Two Years, One Film Camera.

Ever step out of your life completely and let the world write your story? Mine nearly killed me, and then gave me the simplest pleasures in life.

This wasn’t supposed to be a two-year story.

But indeed it became far more than that, and I wouldn't change any of it.

I’m Julia Belikova, a Sydney local and the creator of Cineliaaaa: a film photography travel diary capturing two years of adventures, small miracles, and beautifully messy moments across Europe, the UK, and South East Asia.

At the beginning of 2024, after working full-time for a couple of years in a busy events agency, I realised I’d been prioritising clients over myself. At twenty-four, I was having a ‘quarter-life crisis’ moment. My creativity was quietly slipping away, my dream of travel and volunteering felt out of reach, and the Sydney bubble was starting to feel suffocating and isolating.

In June 2024, I left Sydney thinking I had eight months mapped out. Every stop booked, every detail accounted for, a habit I’d picked up from working as an account manager. I thought I could plan my way through freedom.

I couldn’t, and it was the best detail I could have realised.

At the time before leaving my full-time role, I just knew something felt off. I was moving fast, always “on”, always thinking about the next deadline, the next deliverable, the next version of myself I was trying to keep up with. Somewhere in that rhythm, I felt like the true me was slowly disappearing a little bit.

So I decided to finally leave, and put on the dusty adventure cap that I knew I always had sitting at the back of the closest.

You may be thinking, another typical Australian backpacker, classic...

Instead, I intentionally built those eight months around slow travel and volunteering, embedding myself in different communities and cultures, and experiencing each place in a way that went far beyond the typical tourist path. Thanks to Worldpackers I was placed into homes that were never really mine, but with people who somehow became part of my life anyway and places that in the end, felt exactly like home.

With every move, I met strangers from all over the world who didn’t stay strangers for long. In a way I hadn’t experienced back in Sydney, these connections felt immediate, open, and deeply human.

By July, I was living in a French château.

Getting there was far from romantic at first. It took two trains and a small-town bus, where I quickly realised I was completely out of my depth. The bus driver couldn’t understand my English, and without coins or cash, only a card my Australian bank had suddenly locked me out of, I was left with barely 20 euros to my name and no way to get on.

I remember standing there, exhausted and overwhelmed, wondering what I had gotten myself into so early on.

Then, a local stepped in. Someone I had never met, who didn’t owe me anything, gave me the exact amount in cash to make sure I got where I needed to be. It was such a small act, but it stayed with me. It felt like the first real sign that things were going to be okay, that even in the uncertainty, something would always work itself out.

And somehow, it did.

I arrived to soft light and long days spent in gardens, harvesting fruit, and learning how to work with the land in a way I never had before. Something was grounding about committing to these small, physical tasks each day, something honest about it. Life slowed down naturally. No urgency, no inbox, just time stretching out in front of me, where morning visits to the boulangerie replaced meetings.

It felt unfamiliar at first, but not in a way that made me restless. More like I was being gently reminded that there were other ways to live, slower, simpler, and just as full. And for the first time in a long time, I felt present within it.

From August to October, I spent most of my time in the UK, tucked into small towns and villages, slowly adjusting to a life that revolved around the seasons, gardens, and quiet routines.

What made it truly special, though, were the incredible women I met along the way. Some were twice my age, without any carefully mapped-out life plans, just as adrift as I was, despite having had remarkable careers or opportunities, yet still feeling lost.

Sharing time with them felt like a masterclass in the human condition. I saw how life unfolds differently for everyone, how successes and failures exist alongside each other, and how it’s possible to feel lost even after achieving so much. It reminded me that I didn’t have to measure my life by anyone else’s standards. I could leave societal pressures behind and focus on the moments in front of me. The simple, yet profound things like health, family, open-minded friends, and people who support me for exactly who I am.

Being in their presence, observing their choices, their humour, their resilience, and their doubts, gave me a quiet reassurance: it will all be alright, and the path doesn’t have to be straight or conventional.

Then came Scotland.

On the west coast of Scotland, I lived with an 80-year-old artist named Karen, who somehow became my best friend within weeks. But it wasn’t just our bond that made this place transformative; it was how fully I became part of her local community.

Compared to community life back home in Sydney, I was far more involved here. There was something quietly beautiful about a small town where strangers remembered my name after meeting me once, welcoming me so warmly, despite my geographical isolation (basically on the other side of the world).

Yet I didn’t feel lonely at all; instead, I felt grounded. I was literally in the middle of nowhere, and yet I felt safe, seen, and respected.

With Karen, we cooked together, danced to music from all over the world every morning, drove along endless coastal roads, and shared stories that didn’t feel separated by age at all. We laughed at everything, from failed relationships to the meaning of life, usually with a hot toddy in hand.

Helping her build her art website sparked something in me too. I had been photographing all the small yet meaningful moments all along, where each place felt like it existed outside of time. But in Scotland, it became clear: these images weren’t just documentation, they were a way to hold onto the fleeting moments that made life meaningful.

That’s where Cineliaaaa started. Not as a project or a portfolio, but as a way to hold onto moments that felt too important to lose. A way to romanticise life, even the quiet, ordinary parts of it. Especially those parts.

That winter, I saw snow properly for the first time since I was 13. It felt small, but also everything at once. A quiet reminder that the beauty of all of this wasn’t in the big plans I had made, but in the things I never could have planned. I felt, quite literally, on top of the world.

By the time I came back to Sydney at the end of 2024, I knew I wasn’t done.

I lasted a few months before leaving my family, yet again,

Within the three or four months of being home again, I managed to secure a seasonal job and a working holiday visa, and this time I was off to Greece.

I was living on a small island with an international team of Aussies, Greeks, and Europeans who quickly became like family. Life there felt like one long blur of sun, sweat, work, chaos, laughter, and late nights.

It was truly crazy and theatrical in the best way.

Small island politics came with its downfalls, but there was also the magic of doing full-time work with the Cycladic sea at your feet, and all the Greek salad and yoghurt I could have ever dreamed of.

It felt like the complete opposite of life in Sydney. The work was physical, the days long, and I was undeniably homesick at first, but gradually I realised it was exactly what I needed.

And yes, maybe with one too many hangovers along the way…

However the best part, was leaving the island half a year later, with a new incredible international family supporting me in ways I’d never imagined.

Somewhere along this journey, I also found love.

Amidst all the adventures and different lives I was living, I met someone who became central to the journey after I left the Greek islands. Navigating a long-distance relationship taught me that life’s most profound experiences often arrive unexpectedly, and that taking risks is part of discovering what truly matters.

Simply put, I was not ready to go home again.

With no return flight booked to Australia, I was craving the chance to volunteer again.

Then came a small Umbrian village in Italy. By November, my days were a blur of chicken coops, wild trees that required two layers of chainsaw gloves, and learning to wield a weed-wacker that felt like it weighed twice my body. I chopped logs, cleared land, and slowly transformed into some very untrained DIY queen, a far cry from my 9-5 desk life.

I became the friend everyone back home kept asking themselves, “Where the f*** is she now, and what is she doing?”

On my second day, I stumbled across a dead wild boar, the same one a local farmer kept running into, and from then on, he’d blow me kisses and grin like a teenage kid every time we crossed paths.

It was absurd, hilarious, and completely scripted. And yet, beyond the comedy, I felt the profound satisfaction of contributing, of being useful, of connecting with people and land in a way I never had.

Did I go home after Italy? Absolutely not. In January 2026, I found an opportunity to volunteer and teach English in Vietnam, which felt like everything all at once.

I was so excited, but those first weeks of 2026 were by far some of the most physically and mentally intense of my twenties.

Before even starting the 32-hour journey from Europe to Vietnam, a viral infection had me bedridden with 39-degree fevers for four days. Within two weeks of being in Vietnam, a scooter accident nearly ended everything, followed by another near-death experience in open waters for fellow volunteers only days later.

It shook something in me.

Not in a dramatic, life-changing way, but in a quiet, very real way. The kind that makes you realise how fragile everything actually is.

We survived, trauma-bonded even more, and I left Vietnam with something far more profound than scars and wounds: a family of volunteers from all walks of life.

Friendships cemented in adversity, laughter, empathy, vulnerability, and shared humanity. Simply put, a group of five people trying to figure things out together after some traumatic shit.

And did we all get matching tattoos to commemorate our crazy story?

Naturally, yes.

[Props to Daddy Bill, 58 years old, the oldest member part of our M.A.S.H crew, who went from “never a tattoo” to “let’s do it” after our near-death chaos. Another story, another time.]

Through it all, I had my camera.

At first, it was just something to do. Then it became the one constant. A way to slow things down, to notice, to feel present in moments that would have otherwise passed too quickly.

Cineliaaaa grew from that.

Not just as a collection of photos, but as a reflection of how I started to see the world. Romantic, imperfect, fleeting, and worth paying attention to, no matter where I was. From quiet gardens and coastal cliffs to castles and streets far beyond the Sydney bubble, it became a way of holding on to life as it unfolded.

But not everything fits into a single frame.

The In Between is where the rest of it lives.

The thoughts, the feelings, the moments that sit somewhere between what happened and how it actually felt. The parts that are harder to capture, but often the most important.

Because that’s what these two years really were. Not a clean story, not a perfect timeline, but a series of in-between moments that changed me without me even realising it at the time.