On This Day: Queensland 2000

February 4, 2012, Washington, DC: Where were you when? Sometimes it's impossible to remember and other days it's quite clear. On this day in 2000, I was standing right there in the back of that pickup truck on a Queensland farm, our host tearing through his fields on the hunt for a rogue pig causing a nuisance. The group of us went kangaroo spotting that night, driving back out through the dark, turning off the engine, and waiting quietly for those crazy creatures to bounce over the landscape in a massive pack. We shined spotlights on them as they sprung through the fields, getting our first glimpses of many oddities we'd see in this foreign land.

Where were you when? It's a common question that speaks volumes about the power of place. Twelve years ago today, I was three days in to the trip of a lifetime.