I couldn't afford a plane ticket only a bus fare, and that decision changed the course of my life.
A fork-in-the-road moment. We all have them.
Sometimes they're big decisions, like moving to a different city or travelling overseas. You're aware that your future is going in a new direction.
Other times, they're small ones, like taking an earlier gym class or going to the pub after work, and you don't realise until later, that was the moment.
Sliding doors - if you'd made a different choice, your current life wouldn't exist.
My pivotal moment arrived on November 1, 1997. I was invited to two weddings on the same Saturday on opposite sides of the country.
Both brides were close friends and I would have loved to celebrate with each couple. Of course, I couldn't be in two places at the same time so I had to make a choice.
Single and living in an inner city suburb of Sydney, I was in a low-paying job and didn't own a car. One wedding was a long, expensive flight away in Perth, the other down the highway in Canberra,
I made my decision to catch the Murrays bus to the national capital. Over in Perth, my friend was getting married in the gorgeous gardens of Kings Park.
At the wedding in Canberra, we enjoyed a beautiful reception in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery. The mist from Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture floated in the early evening, creating a magical atmosphere for the happy couple.
And magic happened for me too. That night, I met Jamie, a Canberra Times journalist and the man who would eventually become my husband.
Little did I know how well acquainted I would become with the Murrays bus, catching it every second weekend down the Hume Highway until I eventually moved to Canberra.
That night, I did not foresee living in the national capital for 15 years and the births of a boy and a girl, who would go on to primary school in Chapman and Curtin.
My Perth friend joked to me: "I wonder who you would've met if you came to my wedding?"
For her, it was a throwaway remark but I've always been interested in this concept of sliding doors and parallel lives. What would have happened if I'd maxed out on the plane ticket?
Apart from struggling to pay the rent, perhaps I'd be married to someone in Perth - or maybe living in Scotland.
The previous year, I'd been travelling and I was keen to go back. I'd been considering a move to Edinburgh when I met Jamie.
In another version of my life, I'm attending the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival each year and I have a teenager who speaks with a thick Scottish brogue.
Growing up with Dr Who on the television and Back to the Future at the cinema, I loved pondering ideas about time and other possible versions of my life.
My parents had immigrated to Australia before I was born and when I was young, we had no relatives nearby. I imagined an alternate existence in England among our huge extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncle, cousins, second cousins.
But if my parents had stayed there, they might have only had my older sisters, and not another three kids in Australia. I wouldn't exist.
These thoughts all bubbled together as I was writing my latest domestic thriller novel, Every Time She Wakes.
It focuses on a busy mum, Suze, and how one decision changes the course of her life. But in this story, Suze has the chance to see the impact of her decision.
After a car crash, she doesn't wake up in hospital but instead, two weeks back in time. As a former psychologist, she questions her mind - is she dreaming or is her exhausted brain playing tricks?
But then it happens again and again. Every time she wakes, Suze is in a different version of her life. And each version is because of a choice she made.
Our choice of job can also change the arc of our lives and I played with that idea in the story by giving Suze a role as a careers counsellor in one life.
My dad came from a working-class family in London and planned to join the navy. Then he applied for a university scholarship and won it. As a young lad, he never could have imagined training as an obstetrician and pioneering ultrasound in regional Australia.
In my final year of high school, I was trying to decide between a career in marketing communications or becoming a veterinarian or working in childcare. Each option would have led to a very different life.
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The road not taken - we can get lost in rabbit holes wondering what could have been and creating an idealised picture of those other possibilities.
In reality, I'm sure I would have tired of the Scottish winter with its long dark days and never-ending fog and mizzle. Not quite as pretty as the mist from the fog sculpture in the garden of the National Gallery.
My new novel has awakened different responses in early readers. One said he was grateful for the choices he'd made which led him to this point, while another felt disheartened and, looking back, she wished she'd taken other paths.
But imagining those other possible lives can remind us of what's important in the here and now; remind us of our deeply-held passions and dreams, whether it's a hobby or career or travel or friends or another way of living.
In Every Time She Wakes, Suze finally begins to realise it's never too late to make a change in this life.
For me though, I'm very happy I caught the bus to Canberra that day.
Petronella McGovern is the author of Six Minutes, The Good Teacher, The Liars and The Last Trace. Her books have been nominated in the Ned Kelly Awards, the Davitt Awards and the Indie Book Awards.
Her new novel is Every Time She Wakes (Allen and Unwin, $34.99), which is billed as a "gripping, high-concept thriller that taps into our deepest fears about family, control, and the fragility of reality".
Petronella grew up on a farm in the NSW central west. She says her fiction is driven by her fascination with people and her interest in the complexities of relationships and family dynamics - "what makes us tick, how we view the world and the lies we tell each other and ourselves".
With a master of arts in creative writing, she tutors in creative writing and lives with her family in Sydney.
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