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Gabriella Nonino’ life takes a new turn after some
intrepid journeys around the world
Kipling maintained that “He travels the fastest who travels alone”,
and no one knows that better than intrepid Gabriella Nonino. A European
if ever there was one, born in Germany, daughter of a German mother and
Italian father, who grew up in Sicily and Sardinia, where she studied
in Cagliari’s College of Fine Art, she has since travelled extensively,
alone and fast.
Although she has been to Israel where she worked on an archaeological
“dig”, and to Sri Lanka and India where she set up an art
and craft import business , undoubtedly her most memorable spell of travelling
was that undertaken just over a decade ago when she cycled alone –
the first female ever to have done so- for 5000 km across the Australian
outback from Perth to Townswille:”A journey of nothingness”,
via the Great Northern Highway, the Gunbarrel Huighway, Uluru (Ayers Rock),
Alice Springs and the Diamantina Lakes.
A jolly swag-lady who camped by more than one billabong during her four
month long cycle ride, although she is essentially modest and makes light
of the whole thing, the must have had tremendous stamina let alone courage.
On her arrival, for instance, in Wiluna “the living expression
of a paranoic fear”, she says “I called in the police station
to sing a declaration describing my route and including my parents address
in case of accident or death. This is a standard procedure when the route
includes the Gunbarrel Highway”.
It was here that she was told that the corrugations in the road’s
surface were so deep kangaroos slept in them!
Extracts from her diary read like a living nightmare:” There is
fear in my heat. I try not to think of the consequences of failure. This
morning the temperature has gone below zero. My hands are numb. There
are no feelings in my legs. What am I doing here? I am the only one out
here beside some kangaroos, emus, dingoes and cattle gone astray. Dingoes
and wild Camels have printed their tracks on the sand. At midday I walked
in to a python. His head rose at an angle with his fangs wide open. I
skipped away, ran for my life and never looked back.”
It’s still terrifying talking and reading about her experience,
some ten years on and at a safe distance of 12,000 miles, yet Gabriella
Nonino simply shrugs her shoulders and says:” It was something I
wanted to do. After all I did it without a single puncture, so someone
must have been looking after me!”.
Now a freelance professional website designer, on coming to this country
she lived and worked for several years in London – “Another
kind of terror” – until, longing to leave the city she remembered
going “walkabout” on the Cornish coastal path and how much
she had enjoyed it and, on the strength of the happy memory, come to this
part of the world, to settle in Newlyn where she has been made to feel
so welcome she wants to give something back.
Already in the process of designing a website for Newlyn Male Choir, she
has set up a website for Newlyn itself; one which she hopes the people
of Newlyn will visit and use, she says it has enormous potential; what
she doesn’t say is that all the costs involved have so far been
met by her. To get the website weaving, she has obtained permission from
The Cornishman to use headlines concerning Newlyn published on the newspaper
website: local historian Margaret Perry, author of “A Brief History
of Newlyn” is currently developing the history section of the website,
and Gabriella Nonino is now asking for “input and opinion to make
the site a showcase of all that Newlyn has to offer.” As she says:
”Get online and contribute!”
Difficult to refuse such a courageous swag-lady who, on the last leg
of her marathon journey across the Australian outback, stood on Herveys
Range with “The air buzzing with crickets and the smell of cow dung”
and recall the visitor she had:” A praying mantis which danced on
my fingertips in the light of the torch”, and her thought at the
time, “ Tomorrow I’ll be in Townswille.” She says memory
for her has become a songline, and every Bucca should do his or her very
best to ensure that her stay in Newlyn is a song by singing together on
the website she has created for them at www.newlyn.info.
article copyright © THE CORNISHMAN
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