Local author Sean Doyle wrote the book Night Train to Varanasi - India with my daughter. Sean speak to Denise Alison of Humans of Lismore about his life and inspiraton.

Sean Doyle:

“I was born in Newcastle in 1962. My ancestors on my fathers side are Irish from the area of Limerick. I think it’s sort of Angela’s Ashes country.

They really corner the market in bleak. Irish Catholicism is a lot darker than the others. There’s a lot of pain, alcohol, poverty from my fathers side. Also very much the same from my mothers side, catholic but hailing from Scotland and Finland mainly.

Again alcohol, domestic violence and some madness. It’s a pretty dark family background to be honest with you but things had picked up by the time I arrived. 

I do have family connections to this region that pre date me significantly. My Grandma spent some years in Casino as a girl in the 1910s. She married in 1926. She remembered singalongs around the piano and lots of card games.

My Uncle was a Marist brother for 20 years. He taught at Trinity in the 50’s. In the 80’s my mum lived in Kingscliff and I loved visiting when I came back from Asia. She would give me all the food I love and pamper me.

I could be a boy again which was really nice. I was very close to my mum. 

When I was 3 we moved to Cairns, mainly because my father wanted to get away from his older brother who were both working in the family business which was, not surprisingly…alcohol. We moved to Cairns in 1966, mid summer.

I spent all my years in Cairns. I loved it as a child because I could just lay in nature. This was mid 60’s and it was beautiful but when I hit my teens I was pretty much bored. It was a small pond. 

I didn’t really value the values that surrounded me living in a country town at the time so I left very soon after I finished Yr 12.

I went to Newcastle then on to Sydney Uni and studied art for 4 years where I got an Honours degree in Literature. I had a great time living in Enmore, Newtown, that area. I really enjoyed those years.

My mate Tony and I took our bikes to Melbourne. We had planned to go cycling in Tassie.

It was early 1981 and my girlfriend had dumped me. I was feeling sorry for myself so the trip was a good thing. Tony had a Penpal as lots of us did did back then. She was a girl living in Melbourne and they had arranged that we would stay with her for a few days before Tassie.

Through her we met a group of people I really clicked with. I met some great people, a girl I had a crush on and a guy called Vince who really inspired me just by being who he was. I told Tony I didn’t want to go to Tassie, I wanted to stay where I was. He was ok with that and went on to Tassie. He had a great time and then a bit later Vince and I hit the road cycling. We took the train from Bairnsdale, cycled the highway over to Mt Hotham, down to Bright and on to Wangaratta. They were unsealed roads which made it a tough ride then but glorious country.

I got back to Sydney, met a girl and we were living together before long. She was my girlfriend for 5 years. We travelled together.

My girlfriend had family connections in Sri Lanka and her father organised some great connections over there. We had a week staying in Colonial Raj luxury with servants who wore all white.

The drinks trolley would appear with everything you wanted and then the magnificent meal would come out. We were very spoilt. We went on to India which was a whole other level of experience. Just recently I had an event in Bangalow with my daughter Anna. We both spoke and I asked the people in the audience if they’d been to India.

At least 40 out of the 50 people put up their hand. I asked who loved it and lots put up their hands. I asked who hated it and a lot of the same people put their hands up..and so do I.

That’s India! It takes you to heaven and hell, like nowhere I’ve ever been.

The Northern Rivers is rich with fellow India lovers, I guess partly to the hippy background of the Aquarius festival but also the alternative values the hippie movement brought along.

So back to our trip. I was in South India for 2 months with my ex girlfriend Amanda and they were very challenging times for me. I saw very disturbing sights.

Amanda went home after a month and I stayed on but didn’t cope very well with the pressures and the challenges such as the poverty and the attention. I was 22 and I was not sufficiently grounded in myself to be able to handle the attention.

At that time there were far few foreigners around and when you are alone people are more likely to approach you, which normally is fantastic.

Nowadays my preferred mode of travel is alone because you are more accessible to the place and the people but that was too much, too young for me back then. 

I met some pommy backpackers in Madras and we went to the cricket to watch the England test match in Madras which was wonderful. The Indian crowd were particularly lively that day and the England Batters were doing very well.

Because I was with the pommy guys we’d cheer whenever they hit a 4 or a 6. People assumed I was a pom and the people around us started pelting us with bits of fruit. I walked out like a fruit salad and had to basically find the nearest cow to lick it off.

I went back to Sydney and I just couldn’t get India out of my mind. If I met someone who’d been there I would want to talk to them about their travels. After 2 years I flew back alone into Delhi. I hadn’t been to the North before.

I arrived at night, checked into a hotel, got up and walked out onto the street the next morning and felt like I’d come home. It was an incredible feeling that I’d never had before… or since. It was overwhelming. I was completely unprepared for that.

I had a wonderful couple of months in India at that time. I was young and in my prime. I went to Nepal that trip as well. 

The following year in 1987, I met Micky who became my life partner. Micky is from Copenhagen in Denmark originally. I had first met Micky in 1982 when I was with Amanda. Micky was here in Australia visiting a friend, Julie. I met Micky in a terrace house in Camperdown on August 2, 1982.

Micky immediately enchanted me with her passion, her enthusiasm for life, the fact that she had travelled, because at that time I had not been overseas.

I just wanted to listen to her adventures forever. We were both with someone else at the time but in 1987 we travelled together in Asia.

We went to Denmark eventually, we went to the Americas where I worked in New York illegally as a night guard one block from 42nd street which was a little scary. During that time I started writing travel content. I worked on the Equadour guide book then later I wrote about the centre of Australia for another publication. 

Micky and I travelled more. In ’89 we were in Latin America then back to Europe.

I went back to India at the end of ’89 where I had a full on experience of getting bitten by a venomous snake and I nearly died. That was at Pushkar in Rhajistan.

The snake bite took me to the edge of my existence. It was a Russells Viper. Back then about 10,000 people a year die of snakebite and now it’s much higher.” 

Snakebite

The snake bite took me to the edge of my existence pretty much. I had met some kids at the temple, I had a pair of binoculars and they were really enjoying looking through them.

It was sunset and by the time I was walking back to town, which wasn’t far, it was dark. I stepped on a snake and he got me good. It hurt a lot.

I was lucky in that the owner of the hotel where I was staying, basically saved my life by getting me to a hospital in time and finding a hospital that would take me first of all.

One didn’t want to because they thought I’d die and they didn’t want the admin hassle of getting the body back here.

They said no which is an interesting lesson in what your life is worth. They couldn’t take me at the private hospital because they didn’t have the anti-venom.

We needed to find a hospital that had it… Meanwhile the time is ticking by. Eventually we did, it was late in the day. I’d passed out and there was a Nun, Sister Rosa beside me and when I woke up she was still there praying.

She had stayed with me and prayed all night. I woke up in the morning which was pretty nice. We went looking for her when I went back to India with my daughter Anna. That was a powerful experience that led to my first book, Beyond Snake Mountain, which was published in 1991 in India. It sold out and got some nice reviews.

In 1992 we found ourselves in Europe again. I was teaching English in Barcelona. We stayed for 9 months just before the Olympics there and by then Micky was pregnant. We returned to Denmark and Anna our first child was born in November 1992.

We came back and lived in Sydney and 3 years later our second daughter Tessa was born. We lived in Leichhardt for a time and I was working from home. We didn’t have a lot of money. Family life was challenging so after some years, in ’97 we separated.

Micky came up here with the girls and I didn’t at that point. I was concerned that I wouldn’t get a decent career going and I needed to do that. Shortly thereafter I entered publishing which I’m still in. It was a painful period for all of us.

I would take my 4 weeks annual holiday one week at a time so I could see the girls during school hols. We decided we would have a joint holiday with the girls in Brisbane. Micky booked a hotel on the river and Anna organised the sleeping arrangements and guess what?

Micky and I are in the double bed so of course, the next thing after a 4 year separation we were back together.

I had started a new job so I couldn’t leave. My family came down to the Central Coast for a few years where I worked in Sydney 4 days a week then home for 3 days.

We planned to come back to the Northern Rivers because we all loved it. It felt like the right place for us so my boss at Finch Publishing let me bring my job up here.

I ended up buying a company called Link Manuscript Assessment Service. I’ve been running it since 2007 and we’ve help many authors get published.

I work from home now. I’ve gone back to writing, following the trip I took to India with Anna when she finished high school. 

The book has just come out, Night train to Varanasi, published by Bad Apple Press and I’m really excited about it.

It’s wonderful to be able to celebrate two great loves of my life which are India and my daughter and through her my family in general. India embodied life’s wonder to me and Anna embodies life’s preciousness to me. It’s really nice to have it out.

I’ll also be appearing at the Kyogle Writers Festival, not in the main program as I found out too late for that but they are running a series of side sessions called Front Up’s.

I’ll be doing some signings of the book. I’ve had some events in the region which have been really supported.

Lismore Library have been amazing. Lucy and Peter just went the extra mile. Book Warehouse have been supportive and are stocking the book. 

Lismore

As I said, I moved from Sydney to the Northern Rivers in 2005 – one of the best things I ever did. My family and I nestled into the soft, voluptuous undulations of this glorious region of the Great Southern Land, and have never looked back. It’s a special place, not only for its astonishing beauty, geography and biota.

It’s a great climate too, barring the odd flood and sweltering summer, of course. 

I like Lismore for many reasons. It’s real. It’s not about how you look or what you’ve got, it’s about who you are.

It also has incredible diversity for its size. We have the Remembering and Healing ceremony each 24 April where people from more than 72 countries and 12 religious faiths attend. It’s amazing!

This is part of its realness too: closer to the coast, where the big money kicks in, the demographic is a rather dull monoculture whereby everyone around you is much the same as you: white and wealthy, with the accompanying values and baggage.

In contrast, Lismore comprises all levels of society, and great diversity of race, culture, lifestyle and gender/sexuality.

We also have a lively artistic scene! In tune with the region’s recent history, our values are human – based on people, not profits.

The vibe is warm and friendly, and the locals are a wonderfully accepting, non-judgmental bunch. The heart pumps with vigour, the soul is full of love. May it be ever so!”