One of the questions I'm occasionally asked is where the name Ricardo Bumachunski came from.
The answer has nothing to do with travel, writing or publishing. It goes back to childhood.
If you grew up in Australia during the 1970s or 1980s, you'll probably remember a time when visiting a friend didn't involve a text message or checking whether they were home first. You simply jumped on your bike or started walking and hoped for the best. Sometimes they were there. Sometimes they weren't.
When they weren't, somebody would often shrug and say, "He's gone off with Ricardo Bumachunski."
The joke worked because nobody knew who Ricardo Bumachunski actually was.
He didn't exist.
Ricardo Bumachunski was an imaginary friend who was never around because he was supposedly off doing something far more exciting somewhere else. He was always on another adventure, discovering somewhere new, getting into trouble or disappearing just long enough to become part of the joke.
It became one of those childhood sayings that everyone understood without anyone needing to explain it.
Many years later, when I sat down to write my memoir, I realised I needed a little distance between myself as the author and the person living through the story. I wasn't creating a fictional character, but I wanted readers to experience events as they unfolded rather than seeing everything through the lens of hindsight.
Then, almost without warning, Ricardo Bumachunski came back to me.
The moment the name resurfaced, it simply felt right.
Not because it sounded heroic or literary, but because it carried the same sense of curiosity it always had. Ricardo was never someone who stayed still for very long. He was always somewhere else, chasing another experience, meeting new people and returning with another story.
The more I wrote, the more I realised the name captured something else that mattered to me.
Before readers meet Ricardo Bumachunski, they know almost nothing about him. They don't know his job, his politics, his income, his social status or what sort of person he is. Like meeting someone in real life, they have to discover those things gradually through his choices, conversations and experiences rather than through labels.
That idea eventually became one of the themes explored in The Ricardo Report. We live in a world that encourages instant judgement and instant categorisation, yet some of the most meaningful relationships begin before we've decided who someone is supposed to be.
Looking back, it's strange to think that an imaginary friend from childhood eventually became the guide for a memoir about travel, curiosity and authentic human connection.
Not bad for somebody who never actually existed.
Or perhaps, in a strange way, he always did.
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#RicardoBumachunski #BehindTheBook #MemoirWriting #AustralianAuthor #TravelMemoir #Storytelling #DJGifford #NoIWontBuyYouADrink #Authenticity #Curiosity