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It is summer, the perfect time to search for a permanent home-base in Melbourne, Australia. I have a dream: a nurturing base where I plan and take regular leaps into the unknown. I love this distantly located island-continent-country but overseas travel fuels my spirit, especially during winter. I gladly commit to my dream and sublet. As I move between short-term sublets, I begin to experience life as a traveller in this antipodean city where I live, work and play. Minimalism becomes a necessity as I constantly explore new neighbourhoods and make new friends across the expansive breadth of this sprawling city – from beach-side suburbs, inner-city havens for foodies and music lovers’ to tree-lined sleepy outer suburbs. I delight in this rare opportunity to experience such variety and diversity. Regardless, I still need to encourage patience and persistence until I realise my dream. So, I actively turn up my curiosity for everything outside of my comfort zone and dial down longings for domesticity and routine. Then, winter arrives and, just like clockwork and the urge to travel overseas also kicks in. Grey skies, skeletal trees, icy winds and constant drizzle dampen Melbourne’s charm. Chilly Antarctic winds cut to the bone. My muscles involuntarily contract. Feelings of homesickness soon follows the familiar winter-induced heart pang for the tropics where I grew up. Pre-empting the winter blues, I’ve made tentative plans for a South African tour, a leap into the unknown. Somehow, the literature coordinator at an international arts festival located in Bloemfontein South Africa caught wind of my writing and performance work. She invited me to perform and run workshops at the festival. Bloemfontein is off the beaten track but I am open to the experience also because I’m keen to re-visit Cape Town and Johannesburg. I applied for a travel grant but did not hold my breath: as a freelance artist living in a very competitive creative city, I remain forever prepared for rejection but I still desperately want to travel. Two months later, on a freezing cold late afternoon, I’m still wearing pyjamas and lying in bed when I receive the email. I brace myself and open it. Life force floods my muscles. I leap out of bed and dance. Within an hour, I book my flights and invoice the travel fund. Ten days later, fully recovered from jetlag, I am in Cape Town’s Waterfront District. I sip on South African wine, view amazing African contemporary visual art and network with my peers at the world renowned Zeitz MOCA. Just four days away from a flight to Johannesburg and 8 days out from a road trip into Bloemfontein, that stuck-in-a-career-rut feeling and homesickness are both distant memories. “Where?” One artist interrupts me and smirks. “Bloemfontein?” Another says, visibly confused. “Nobody goes there.” My host explains, bluntly. I did. I felt nervous and curious. I leapt into the unknown. It was unforgettable. I met amazing artists in the rural birthplace of South African Apartheid and the anti-Apartheid movement.