third world countries we've gone to. They've never begged because guess what? They've never been conditioned by tourists to do so. I don't take candies or things like that, but I always take coloured pencils and things like that. Well, I took coloured pencils and I gave them to the kids, but guess what? They had no paper. And that was a real sort of shock to me. But you know what they do have in Yemen? They have over 700 endemic species that are unique and are nowhere else in the world, including the famous blood dragon trees. They've got no electricity, they've got no running water. I had no wifi for a week.

So I hope readers appreciate why I went to Yemen. Why not? But it was really, why not go when I can see views like this? And that was taken on my phone. And it's not doing a commercial for my phone, but it was just, I'm not a fancy photographer. I just take photos of what I see. It was an otherworldly place. The ecosystem was amazing. I mean, even David Attenborough and Michael Palin, who are both my travel heroes have not been there. The only thing we could do was charge the phone in the four wheel drive. And again, it's not digitised. I still sometimes can't believe I was there, but a year ago, that's exactly where I was. And some of you might think I'm an intrepid traveller. Let me tell you, I'm more tepid than an intrepid. I get terrified about snakes and spiders. I remember when I first came to Australia, I shrieked at a huntsman.

Until I realised it was harmless. Isn't that a little bit the same? We often fear what we don't understand. And isn't it the same with countries as well as spiders? We sometimes, if we understand things, we probably fear them a little bit less. We still should be cautious. I'm not saying that. But on that trip to Yemen, it was pretty hairy. The airport was bombed the day we left, the main airport, and everyone was killed. Luckily, I was at the regional airport, but I had no idea that this was even happening. And I'm not a mother Theresa in any way, shape, or form. I was on a humanitarian flight, but it was humanitarian only to get people to go from Yemen to the UAE for medical treatment that they couldn't get there. So I volunteered with street kids in Vietnam and an orphanage in India and in Africa, but I am so not the Mother Teresa type.

I don't do bodily fluids. I'm not good with little kids. So I figured the only way I could ever contribute anything to this world is purely financially. So that's why the royalties from this book go to Medicine Son Frontiers for people who risk their lives in situations I cannot even imagine doing in those situations. But as I said, I was blissfully unaware of everybody being killed at the main airport the day that we left the regional airport because it was like the old days. There was no wifi. Lots of times when we travelled, those of us in our room we travelled before the days of wifi. Lots of stuff was going on. We didn't even know about it. There was only six of us in our group. The next eldest was 31 years old. And so I was never worried about terrorism. My main concern about breaching the smart traveller advice was I might fall down one of these canyons because it was shale.

There's absolutely sheer drops. There's no medical facilities whatsoever and I wouldn't have been covered by insurance. But these amazing water holes and waddies and it was just amazing. And I'm a lifesaver at Manly Beach in Sydney and I love swimming in the ocean. So I though, why not go down and have a go? And I absolutely loved it. And I'd like to, before we open for questions, I'd like to share with you a little situation about swimming in Yemen. Not salmon fishing, just swimming in Yemen.

We had music to it, but we couldn't use it because of the licencing. Do you have a different view of Yemen looking at it like that? Absolutely. But basically we're all imperfect people in an imperfect world. The music we had was wonderful world. But that's one of the takeaways I've learned. It's probably the main thing I've learned from travel, that we often fear what we least understand. And really we're all imperfect humans in an imperfect world. And Hugh mentioned earlier about his book, he only mentioned it very briefly on kindness, just saying. And I just like to say that it's quite coincidentally, he's got the same quote on the back of his book that I have on the interior of my book. And my book had gone to print before I'd even read his. So it was quite coincidental. And I absolutely love that quote. "Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not."

And I sometimes have to remind myself about that because there's times when I've not been nearly as kind as I could be. But I just think that really all people and places seem peculiar until they become familiar. So just saying, and so also just saying that "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." And this photo's from the only continent on the world doesn't have any citizens from the Antarctic. So now I guess I'd like to open it up to questions. And when I do so, I'd really like you. We've got two people running around with microphones, but to please wait till you get the microphone before you answer your questions. Whilst everybody at once?

Audience member 1:

Thank you. Welcome. Oh no, I'm going to fall over. That's all right. All right. Good evening, Catherine.

Sharon Bulkeley:

Hi.

Audience member 1:

You've talked a lot of times about near experiences. When has been a frightening experience for you?

Catherine DeVrye:

Good question. It's not all sweetness and light when you travel. As you know, you can have lost passports and stolen phones and late trains, etcetera, etcetera. And I've had some pretty hairy ones. One of the most recent ones was in Bangladesh about 18 months ago when they had the revolution. And my phone got stolen. And also the government closed down the internet in the country because the prime minister had to leave an exile. And when I went to report my phone at the police station, there were like 17 police had been shot that day. So they had other priorities other than my phone. And because everything was on my phone, like my bank accounts and my QR codes for my two step verification, that was pretty scary. I was also pretty scared with lightning that hit a plane over Wisconsin. Being with five fake black policemen in Kenya that were all this big, it was pretty scary, but I managed to talk my way out of that.

But probably New York was pretty scary on a taxi ride in New York where I jumped out of the cab and left everything in the back seat because that was a very threatening situation for a woman. But the most frightening trip I have ever had was between Melbourne and Geelong, which may surprise you, but I was going to speak at a conference down at Deakin University and my phone rang and it was my GP saying that I had a malignant melanoma level four. And I immediately was out of that taxi and I was back in my mom's hospital room seeing myself in that bed with tubes and everything coming out of me. And that was the most frightening moment. So that's why I think we never know when we're going to pack our bags for the very last time. And we can be fearful and just stay in one little place where we can go out and see the world and experience life differently.

And that was absolutely terrifying. Other questions?

Audience member 2:

Thank you for a beautiful talk. I was interested if you were going to tell us the story about the person you met and went skiing with.

Catherine DeVrye:

Happy to. I was at Kuwait Airport. I'm not quite sure why I was at Kuwait Airport, but I was at Kuwait Airport and I think they called Kuwait, Kuwait because you're waiting in a queue. Q, wait. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting. And we had no mobile phones, no reception or anything in those days. So did something really unusual, started talking to the person behind me. And it turned out she was a Filipino descent who was working for the US government at their base in Kuwait. And we started chatting. We were there for a long time in Kuwait, let me tell you. We discovered we'd both been to Everest Base Camp in Montblanc around the same times. We both like walking. We both love mountains, etcetera. So she said, "Would you want to come up for dinner that night?" And I said, "Sure. Why not?"

And while we were having dinner that night, we started talking again. And I said I was going to Lebanon because Lebanon used to be the Paris of the Middle East. You could ski in the morning and you could swim and snorkel in the afternoon. She said, "Oh really? I like to ski too." So she came the week later, she came and met me in Lebanon. And we subsequently met Noman and she was in Australia last Christmas. And so again, the message in the Kuwait, that's in the Kuwait chapter. It's like put down your phone, talk to people, interact with people, and you'll be surprised at what might happen because strangers or friends we just haven't met. It's a question back there.

Audience member 3:

Thank you so much, Katherine. So my question is, you obviously have a mindset around kindness. What are some of the practises that you engage with that supports that? And how transferable are they when you're travelling?

Catherine DeVrye:

Ooh, that's a good question because I'd like to tell you that I have never been the ugly tourist. I've always been kind and patient. That's what I'd like to tell you. It would be an absolute lie. Times when you're stressed or you're sick or whatever, you can be the most horrible person in the world. And again, when you feel intimidated, you tend to have the attack thing. I guess I try and step back from it a little bit and try and breathe. But I think kindness, I found the most kindness I experienced was when I was the most vulnerable, which was interesting. And generally when I was alone or maybe with just one other person rather than in groups. And I sometimes travel in a group as well. But for myself, I have little post-its I mentioned earlier on my bathroom mirror. And I've got friends that are much kinder than I am.

And I try and follow their example. But some people are by nature a very kind person. I don't think that's me. I think I was a very, let's get this done person. Let's get out of this neighbourhood person. Let's make a difference in the corporate world. But I think because I started life in an orphanage, I've got this innate thing of wanting to give back. And I don't know if that's kindness or if that's ego or whatever it is, but I don't really have an answer to. I know I should be kinder than I am, but I was swearing at someone that cut in on me this afternoon just quietly. He didn't know. I thought, oh, he's maybe dealing with different issues. But I really didn't. I thought about that five minutes later, not at the time. And things can escalate. So I'm sorry I don't have a very good answer to that question.

Audience member 4:

Hi Cath. I'll catch up with you later. It's Diane.

Catherine DeVrye:

Oh, hi. How are you?

Audience member 4:

Good. Cathy, you're definitely a traveller, not a tourist. And you and I have talked about this before, but do you think tourism is a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, everybody says tourism creates jobs and helps developing countries get some income, but then you talked about children learning to beg because of tourists. So what's your view on tourism? Good or bad?

Catherine DeVrye:

Well, I would have to say good or I'd be a hypocrite, wouldn't I? But I think Tony Wheeler was asked that question once of Lonely Planet, and I remember hearing him at a writer's festival somewhere and he was obviously challenged on that question much more so. And tourism is like so many countries would not have any economy. They rely very much on tourism. But then on ABC Radio today on Radio National, they were talking about dark tourism and how that was maybe being disrespectful. And I think overall, I have to think that tourism is good, travelling is good, but as long as you don't go as a privileged person, as long as you understand that you're a guest in that country, patience is not my strong point. I was at the back of the queue when it was handed out, I'm sure. But I think if you understand you're a guest in that country, you're bringing something into that country and you're leaving with more, you're giving more than what you leave with, I think it's a good thing.

But I get really annoyed when I. I remember just one time I was in Laos and this group I was with, there was one guy that was bargaining with this woman with a child who was bargaining about dollars. And it really annoyed me. I just wanted to slap him because a dollar to him meant nothing. To her, it meant probably the kid ate for another week. So I think tourism is good if you're a good tourist and it's not so good if you're a bad tourist.

Yeah.

Audience member 5:

Is there a place you return to and why?

Catherine DeVrye:

Oh, lots of places I would like to return to. And the why when all of them would be to see more of what I've seen, because some of my visits have been a little bit superficial. I was really pressed for that question recently for an article and it would have to be Oman. Oman, I've been to many, many times as a guest of their government and speaking at conferences, but also just going off backpacking. And as I said, I'm driven by landscape. Oman has the most beautiful beaches. It has beautiful mountains. It has beautiful deserts. It has beautiful wadies. It has beautiful people. It has a beautiful opera house. It has a deep culture. It's clean. It's safe. And I would go back there in a heartbeat. But there are many other places I would like to go to as well. But I guess probably now just looking at, maybe time for one more question and if no more questions.

Is she running back there? I can't see. Sorry.

Audience member 6:

Hi, Catherine. I was wondering whether you had a preference to travel alone or with a companion and why? And what would make a good travel companion?

Catherine DeVrye:

Someone once said, and I wish it was me and I wish I could remember who it was. It said "it's easier to find a good travelling companion than get rid of one, a bad one." I have been fortunate. I've got one travel companion who just happens to be in the audience tonight. And she comes with me every Australia day and she's just fabulous. I often travel alone because I think I meet more people and I'm more interactive and I have more time to think when I'm alone. I love travelling with a good travel companion. I don't want to travel with someone who thinks I'm going to be their tour guide or who has this sense of what restaurant we're going to, the best restaurant or the best this. So what's the Instagramable ice cream shop? So a good travel companion, this is really honest, is someone who wants to do what I want to do.

No, I can't believe I said that. But a good travel companion is, I think it's important to set the expectations ahead of time, like what you're both after. I like very active holidays and that you come to an agreement, we might do some things together, we might do something separately. I think so. But I also joined, one of my friends recently went to Saudi on an organised tour and she's, oh, you'll just think I'm such a wimp. You'll think I'm pathetic. I said, no, I think it's a really good idea. I probably would've seen more on an organised tour than I did travelling solo, but three and a half years ago there weren't any organised tours going there. So I don't judge one way or the other way. I think it depends. Everybody says you're so active, adventure. I can't believe you love cruising. I love being on small ship cruises where I only have to unpack once and I don't need to worry about anything else.

So again, it just depends on the nature of the holiday. And I guess another question that sort of comes to me, and when Sharon and I were first speaking, you used the term social cohesion. And one of the questions that I was asked at Willoughby Literary Festival a few weeks ago was, is social cohesion even possible? And I thought about it and I thought, no, have you ever been to a body corporate meeting? No. Or have you ever had Uncle Fred drunk at Christmas dinner? So social cohesion isn't possible even within our own families, our own communities. It probably isn't viable elsewhere. But now I'd like to ask you a question. And the question is the question I asked at the very beginning when I pondered the question. What if our world was kinder than headlines suggest? In answer to that first question, what do you think?

I think it might be. And if for every one of you, your answer might be different, but I believe people everywhere are kinder behind the headlines. I believe people everywhere are kinder than their governments. It's not a big idea. It's a simple idea that we're all connected. And I told you the first line in the book is smiles or passports through deserts and visas to all foreign places. I'd like to finish with the last segue in the book, which was a poem I wrote. And I'm not a particularly good poet, but it just sort of came to me one day. And I then had a young, this is again during COVID, a young friend of mine who's a musician in Nashville, he had to come back and his dream was devastated with the COVID. And his mom said to me, "Could you maybe, he's maybe struggling a bit mentally." And I thought, "Well, so am I." But working together with this young guy who's a fabulous musician, he took the last poem in my book and I think he turned it into a very, very good song because the poem is from Timbaktu to Katmandu.

When Moon Shines in the Sky. From snowy peaks to sandy dunes, we all love, we laugh, we cry. The names of both those far-flung lands avoke mystique so grand were prejudice flaws to awe in ancient far flung lands. Beneath horizons, far and near, dreams take detours, hope, quells fear. From melting ice to drifting sands, some random stranger lends a hand. Kindness shown when least expected, showing that we're all connected.

Presentation (singing):

From Timbuktu to Katmandu, one moon shines in the sky. For snowy peaks into desert dunes. We live, we laugh, we cry. Beneath horizons far and near, dreams take detours, hope quells fear. From melting ice to drifting sands, some random stranger lends a hand. Kindness shown when least expected, proving that We're all connected.

Catherine DeVrye:

Thank you. Thank you very much. And we are all connected. We're all connected and thank you to Sharon and her amazing team for bringing us all together and connecting us tonight. Hugh for your very kind and generous remarks. You've just been a legend. And to all of you for coming along and those of you out there online, I hope you all leave with less fear and more optimism of our common humanity and wishing you all joyful journeys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Sharon Bulkeley:

Thank you, Catherine, for that absolutely wonderful lecture. And thank you to our audience for coming tonight and for those thoughtful questions. If you'd like to know more about Catherine's adventures, you can get a copy of her book upstairs at the world's best bookshop. And she will be up there happy to sign them for you and I'm sure to swap travel stories with you. So thank you again for coming tonight. We look forward to seeing you at future library events or out there on the road less travelled. And we hope that you've learned something about travel, about yourselves, and about how being open-hearted and curious can really set you on new adventures. So thank you very much.