The Aromatic Bush Chronicles
Fifty Years of Work, Wanderlust, and Women
The Aromatic Bush Chronicles explores a side of international business travel that is rarely discussed: what happens after the offices and boardrooms close and a travelling executive is left alone in an unfamiliar city.
A working day may occupy six or eight hours, but an overseas assignment leaves many more hours to fill. Evenings can be long, weekends longer, and meals eaten alone soon lose their appeal. Touring famous sights is rewarding, but the experience is diminished when there is no one with whom to share it.
For Gerald Bratley, a lively bar, nightclub or local meeting place often offered more human contact than an excellent meal at an empty table in a five-star hotel. The neon-lit areas of a city became places not merely of entertainment, but of companionship, conversation, discovery and, at times, intimacy.
He soon realised that he was not alone in seeking relief from the isolation of constant travel. Other international businesspeople faced the same divide between the formal working day and the private hours that followed.
The Aromatic Bush Chronicles is an honest and candid account of how Gerald filled that void. It examines the relationships, encounters, risks, pleasures and emotional consequences of a life spent travelling between countries, cultures and temporary homes.
At its heart, the book is about more than sexuality. It is about loneliness, companionship, desire, cultural difference and the ways people adapt when their working lives repeatedly take them far from home.
Themes and Genres
True adventure
Narrative nonfiction
Relationships and sexuality
Cultural and social issues
International travel
Working-life memoir
Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.
- ASIN : B0G6SB51Z3
- Publisher : Independently published
- Publication date : 12 Dec. 2025
- Language : English
- Print length : 286 pages
- ISBN-13 : 979-8278470731
- Item weight : 336 g
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 1.83 x 21.59 cm