A walkabout is a rite de passage, or a ritual of transition. The word walkabout comes from an English translation of an aboriginal Australian word.

It describes the Aboriginal process for dealing with major life changes or transitioning from one phase of life to the next. For example, the transition from boyhood to manhood is marked by a walkabout. Likewise, the death of a loved one may require a walkabout as a way of coping with and transitioning to a new life without the loved one.  In modern white Australia it is now used to humorously  describe every event where a man appears to be wandering aimlessly. For example I have heard it used  to describe a two week bender.  But its history is much more serious and meaningful than a drunken binge.

The walkabout, as I understand it, is generally described as the "rite de passage" of a young man from boyhood to manhood. In this ritual the death of the boy is celebrated by the tribe to signify the end of that part of his life. Ritual mourning of tribal members is encouraged to reinforce the message that the boy is now gone.

The boy then walks alone into the outback, the vast desert wilderness of central Austrailia. While wandering alone he is supposed to confront his demons, and his aspirations and reconcile them into a path that he will travel in his new life. He is also supposed to identify those strenghts within him, that will help him survive alone in the wilderness, so that he may employ those strengths for  the good of the tribe when he returns.

Supposedly, the young man will not return until this path has been chosen and his particular gifts or strengths have been identified, and since the boy is now dead, the new path is the path of the man. So the boy is determining, on his own, what kind of man he wants to be and how he will become that man.

The return of the boy from walkabout is then celebrated as the birth of the man.

This site is about my walkabout.  My personal journey from one phase of my life to the next.  It is about the mechanics of that journey, where I went physically, but also about the inner journey.  What I left, what I discovered, but more importantly, where I want my life to go after words.  What I want my new path and goals to be, and how I will start my next phase of life.

Read, First You Die, about why I went on Walkabout

More about Rites of Passage