Travels with Oscar Wylee Eyewear

Do you wear glasses or sunglasses? Do you like doing good stuff for other people (with minimal effort)? Allow me to introduce you to the works of Oscar Wylee.

I recently made the acquaintance of this optical brand with a vision (pun intended) for giving disadvantaged people the gift that so many of us take for granted – the gift of perfect sight. And here’s where you doing good stuff comes into the picture: for every pair of glasses sold, Oscar Wylee provides affordable eye care to someone in need through their charity partners, Sight For All and Rose Charities Cambodia.

The stores have a great range of frames and an in-house optician to assess your vision – on their kind invitation, I walked into their Melbourne store, spent ages agonising over frames (and then just a few minutes being tested!), and then a few days later, I had my new reading glasses, which are quite spiffy if I do say so myself. 

Due to a bit of a mix-up in communications with the Oscar Wylee team, I got the reading glasses made up with outdoor lenses too, which turned out to be a happy mistake because it meant I could enjoy reading al fresco (rather than al desko) on my recent camping trip on the Great Ocean Road.

Do you like my accessorising? I wasn’t trying to look like I was on safari, the fly veil is simply to keep those pesky insects away, because where there is beautiful nature and fine weather there are also lots of flies (ie most of Australia). Fortunately they left us alone most of the time!

My choice of reading was Travels with Myself and Another, which I can highly recommend. It’s by Martha Gellhorn, former wife of Ernest Hemingway, and is a memoir of some of her more trying journeys. Most of her recollections made even the most modest of camping expeditions seem like five-star hotel accommodation, so it was an appropriate choice for this trip, although thanks to my friend Maddie’s generous dad, who lent us his equipment, it was a pretty comfortable few days.  Plus, we got to see views like this…

Thinking about all this natural beauty now makes me really grateful I was able to get out and see it (even if I was complaining about my sore feet at the time after a 14km walk!). If you’re in the market for new eyewear, keep Oscar Wylee in mind – your purchase will help others see more of their world more too.