Tag: travel
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What Kind of Bike?
What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of? It was probably not the funniest misunderstanding I have ever been part of, but it was the most recent. We were having dinner at the college and meeting someone for the first time. The conversation turned to what everyone had done over the weekend. He mentioned…
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The Memory Stones
What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel? I read The Memory Stones by Caroline Brothers three or four years ago and was deeply moved by it. The novel tells the story of a young woman who disappears during Argentina’s military dictatorship and of the child taken from her. It is both a…
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Where Would I Live?
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? I’m tempted to name a place I’ve never been. Costa Rica. It keeps popping up in my feed, which probably says as much about the algorithm as it does about me. But I am intrigued. The prompt asks, “If you could live anywhere…
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The Forest Without Birds
What’s something you’d love to see in the futurebut know you probably won’t live to witness? We arrived in Cao Bằng today after driving through the far northeast of Vietnam, close to the Chinese border. The landscape is astonishing. Limestone mountains rise from the valleys. Terraces cut across the hillsides. Villages sit in unlikely places.…
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Lunch in Lo Lo Chai
Do you believe in minimalism? At lunchtime in Lo Lo Chai, the village had gone quiet. Doors were half open. The heat sat in the laneways. People were resting. Not because the life is easy. It is not. People here work hard. They are industrious. The day begins early. Work fills the morning, pauses for…
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Good Morning Vietnam
What is a moment in your life that felt like it was straight out of a movie? On the flight to Vietnam, a family sat behind us: a couple with their teenage son. My wife is a psychologist, and she noticed almost immediately that he was neurodiverse. For much of the nine-hour flight, he repeated…
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A Fruit Cart in Hanoi
Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye. We are on a short holiday in Vietnam. This is our first day, so we started with a tour of Hanoi. We were walking through the city when we saw this woman with her fruit cart. She was standing in…
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Unsettled
What’s a moment that made you question reality? Fifteen months ago we went to Antarctica. It was my wife’s birthday present. More than that, it was something she had wanted to do since she was a little girl. I had known this about her for years. Some people want to see Paris or the pyramids…
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Planned Enough to Be Surprised
How do you plan the perfect road trip? I am not sure I have ever planned the perfect road trip. I am not sure such a thing exists. Every road trip is different. Some are carefully mapped. Some are held together by a rough idea, a few necessary bookings, and the hope that something good…
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The Grace of Welcome
What’s the most interesting local custom you’ve encountered? The most interesting local custom I have encountered is not interesting because it is quaint. It is interesting because it asks something of us. I am thinking of Welcome to Country or Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies. They are not the same thing. A Welcome to Country is…
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The Festival That Failed
What is the best concert you have been to? The best concert I have ever been to was Narara Music Festival, on the Central Coast of NSW, at the end of January 1984. It had a great line-up. INXS. Mondo Rock. Sandii & the Sunsetz. Simple Minds. The Pretenders. Talking Heads. Eurythmics. Cold Chisel. Australian…
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What the City Offers
Which is the best thing to do in your city? Because I live and work in a university residential college, there are always students coming and going. They come from rural towns, interstate, and all over the world. They arrive with suitcases, excitement, uncertainty, and sometimes homesickness. They have come to study, meet people, begin…
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The World Becomes Larger Again
Have you ever been camping? We love camping. Not because it is always comfortable. It isn’t. Sometimes the ground is hard, the toilets are basic, the weather turns, and the wildlife is more determined than expected. But camping gives us something we find harder and harder to come by: simplicity. No distractions. Limited device use.…
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The Places That Leave Me Cold
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why? I love visiting new places. Often they are not the places other people expect. I have travelled on every continent, including Antarctica, and some of the places that have most moved me were not the polished or well-known ones. They were places with…
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More Than a Meal
What is your favourite restaurant? I have never been able to answer questions about a favourite restaurant in the singular, as though one place could do all the work required of it. Restaurants are not interchangeable. There are restaurants for celebration, for conversation, for family, for beauty, for comfort, and for memory. To ask for…
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Modes of Encounter
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike? Every trip says something about the person taking it. That’s what I think. Not in a grand psychological sense. Just in the small way choices reveal us. The pragmatist books the plane. The romantic takes the train. The free spirit wants the car…
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P Plates, No Plates
Have you ever unintentionally broken the law? At seventeen I spent a summer working in a used car yard. I’d only just got my licence, so I was on my P plates—back when they were wired onto the number plate, long before magnetic ones made life easy. The boss told me I could take whatever…
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A Measured No
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do?What would it take to get you to do it? Every now and then someone says they went skydiving on the weekend like it’s a normal weekend activity. They’ll say it casually—like it’s on the same level as trying a new café. I’m always interested and usually ask…
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Australia Day
Write about a few of your favourite family traditions. As I write this, it’s 26 January—Australia Day. It’s the official national day of Australia, marking the 1788 landing of the First Fleet and the raising of the Union Flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove. It’s also a contentious day which divides people. I personally…
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A New Kind of Freedom
Think back on your most memorable road trip. Late May 2021, between the two NSW COVID lockdowns, we took a road trip because it was the easiest kind of travel that still felt possible. No airports, no border rules, no sudden cancellations. It wasn’t the trip we would have chosen in a normal year. It…
The Afterword 