January 26 is Australia Day.  It's a special day for me as well.  On this day three years ago I met my wife on a train to the Big Day Out in Sydney.

I'd moved to Sydney from my home town, Adelaide in South Australia to take advantage of the dot-com boom.  It was a pretty simple decision really: move states and triple my income doing the same work with bigger and better companies.  It had also coincided with the end of a five year relationship.  I'd decided to have some quality solo time (re: I discovered alcohol) and do things I enjoyed doing, with the hope that I'd find someone who shared my interests without too much work.

This strategy worked well.  I did the usual life-enhancing things like drawing classes, voice training, dance classes at the Sydney Dance Company studios, bushwalking.  I also did all the things you see in the classifieds 'movies, walks along the beach, good restaurants'.  But it soon became clear that while I was having a good time I wasn't meeting anyone.  When I went bush walking I had some picture of a bunch of Elle McPhersons who loved to hike in the Australian bush.  It turned out to be a 70 year old woman ('Roma by name .. Roma by nature ...') and a couple of 40 year old guys who still lived with their mums.

The prospects at work weren't any better.  Unfortunately there just aren't many females into IT.  I was working at the Sydney Morning Herald, which did have a large marketing department that had the reverse gender balance to the IT department, but I soon worked out that chances were slim.  Whenever a new female did arrive it was like throwing mince meat in shark infested waters.  Sizing up every female colleague as a potential partner just felt predatory.  It was clear I need to re-think my strategy.

After a lot of soul searching I realised that my chances of meeting someone were pretty small as long as I never spoke to anyone I didn't know.  Using my psychology and social science training I hypothesized there was a correlation between the number of women I spoke to and the likelihood of getting a date.  So, it was clear, I just had to approach strangers and try and strike up a conversation.

My greatest fear was making a fool or myself, or worse, approaching a woman who had  a boyfriend and ending up in a punch up (I could clearly visualize this happening).  I began researching how I might locate someone and make an approach.  If women were in pairs then it was a pretty hard ask, women in groups of three were just impossible (three legged chairs are the most stable).  It was clear: It would be easiest to do this if I found a woman on her own.  The challenge was how to do this without being creepy.

I continued going out and enjoying myself.  Eventually I was out dancing at shows by the Sydney Opera House and saw a woman who was on her own.  I struck up a conversation - 'Good DJ hey!' - and had to confront my worst nightmare: a boyfriend.  Strangely, nothing bad happened.  My confidence levels shot up.

The Big Day Out is a travelling rock concert that goes through most Australian capital cities and even a couple of days in New Zealand.  In Sydney it's hosted at Homebush, the Olympics venue, which is serviced by a train from central station.  I had been to quite a few events at the Olympics and had enjoyed the atmosphere on the train, where everyone had started talking to each other.  While I was walking down the platform I noticed this very attractive woman looking out of the door to see when the train left.  'She's more attractive than anyone I'd normally talk to' I thought.  Then the cognitive-behavioural psychology part of my brain started saying things like 'why not talk to her?' and 'which part of turning around and opening your mouth to make sound are you unable to do?'.

So, feeling my heart in my throat, I turned around.  The first question is the key I thought - it has to communicate interest without looking desperate or creepy.  It can't be a 'line' or too cheesy.  So I thought about what I was generally interested in knowing about someone else.  I walked into the empty carriage and sat in the seat across the aisle from her and opened with 'Is this the first time you've been to the Big Day Out?'

I later realised that this was dangerously close to 'Do you come here often?' but luckily we managed to get over that first hurdle, got talking on the way out and ended up agreeing to meet up later in the day 'in front of the sound desk before Coldplay'.   I was pretty excited from that moment on.  Enough that I even sat through a Rammstein performance (I was the only guy laughing at how funny these right-wing German rockers were).  In fact, I was so excited, and I'm so bad at hiding how I feel, that I ended up showing off like a teenager, performing a cartwheel and losing my sunglasses. Tragic, but true.

Anyway, later that year we ended up moving to London together.  I proposed in Paris under the Eiffel tower (another story), we got married last year outside Sydney and are now expecting our first child.  All this from the second stranger I'd ever spoken to.