Morning:
8°c
Jamie Neale, the Muswell Hill backpacker lost for 10 days in the Australian bush, is doubtless relieved to have been found before succumbing to dehydration or unpleasant Antipodean wildlife.
Still, I wonder if his father's reaction won't remind Jamie of the reason he probably set out for the territory in the first place: "All because he's the only teenager in the world who goes out without his mobile phone."
In a world shrunk by technology and parental angst, you can't blame a young man for running hard to escape suburban life.
Time was when a gap year before university was an exotic luxury, mainly the preserve of public schoolboys taking the rest of the year off after autumn entrance exams for Oxbridge.
I was one of just a handful at my comprehensive who put off scurrying straight on the hamster wheel of higher education. So it was that I set off one evening in 1983 for a Channel ferry and a crisp September morning in Paris.
It was pretty easy to escape both your peers and your family (you just didn't call them and they couldn't contact you, there being no mobile phones or email). Travelling around Europe with a girlfriend, I made an unscheduled detour into Hungary for a few days.
When I finally called home from Salzburg after more than a week out of touch, my mother was distraught. Standing seething at a payphone in the dark, I resolved to hit the road again as soon as I possibly could.
Flights were a lot more expensive and travelling long-haul required serious planning. Added to that, the time-honoured overland route to India had been closed by the Iranian revolution and Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
So, supported only by savings from a few months as a parks department labourer, I stuck to Europe.
But it still gave me a love of being on the road that I rarely recapture now with small children in tow; when I do, just standing by a mountain roadside with a rucksack on my back and my thumb out brings a grin to my face.
Today a gap year is still essentially a middle-class privilege but one that is commonplace - indeed there are whole travel companies devoted to helping you fill out your year to the maximum.
Surfing in South Africa, whale shark conservation in Mozambique, or more feelgood options such as Venezuelan horse-riding therapy for disabled children? You can buy it all.
For a gap year has become another commodity. As a result, it is that much harder to escape your peers, even if you can bear to tear yourself away from Facebook - or indeed to impress them with your traveller's tales.
My one about trading trainers and cigarettes for Red Army kit in Chernenko's Moscow? You'll have to do better than that with 18-year-olds who've lived with indigenous tribes in Borneo or taught snowboarding in New Zealand.
Yet it's more important now than ever that teenagers take time off on their own. Despite their superficial independence, parents today are more paranoid about their children.
I doubt many modern teenagers get the freedom I did, for example, to take off to Berlin for a week aged 16 with a couple of friends (I did call home, to get my O-level results).
Even the friend of mine who, in his early twenties, ended up with tuberculosis in southern India, nursed back to health over several weeks by an ayurvedic sage, would doubtless have been air-ambulanced back to safety these days.
And if you don't make a break for the border at 18, are you really going to want to in your twenties, with job worries and student debts?
Good on you, Jamie Neale: leave the mobile switched off and keep on running.
Reader views (3)
Unfortunately, after going on Australian television expressing his appreciation for his amazing rescue, Jamie happily made $200K from the local media for 'his story' and absconded with the full amount. He didn't honour his offer to repay the cost of $100K that his rescue incurred. I hope other travellers will not be so greedy nor unappreciative. It does not leave a good taste in anyone's mouth in Sydney.
VE, Sydney
- Vanessa, Sydney Australia, 30/10/2009 13:46
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As an ex RAF Search and Rescue NCO and a current bushcraft and survival instructor, I'm very cynical after 12 days he looks far, far better than he should do. I've pulled people of the hills here in the UK that have looked in far worse state than him.
In terms of survival the main priorities are water, shelter and food, without food he can last 3 weeks, without water 3 days. In some reports he's stated that he obtained water from the rain - this would provide him with good clean water, however, with that amount of rain how did he avoid exposure and hypothermia? He has also stated that he obtained water from streams, any water from that type of source is suspect unless treated with chemicals or by boiling.
In his initial interview he says he 'guessed' at edible foods - a very lucky guess considering the amount of inedible foods in that area, he later states that he knew the plants he was eating were edible.
For me there are too many contradictions for me to accept this at face value. Given his background he really should have known far better.
As for comments about taking his mobile phone, given the lack of coverage it would be dead weight, he could have hired an emergency locator beacon, these are readily available for hire for this eventuality.
I do hope he will be repaying the cost incurred rescuing him from his stupidity.
- Brett Day, Chelmsford, UK, 30/10/2009 12:46
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At last a voice of reason. Everything I've read since Jamie was found has been so synical - either he's faked it or been an idiot. So many of us were so worried for such a long time and couldn't really believe he would survive, but he did. It shoud be good news. I wouldn't be surprised if what he's come out to is as scarey as being stuck in the woods and wish he could carry on with the trip he'd planned without bother.
- Mo Julian, London, 30/10/2009 12:46
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