Kate Moore, an Australian woman whose father is from Shropshire has arrived in his home town of Shrewsbury and blogs here for the first time about why she’s made the 12,000km journey.

When ShropshireStar.com’s editor  first suggested I write a blog, I couldn’t imagine what it was  about my life that would attract anyone else’s interest.

To this . . . Shrewsbury, Shropshire

After all I’m just another twenty- something year old female searching for something, in fact almost anything, but if you ask me what I’m not sure even I know.

It wasn’t until he pointed out to me that most kids of my age were desperately trying to get out of England that I realised I may be just that little bit different to the norm.

So, my name is Kate Moore and in what appears to be swimming against the tide I have moved from Geelong, Victoria, Australia to . . . Shrewsbury. A journey of 12,000km, a journey in search of I know not what but a journey which I rather suspect was programmed into my DNA from the earliest of ages.

Unlike most Australian children, I was brought up with pork pies, crisp butties and ‘God Save The Queen.’ The week consisted of Mondee through Sundee with nary a sign of a ‘day‘ attached to any.

Aside from cigarettes, rugby and stilton cheese, I loved what my daddy loved. In our house we had a settee instead of a sofa, a bungalow instead of a single story house and my brother and I went to a Public school which everyone else called Private.

You see I came from an ethnically mixed household, with an English father and an Australian mother. Don’t laugh, as despite having been in Australia for some thirty five years my dad is still English with every fibre in his body . . . and sounds it too.

Ask him the happiest day of his life and the answer won’t be the usual cliche response of  ‘the day I got married’ or ‘the day you were born my darling.’

No question it would be the day England beat Australia in the final of the Rugby Union World Cup in 2003.

So when the urge to travel and see the world presented itself there really was no choice. I didn’t have to succumb to the typical Aussie backpack trek through South East Asia, and find myself with some marginal and positively dubious native guru prognosticating on the sorts of things I couldn’t give a stuff about.

Mine was an easy decision and with the benefit of a full ten year ‘live and work as you please’ British passport (courtesy of Dad), my travel was predestined.

The fact that I also have the best Auntie (Valerie ) and Uncle (Alan) in the World (based in Shrewsbury) made the choice of destination even easier.

So here I am in the breathtakingly beautiful Mediaeval/Tudor town of Shrewsbury. I am standing proudly in my Dad’s birthplace, and I know in his heart of hearts it’s the one place he will always call home.

No matter how much I may miss my country of birth, Shrewsbury enables me to feel close to him and appreciate that there is no place like home.

As I’ve discovered, home doesn’t always have to be the place you were born but the place that gives you the most warmth in your heart. Like many young girls and presumably boys for that matter, I still haven’t decided what I want to be when I grow up.

Life so far has been a mixture of . . . well if I’m honest nothing in particular. Tried ‘Uni’ but it really didn’t work for me, and whilst I have always been employed I am yet to find that certain something that makes me think ‘this is where and what I want to spend my life doing.’

Next week I’ll delve in to the differences between Geelong and Shrewsbury, and how my search to find whatever it is I’m looking for is progressing. Just a hint for now, but the pub’s are great and the wages . . . well . . .