Away with Gina Chick: ‘I like to travel with a parrot. I get to feel like a pirate’
Gina Chick has a wise take on riding the waves of travel.
“Things happen on holiday – your stuff gets stolen, the car breaks down, you miss your flights, there’s some giant weather event,” she says. “But afterwards they’re the things that bring you together, that you remember and tell stories about for the rest of your life. And I love the holidays that turn into an adventure. They’re my favourite.”
Chick knows a thing or two about adventure. She won the first season of Alone Australia after surviving 67 days – completely solo – in the Tasmanian bush. It was a feat she’d been training for her whole life. Before her star-making turn on reality TV, Chick spent a third of each year abroad teaching dance meditation retreats, a third running wilderness programs in the Australian outback and the remainder of her time living out of a seven-metre Toyota bus, driving wherever she felt like. Despite picking up $250,000 in prize money on Alone, Chick still lives in that bus, preferring the nomadic lifestyle over creature comforts.
Related: Three things with Gina Chick: ‘I have many blades of various shape, size and degrees of lethality’
For the moment, Chick is back in Tasmania, perched on the edge of the ocean and working on her next book (her first, a memoir called We Are the Stars, was published last year). Here Chick tells us about the most memorable moments of her unconventional life on the road.
Who makes an excellent travel companion?
Usually, they’re not human. If I’m going around Australia, I like to travel with a parrot. I get to feel like a pirate. It’s a conversation starter. And it’s always happy to see me.
If I’m going international, I like travelling with a good guitar. I am a totally crap guitarist but if I ever get stuck in an airport and pull out a really good guitar, every guitarist around pricks up their eyes and their ears and comes to find me. The next thing you know, there’s 20 people sitting around some amazing musician who’s absolutely going off. The hours pass and it’s just kumbaya, baby.
What’s your earliest childhood holiday memory?
Camping – all of the family holidays were camping. My parents were teachers, so every school holiday we’d drive off somewhere to sleep in those old canvas, A-frame tents. I remember being in the back of the van with my sister and our dog, who farted the entire way. Then we’d get to the camping area and eat braised steak and onion out of a can for dinner, which for some reason tastes amazing when you’re camping and like a dog’s arse when you’re not.
Describe your most memorable travel meal – good, bad or just surprising.
I was in France to teach a retreat and was driving through the countryside when I saw a roadkill squirrel. I’d never eaten squirrel and wanted to try it. That night, I made a fire, put the squirrel on a stick and cooked it, feeling like Robin Hood. It tasted a bit like nutty rabbit.
What’s the most relaxing place you’ve ever visited?
South-western Tasmania for 67 days on Alone Australia. Just kidding! It’s the Harbin Hot Springs in California. It was this amazing hot spring that I went to in 2002 on the way to Burning Man, where I spent hours moving from the hottest hot pools to cold pools and back again. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more relaxed in my life.
And the most stressful?
That would be getting altitude sickness driving from Salt Lake City across the Rockies to Denver, Colorado. I get altitude sickness at anything over 5,000 feet, but I didn’t think about that because I was going to visit a lover in Denver for one night. I was like, “Yeah, I can drive!”
I was sick the entire way. It was probably one of the most tormented trips I’ve ever done. But it was fun with the lover, even though I wasn’t really up to scratch. We did our best.
What is your holiday ritual?
When I’m travelling internationally, I always try to swim in whatever their local water is because that’s part of how I get over jet lag. I find that if I can swim in the water, my system calibrates to the time zone. It might be psychosomatic but I think it works.
And if I can, I hire a car and drive rather than fly to places because I want to be able to explore. I will always look for places where I can see a horizon, because I need an infinite edge. I will always try to do something risky, something that’s going to push me outside my comfort zone. And eat local. Muddle through on the language. Fall in love. Don’t die.
What’s one item you always put in your suitcase?
I always take what looks like a Swiss army knife but it is full of tools for carving wood. And then when I’m travelling, I will find bits of wood and carve spoons out of them, which I bring home as souvenirs.
What’s your biggest travel regret?
The world has changed, which means that for me as a solo female traveller, there are places I just can’t go now. My aunt, who is now 89, hitchhiked through the Middle East alone in her 20s, about 65 years ago now. I’m sad that is something I am unlikely to be able to do.
Gina Chick appears at All About Women at the Sydney Opera House on 9 March
