I had a backpack stuffed with travel accessories, a head full of adventure fantasies and barely a hair growing on my chin. My gap year was slotted neatly between the first and second years of university. My 60-litre pack was crammed with a tent, sleeping bag, pocket-knife, pegless washing line, a couple of shirts and a week's worth of my luckiest undies. I didn't know where I was going, only that I was going. At 19 it was a rite of passage, I wanted to prove myself and come home a man.

I had a round the world ticket starting in Sydney, with four stops over three continents. I didn't know how long the trip would take me and I didn't care. I was on the road to discovery. Striding alone through the departure gate I left my tearful mum, friends, family, and university routine behind me. I was determined to be independent.

My first stop was Bangkok. Thrilling over the freedom of it all, I sat in a sweaty backpackers' bar, made new friends and felt like I could achieve anything.

Flying out of Thailand made me tingle. There was no one waving goodbye and there would be no one waiting to greet me. Onward! I hitched, boarded buses and caught trains through western and eastern Europe, living on the cheap, learning about other cultures, and experiencing a series of wild, serendipitous times.

Morocco and the Middle East were a real eye-opener. I couldn't get enough of the food, smells, sights, people and places. I drank masses of mint tea with local families, drove over the Atlas Mountains and into the hazy expanse of the Sahara Desert, learned smatterings of different languages and nurtured the new dreadlocks that coiled down my back. It wasn't until I found myself embroiled in a soccer riot in Damascus that I decided to head back to the west.

Over summer I stayed in a squat in Holland, drummed and danced at European music festivals and fell in love in the bars of Prague. Then, I winged my way to another region of the world: Indonesia. For the next two months it was all rice paddies, tiny villages, beaches, poverty and paradise.

When I returned triumphantly to Australia, my gap year quickly became two years as I decided to continue my travels around that vast sunburnt land for 12 months.

Then it was time to continue my studies. But this time, when I sat in my tutorials and lectures, I had a world of new experiences and references points and a better understanding of my reasons for being there.