u/Pastalforno

Hey everyone,

Long time lurker, first time posting. I'm a 26 year old Italian and this will be my first ever solo trip and first time outside Europe. Flying from Milan on July 1st, arriving Brisbane July 2nd, flying home from Melbourne on August 9th — 38 nights total.

Travelling with an Osprey Fairpoint 40 as my main carry-on backpack and a North Face Base Camp Duffel S as my checked bag / day bag on the ground. Fully committed to the backpacker setup.

Here's the plan:

Brisbane — 2 nights (Jul 2–3)
Jet lag recovery, South Bank walk, sort my SIM card. Staying at Bunk Brisbane.

Noosa — 8 nights (Jul 4–11)
Main goal here is learning to surf. Booked 5 lessons at Merrick's Noosa Learn to Surf, 3 flex days for extra lessons or independent board rental. Staying at Nomads Noosa.

Agnes Water / 1770 — 2 nights (Jul 12–13)
Quiet reset. Reef snorkel day trip (southernmost point of the GBR), LARC tour, beach walks. Backpackers @ 1770. Overnight bus to Airlie Beach at 8pm.

Airlie Beach — 4 nights (Jul 14–17, 2 hostel + 2 on boat)
Whitsunday Adventurer 2-day/2-night sailing trip departing July 15. 12 passengers max, catamaran. Staying at Bounce Airlie Beach for the hostel nights.

Mission Beach — 4 nights (Jul 18–21)
Jul 18 arrive and rest. Jul 19 skydive from 15,000ft with Skydive Mission Beach (beach landing). Jul 20 Dunk Island snorkel day trip. Jul 21 Tully River white water rafting (Grade 4–5). Mission Beach Treehouse for accommodation.

Cairns — 11 nights (Jul 22 – Aug 2, 7 hostel + 4 on liveaboards)
This is the big one. Doing the full PADI sequence with Pro Dive Cairns:

1. Jul 23: Pool + classroom day (Open Water)
2. Jul 24–25: Open Water liveaboard (3D/2N, 9 dives across 4 outer reefs)
3. Jul 26: Return, rest
4. Jul 27–28: Advanced Open Water + Nitrox liveaboard (3D/2N, 11 dives inc. 2 night dives, depth to 30m)
5. Jul 29: Return, rest
6. Jul 30: Daintree Rainforest + Cape Tribulation day trip
7. Jul 31: Atherton Tablelands (hired car, or any suggestion?)
8. Aug 1: Rest / possible Green Island fun dive
9. Aug 2: Fly evening to Sydney

Staying at Mad Monkey Backpackers Waterfront, Gilligan's for the last couple of nights.

Sydney — 4 nights (Aug 2–5)
First time in the city. Plan: harbour at dawn, Manly ferry, Bondi to Coogee coastal walk, kayak under the Harbour Bridge (if is not too cold). Sydney Central.

Melbourne — 3 nights (Aug 6–8)
Queen Victoria Market, laneways, St Kilda sunset. Fly home August 9.

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A few specific things I'd love input on:

1. Is the Noosa surf timing realistic? 5 lessons + 3 flex days — will I actually make meaningful progress or am I being too optimistic?
2. Whitsunday Adventurer specifically — has anyone sailed with them? The small boat (12 pax) appealed to me over the big social boats like Atlantic Clipper, but open to being talked out of it
3. Pro Dive Cairns back-to-back liveaboards — Open Water then Advanced in consecutive trips. Anyone done this? Any reason not to?
4. Agnes Water — most people seem to skip it. Worth the stop or should I just go straight to Airlie?
5. Anything obviously missing or badly sequenced?

First time doing this so I genuinely have no reference point. Be brutal.

Thanks

(English is not my first language — I used AI to help write this clearly, but everything here is real and mine.)

Background

I’m 26, grew up in a large city. About 6 years ago I moved to a small coastal city — partly for work, partly to escape the reality I’d built for myself back home. I found a job, and almost immediately I met a girl. Let’s call her Claire.

Claire and I built something real over 5 years. For almost 4 of those years we lived together at her parents’ house. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home — the closest thing to a family I’d had in a long time.

The structural problems were always there. She’s deeply social, outgoing, needs people around her. I’m the opposite. I worked too much, stayed home, and used her as my primary — honestly my only — emotional outlet. She carried most of the emotional weight of the relationship. I contributed very little in terms of shared social life. She asked me to come out with her friends, to build a life there with her. I rarely did.

In February 2022 I had the opportunity to move back to my hometown. I didn’t take it. I told myself it was because I believed in us. Looking back, I think I was also afraid — of committing fully, of failing, of disappointing people. I stayed, but I never fully arrived.

The breakup

About 7 weeks ago, during a phone call, things escalated badly. I was stressed about work and other things completely unrelated to her, and I dumped everything on her. She had no fault in it. That call pushed things to a breaking point.

One week later, she called me. We talked, and we both acknowledged that ending things was the right decision. In that moment, strangely, it didn’t fully hit me. Then it did — completely. The breakup landed like a freight train I never saw coming.

Since then: severe anxiety, barely sleeping, relying on prescribed medication just to get through the day, two jobs that are both making me miserable, no real social network where I currently am, and no clear direction for the future.

My therapist — I’ve been seeing one since January — has identified a core pattern: I never put myself first, I suppress everything until I explode, and I have roughly 15 years of unprocessed emotional backlog that I’m only now beginning to unpack. That tracks painfully well.

I also need to be honest about something harder: I cheated on Claire twice during the relationship. No sex, but physical contact with someone else — including once about a month before the breakup. I told her about the most recent episode. She knows.

Where things stand with her

Despite everything, I’m still in love with her. I’ve been trying hard to be honest with myself about whether this is love or dependency — she was the only person I spoke to daily for 5 years, the only stable presence in my life. I genuinely don’t know where one ends and the other begins.

I told her recently that I believe the version of me who is now aware of these patterns could show up differently. That I never actually allowed myself to build a social life there — not because I couldn’t, but because I never let myself. Her friends were fine, I got along with them. I just never committed to it. And I feel something close to a duty to try — not as an excuse, but because I genuinely never gave that life a real chance.

Her response: she said she’s confused. She doesn’t know if she wants to try again. She needs to see me in person before she can answer anything. She hasn’t closed the door. But she hasn’t opened it either.

She’s been emotionally preparing for this for almost a year. I’ve had 7 weeks. The gap shows.

The alternatives I’m sitting with

1. Try to rebuild things with Claire gradually.

See each other, take it slow, work on myself in therapy in parallel. Not move back immediately, not make grand promises — just see if there’s something real still there when we’re both more stable. I feel strongly that I never gave that life a genuine chance, and that’s the thing I’m most afraid of regretting.

2. Leave for 2-3 months — Canada, Australia, somewhere completely different.

Travel, reset, figure out who I am outside of work and this relationship. When I’m honest with myself: part of this is running away. But part of it might also be something I genuinely need.

3. Do the Camino de Santiago — 20 to 30 days walking.

Disconnect completely. No phone, no noise, just movement and time. I’ve been considering this as something in between escape and reset — structured, physical, finite.

4. Stay where I am and keep going.

This one has no real logic. It’s inertia. And inertia has historically been my worst enemy.

What I’m genuinely asking

If you were a complete stranger hearing this — what would you say? Not what I want to hear. What you actually think.

Is trying again with Claire, knowing all of this — the cheating, the patterns, the dependency — a reasonable thing to pursue? Or is it just the path of least resistance for someone who has never learned to be alone?

Is the feeling that I “owe it to myself” to try the social life I never built there a real reason — or a story I’m telling myself?

And if you’ve been through something similar: what actually helped?

TL;DR: 26M, ended a 5-year relationship after years of emotional avoidance and never fully committing to the life we could have had together. In therapy, genuinely self-aware for the first time, still in love with her. She’s open to talking but hasn’t said yes to trying again. Trying to figure out if pursuing reconciliation is love or dependency — and whether I’m actually capable of change, or just telling myself I am.