Forever Day: How to melt Swiss Cheese into the Australian Pie
What if life wasn't about working more to buy more, but about discovering the day that never ends?
From Switzerland to Australia, Forever Day is a comic-mythic journey across decades, countries, and digital frontiers, where a backpack becomes a passport to love, belonging, and purpose. From migration tales to publishing mayhem at USA TODAY, from auction lore to magpie song, this story invites readers to step off the treadmill and join the search for a life worth repeating.
Growing up in the kitchen of a Swiss pub, I believed the day you die was your "forever day". I wanted to find my own. I drove a hippie bus into the '70s, one foot on the corporate ladder, the other in the sand. I split with my girlfriend, quit my job, and boarded a migrant boat bound for everywhere.
There had to be more to life.
Onboard, I fell for an Australian school teacher. She was smart, beautiful and came with an entire continent. I was going to make it all mine.
While the Embassy slept, I wrote a memoir about my first trip down under and stitched up a stringer contract with a press agency. The book got accepted. The visa took a lot longer.
We married on arrival, set up house among the magpies and gum trees, and travelled the country like the Leyland Brothers on a budget. I wrote another few books with a Budgie ringing the typewriter's margin bell. But the '80s arrived, and reality hit. I needed a paying job. Centrelink offered pearlers. I bought a chicken bar instead and ran it with a crew of ex Telecom staffers on workers comp.
A Hungarian spice turned it into a franchise. The Hungarians sent me back with a suitcase full of cash. The Italians followed suit. I deposited it all in Swiss banks and multiplied, kids, chickens, complications. I became publishing manager for USA Today's global push and allegedly laundered as much money as Rene Rivkin on the side.
We've had our ride on the wild dragon; Janine said it was time to go home, stop chasing the next big thing and settle down in Queensland. I stumbled upon my lifetime's calling: antique hand tools, and I never thought of it as work for a single day.
Time just rolls on when you find your very own Forever Days.
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