Fiona The Travel Doll

Bushboy’s response to this post reminded me of something I participated in about twenty years ago. As regular readers of this blog will know I collect dolls. I have all kinds from tiny dolls that fit in a dolls house (yes, we have those too) to large ones that are the size of a small child. The type of doll that I have the most of though, are fashion dolls like Barbie.

I started to collect dolls seriously in the late 1990s and that was also around the time that I started to use computers and learn about the internet. It wasn’t long before I discovered groups for doll collectors online and that was great because I didn’t know any other collectors personally. To find a group who didn’t think that a middle-aged woman buying dolls for herself was weird was wonderful. Most of the people I communicated with were in the USA & Canada. I don’t remember who came up with the idea of the travel doll but I was pleased to join in and did it twice in 2002 and 2003.

The doll was a play line Barbie named Fiona and she arrived in a box with a few outfits to wear. I can’t remember for sure but I think each of us added an outfit to the box as she went. The first time Fiona came I was living in South Australia. I took her to various locations to photograph her but as I was rather shy about photographing dolls in public, I also used photo editing to insert her into my photographs or postcards.

Here are a few that I used. I apologise for the quality. I was still new to computers so my editing wasn’t very good. I probably have the original photos somewhere here because I didn’t have a digital camera then and had to scan these in.

Fiona spent a couple of weeks in Adelaide, she made some new friends, went to the beach, saw some wildlife and even met a boy.

It’s a bit sad that the cost of postage has now made this game impossible because it was a lot of fun to do this. If we did such a thing now it would have to be virtual travel with the dolls never leaving home which is a shame.