A NEW LIFE:Anthony Harris sold his law practice, went on a year-long round-world trip with his family and now works as a full-time parent while setting up an organic food business, writes AÍLÍN QUINLAN
THEY VOLUNTEERED in the kitchens of India’s famed Golden Temple in Amritsar, rode elephants in Thailand, took a slow boat down the Mekong River and viewed a total eclipse of the sun in China.
Other families might dream of taking their children out of school for a year to travel the world – the Harris family actually did it.
For kids Paul, Tom and Catherine and their mum Julia Rowan, the year 2007-2008 was one long, incredible holiday they will never forget.
For their lawyer dad Anthony Harris, well known to regulars of the Flood Tribunal, it was equally memorable – for him it was the kick-start to a new way of life.
Upping stakes and taking the kids out of school for a round-the-world trip lasting a year isn’t the kind of thing one does every day – but then neither is selling your busy law practice and settling down as a house-husband while planning a new career as an organic farmer.
Well known in Dublin legal circles, Harris had run a successful law practice in Dublin 12 for 25 years. In his capacity as George Redmond’s solicitor, he appeared before the Flood Tribunal, cross-examined James Gogarty, and had regular dealings with the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Revenue Commissioners.
“I was involved in everything to do with George Redmond’s cases over a period of about 10 years. It was very busy and demanding. I was also running a general law practice, dealing with property, family law and childcare etc.”
But a few years into the new millennium, he was ready for a change. “I had had 25 years of other people’s problems and for some reason I always seemed to get very complex cases.
“I specialised in complex litigation and I spent a lot of time at the Children’s Court dealing with very difficult cases which were super-important to the client and hugely demanding at an emotional level.
“I used to pretend to myself that I would start retiring at 40, by cutting down to a four-day week and slowly reducing my work load.
“In the end I couldn’t do it – I was around 40 when the George Redmond thing hit and that saw me right through to the age of 50.”
Anthony’s involvement with the Tribunal ended in 1999 and, by around 2002, he says, he and his wife Julia – a management training consultant – were seriously considering a year out. They eventually decided to take off on a trip around the world, beginning in the summer of 2007.
“We thought it would be a good thing to go off and see the world. I wanted the kids to have their lives put in context and to see how privileged they were. I also wanted them to experience other cultures and religions. It would be an education for us all and a great thing to do as a family,” Anthony says.
From his own point of view, he’d had his fill of the courts. In July 2007 Anthony sold his practice.
“Enough was enough. The year out was for the family but it was also a kind of gap year for me.”
The couple’s eldest child, Paul, then aged 12, was due to start second-level education in September of that year, so his parents informed the school that he would be arriving a year late. “It was then that it really hit us – we really were going,” recalls Anthony.
But the kids weren’t at all impressed by their parents’ plans for a year-long family holiday: “They complained a bit. They wanted to bring along a friend for each of them. They also offered to stay in a friend’s house for the whole year we were away. But in the end they came!”
Anthony and Julia rented out their house in Rathfarnham and bought a camper van, but days before they were due to depart – on August 21st, 2007 – they still hadn’t decided on a route.
“We left [but] we still didn’t know where we were headed. We booked our first passage from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland, and stayed there for a few days before taking the ferry to Norway, driving into Sweden and catching a ferry to Tallinn in Estonia.”
From there they spent several months travelling through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia – “Eastern Europe was like Ireland in the 1950s” – on through Italy and Greece, then back across Italy, into Spain and down to Morocco.
They spent Christmas and the New Year in Spain and Morocco, and had three glorious weeks in Egypt, where they found an apartment in Cairo with a clear view of the pyramids, and travelled down the Nile.
Throughout their travels, the couple continued their children’s education, working through the primary school curriculum in English, Irish and maths with Catherine, now 10, and Tom now 12, while Paul – soon to be 14 – had to keep up to speed with his maths and Irish.
The family also spent time researching and discussing the different cultures they encountered on their journey.
In February 2008 the camper van was collected in Spain and driven back to Ireland by Anthony’s brother David as the family prepared to fly first to Egypt and then on to India on the next leg of their journey.
“As we travelled onwards, things became stranger,” says Anthony. “We encountered the religion of Islam and the Muslim way of dress in Morocco. In Egypt they were even more conservatively dressed, but then in India there were the most amazing electric colours.
“We stayed in India for two months. The kids were enthralled. It was an amazing experience.”
The family travelled the continent by train, visiting places like Delhi, Kashmir, the east coast, Pondicherry, Mumbai, Calcutta and Amritsar, where they rented a room in the renowned Golden Temple for several days.
“It was incredible. They fed 80,000 people a day at the Golden Temple. We volunteered in the temple kitchens. Paul got bitten by a dog and had to have rabies injections.”
Next stop was a month in Thailand where they rode elephants, and on to Laos where they took a slow boat down the Mekong River before flying to Hong Kong and arriving in China on June 6th.
There they went on an unforgettable two-month journey which took in the Great Wall, a total eclipse of the sun in Hami, and a three-day trek through the upper reaches of the Yangtze River valley. Tibet was next, and then it was back to Beijing in August 2008 where – as listeners to RTÉ radio may recall – the couple got badly stung on tickets for the Olympic Games that they bought via a website.
“In the end, the Irish Olympic Council and RTÉ stepped in and got us tickets for some of the events. We were enormously grateful,” says Anthony.
The family – whose relatives followed their adventures via a website (www.5goglobal.com) – finally arrived back in Ireland on August 19th, 2008.
Anthony estimates that the trip, minus the cost of the camper van, cost in the region of €60,000.
When they returned, the kids got busy with school and Julia was quickly absorbed by re-establishing herself in the consultancy business.
For Anthony it was a time of reflection and planning.
“In many ways the trip opened my eyes to new possibilities,” says the 52 year old who is now considering writing a book on the family’s travels and setting up a new business:
“I’m currently a house-husband, very family orientated. I bring the kids to school and collect them. I do the shopping and most of the cooking – although I’m not very good at cleaning!”
Anthony is also busy doing the groundwork for the establishment of an organic horticultural business in the west of Ireland.
He’s philosophical about the future.
“This is something I love doing, but whether it happens or not I don’t know. I’m flexible. If that doesn’t work, something else will.”