Travel and analysis.
Distraction is one of the great perils of white collar work, right up there with poor posture and the development of flabby, underused leg muscles. That’s because if you’re working on a computer in 2019, you’re almost certainly on the internet — and more engaging activities are never more than a click or two away.… Continue reading Exploring the World From Your Desk
Last week, we started a two-part series where I tried to wrap my feeble mind around an evolving fixation on borders. We started with grandiose adventures across the somewhat meaningless boundary between Queensland and New South Wales, followed by the thoroughly underwhelming frontiers in Europe and the more exciting crossing further east. Iran/Armenia, 2014 We… Continue reading Post Cards From The Borders, Part Two
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
I have been working — steadily and oh-so-slowly — on a book about the time I tried and (spoiler alert!) failed to ride a bicycle named Baxter from Canada to Argentina. Many of you probably remember me writing about that journey on this very blog. As that book is now nearing completion, I have a few things to report...
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
