What do decades of adventure, jumping off moving trains in rural Australia, and raising children adopted from Russia have in common? They are all part of Laura Dilts’s remarkable travel journey, which she shares in this captivating episode of Stamped: Global Travel Stories.

Laura’s travel adventures began with family road trips exploring America’s national parks while her nuclear physicist father conducted research at Los Alamos. Her childhood home regularly welcomed international visitors through her mother’s cultural organisation, creating a foundation of global curiosity that would shape her entire life. By sixteen, Laura had negotiated with her parents to visit Greece independently, working to fund half the trip herself, the first of many solo adventures that would take her across continents.

Perhaps most fascinating is Laura’s nine-month Australian exchange programme, where she lived with 36 different host families across rural South Australia and Queensland. She shares hilarious stories of working on farms, encountering wildlife, and even having to jump from a moving train that “only slowed down like an escalator” at her rural stop. Her descriptions of Kangaroo Island and watching hundreds of penguins return to shore at dusk reveal hidden gems most travellers never experience.

As Laura’s life evolved, so did her travel experiences, from exchange programmes to adoption journeys in Moscow, where she discovered cold so intense that sunny days were worse than cloudy ones. Now entering a new chapter as an empty-nester, Laura approaches travel with a refreshing philosophy: “Life’s too short to wait.” 

After losing a friend unexpectedly at 56, she is embracing solo adventures while prioritising connections with friends worldwide, proving that at any age, the world remains full of possibilities for those willing to explore it.

⭐️ Guest - Laura Dilts
📝  Show Notes - Episode 77

🎧 Listen to next

• Episode 72 Stamped: Melissa Delaware – From Australian Beginnings to Global Adventures
• Episode 68 Stamped: Mandy Watson – One woman, one motto, and a world of adventure
• Episode 63 - A

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