Flight of Fancy podcast: Things you’d only know if you travelled in the '80s and '90s

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This was published 5 years ago

Flight of Fancy podcast: Things you’d only know if you travelled in the '80s and '90s

By Ben Groundwater
How we travel has changed dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years.

How we travel has changed dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years.Credit: Shutterstock

Here's a thing you probably haven't done for about 20 years: write down the serial numbers of your travellers cheques. Remember when you had to do that? When you'd go down to the bank and buy a whole sheaf of cheques and then record the serial numbers so you could cancel them if they got lost or stolen?

That used to be such an ingrained part of the travel experience, and now it's just disappeared. Gone. In the same way so many rituals of travel have vanished in the last 20 or 30 years: using a map and figuring out how to refold it; writing aerograms; getting film developed; making a plan to meet up with people in three months' time and actually having to stick to it.

Travel has changed. Immeasurably. Irreversibly. Most times it's changed for the better, but in some ways, it might also have changed for the worse.

On this episode of Flight of Fancy, I chat to fellow travellers Ute Junker and Liam Phelan as we cast our minds back to travel the way it once was. This is all about the trials and tribulations, the joys and the hardships of travelling the world back in the 1980s and 90s.

If you remember poste restante, then this episode is for you. If you remember deutschmarks and guilders, if you remember cashing travellers cheques, trying to refold maps, sending faxes to reserve hostel beds, carrying rolls of film, and clutching a guidebook that you called your Bible, then this episode is for you. Pop on your Walkman and enjoy.

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