2020 was the year most of us stayed home and the year just about all of us want to forget, unless you are Melbourne journalist and long time traveller Ken Haley.
In 2020, the wheelchair-bound author mapped out an enticing year-long menu of travel destinations, comprising the Caribbean island states for main course, with Central America for dessert.
But Haley had barely left our shores when something called "novel coronavirus" began to loom.
Then the whole trip turned into obstacle course. Cuba was a breeze, but then the world went into COVID lockdown mode and he had to decide whether to push on.
As a pioneer wheelchair traveller, Haley knew exactly what to do. He took the brakes off and continued. His new book, The One That Got Away (Transit Lounge, $32.99) shares his fascinating travel adventures around the world during the height of COVID.
His stay overseas was not without issues. His trip was hindered by lost luggage, a robbery, hotel quarantine 'detention', along with other seemingly endless COVID roadblocks, as well as some health challenges that he warns readers to brace for.
But Haley said the "most vital currency any traveller can have is confidence".
"If I thought I was going to be robbed, I probably wouldn't leave my home let alone travel," he said. "But I didn't even realise I'd been robbed until later.
"I rent my home and had to arrange for someone to be there to look after it. Because I was travelling for a year and because of my paraplegia, I couldn't take a year's worth of neurological care with me so that person had to be able to send it to me as I needed it overseas.
"Thanks to COVID, of course I couldn't get it and I did need hospital treatment which is the last thing a traveller wants overseas.
"Fortunately I was in Canada when I needed hospital treatment. We've all heard the horror stories about medical treatment in America and it would have been far worse anywhere else."
Haley's humour and self-deprecation are never far off as he duly records his efforts to remain a 'coronatourist' and to not hide the challenges he faces as a wheelchair traveller.
"As COVID took hold of the world, it was interesting to see how the world coped. Unlike Australia, the Caribbean has 20 nations and every one had their own version of the WHO (World Health Organisation) songbook. It could be a nightmare.
"While there was so much confusion world-wide, each country had different ways of testing."
Haley turned an accident of timing into a rollicking, but dangerous adventure.
The result is a humorous and penetrating insight into a world grappling with an unforeseen calamity and a rare and empathetic travel book.
A Walkley Award-winning journalist, Haley is one of Australia's most widely travelled authors. To date, he has visited 143 countries at length and there's more to come.
He became a paraplegic in 1991, but as far as he is concerned the only difference this has made is that he now observes the world from a sitting position.
The One That Got Away is a wonderful travel memoir that gives hope that, like Haley, we too might one day be able to venture abroad again and so he will again in 2024 with Central America on the agenda.
"I did this journey in my mid-60s, turning 66 in Florida. I will be 70 in 2024 when I hope to hit the road again," he said. "I might have to drop into South America just because I will be nearby."
He had no plans to write a book about this trip.
"I've been away on my long trips many times over the years where I've planned to write a book and it's never happened," he said. "I really love travel books too.
"I've got diaries at home from China written in the 1980s in beautiful copperplate detailing my travels. Nowadays I can barely scrawl but I keep notes of places, people, experiences.
"But this book had to happen."
A Walkley Award-winning journalist, Ken Haley has worked on the foreign desk of The Times, Sunday Times and Observer in London, at the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain and on the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
He has also worked at Melbourne's The Age and as a newspaper sub-editor in Athens, Johannesburg and Windhoek, Namibia and as a university tutor and freelance editor. His previous books are Emails from the Edge: A Journey Through Troubled Times and Europe @ 2.4km/h.
The One That Got Away: Travelling in the Time of COVID (Transit Lounge Publishing), by Ken Haley; RRP $32.99
Therese Murray
Wordsmith. Senior journalist. Editor. I have a proven track record in helping people and communities solve their problems. My career is all about telling stories.
Wordsmith. Senior journalist. Editor. I have a proven track record in helping people and communities solve their problems. My career is all about telling stories.
