Travel and culture
It’s been three years since I last went home. Three long years in which my own blissful little life — romance, marriage, friendships, a loving family-in-law, testing the limits of “working from home,” outdoor adventures in the paradisiacal Pacific Northwest — has shone in ugly contrast with a plague-ridden civilization that feels like it’s shutting down, turning in on itself.
Queensland/New South Wales, 1996 - 2004 When I was small, my family lived in a small city on Queensland’s Wide Bay. At least once a year we would load up and drive south, usually over two days. The destination was Tamworth, where my mum grew up and where my grandmother still lives. For me, the… Continue reading Post Cards From The Borders, Part One
There are several routes into Queensland from the Northern Territory but only one of them, the Barkly Highway, is paved. I had my sights set on the Plenty Highway, which cuts east off the Stuart a little way north of Alice, and heading towards Channel Country beyond that. Hailee was more inclined to stick to… Continue reading In Far North Queensland
Alright, let’s get this out of the way. This time the excuse is this: as we neared the far reaches of Australia’s east coast and with it, re-entered the orbit of my family and the last weeks of the trip, I had less and less time to sit down and punch out a post. When… Continue reading The Red Centre
Australia’s Northern Territory is shaped like a tombstone, its base lodged deep in the red central deserts and jutting up to touch exotically-named bodies of water like the Timor Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The state’s human population mostly congregates along the Stuart Highway, a north-south spine of bitumen that links Darwin in the… Continue reading The Top End
By now, this drive around Australia has given Hailee and me a sort of immunisation against the power of a beautiful coastline. We’ve seen more white sand, dramatic cliffs, pounding waves and seawater the colour of Listerine than you could shake a snorkel at. Someday, I suspect poor Hailee will return to the fabled coasts… Continue reading The Gorge-ous Kimberley
Before I get into it this week, I’d like to take a moment and do something I’ve never done before. Over the years, this blog has collected a small following that, in places, even extends beyond my own circle of family and friends. Some of you leave comments from time to time, others drop in… Continue reading Perth to the Pilbara
I really, really wanted to like Esperance. This was our first proper town in Western Australia, a lonely outlier on the state’s southern coast. The name had a nice ring to it, a hissing rhythm when pronounced in Australian English. Esperance – it’s French for “hope,” named after a ship in the same expedition that… Continue reading Little Gnomes and Big Trees in the South West
The Nullarbor is more famous for the things that aren’t there than the things that are. There are no hills, for example. Nor are there many trees. There are no real towns to speak of, and very few bends in the road. This lack of things makes for a large (even by Australian standards) blotch… Continue reading The Nullarbor
So for the last six or seven months people have been asking Hailee and I, “what’s your plan?” To this we would rattle off a laundry list of people to visit and places to see along the east coast. We wanted to check out Tasmania. We had people to visit in Brisbane. We had to… Continue reading South Australia: We Finally Go West