June 2001. I’m on an overnight Greyhound bus from Cairns to Townsville. A typical post-university year travelling in Australia and New Zealand has taken an unwelcome turn after an equally typical relationship breakup.
Initially there had been no plans to follow that year’s British & Irish Lions tour, even though I had been enthralled by the classic encounter against the Springboks four years earlier. With my newfound freedom it seemed logical to head south, a couple of hundred miles down the coast, to see the legendary tourists in action.
