Tag: travel
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Namibia: Where Life Flourishes Against the Odds
What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list? I’m not really a bucket list person. I don’t have a list of countries that I’m determined to visit before I die. But every now and then, a country captures my imagination. Namibia is one of those places. I’m not entirely sure why, but…
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More Than Memories
What’s the best way to meet new people while traveling? We’re the kind of people who are more interested in ongoing relationships than casual ones. So when I think about meeting people while travelling, I’m less interested in how many people we meet than in what happens afterwards. In recent years, we have increasingly travelled…
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First get oriented. Then wander.
What’s the best way to explore a new city? People often say that the best way to explore a new city is simply to wander. I admire people who can do that. I’m not really one of them. When I arrive somewhere new, I like to get a cognitive map in my head. I want…
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Very Small, But Never More Alive
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive? This is me in my happy place, standing on an ice floe in the Southern Ocean. It was day one of our expedition to Antarctica. The air was cold, but not unbearably so. Around us, ice, ocean and sky seemed to stretch forever.…
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And Yet It Felt Like Home
What’s a place you visited that felt like home? Moshi in Tanzania felt like home. That is strange, because it is nothing like my home in Australia. Mount Kilimanjaro rises only about 30 kilometres away, so close that it seems to preside over the town. You glimpse it above buildings and along ordinary streets, its…
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The Shipping News
If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week,who would you choose? I was asked an unusual question by an international student this week. They had identified Canada and Australia as two popular study destinations. Then came the personal question: If you could live anywhere, would you choose Australia or Canada?…
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A Big Country
What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken? Australia is a big country and a long way from almost everywhere, so Australians become used to travelling long distances. We do it because we have to. Distance becomes part inconvenience, part adventure. The longest trip I have ever taken, at least in terms of time on the…
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Spend Less on What Doesn’t Matter
What’s your best tip for budget travel? One of the best holidays we ever had was seven weeks travelling around Europe, mainly by Eurail. We had saved enough frequent flyer points to cover the airfares, so that made a huge difference. We flew to Amsterdam, spent a few days there, then stayed with friends in…
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Narara Music Festival
How did you meet your significant other? We really met at a music festival over forty years ago. We had crossed paths before. We were both on a beach mission team at Ulladulla on the South Coast of NSW. We had a common friend, and I remember her singing one night in a coffee shop.…
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The Last Day in Antarctica
If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why? If I could relive one day from my past, it would be our last day in Antarctica. It was the culmination of a trip we had saved towards for fifteen years, a celebration of a significant birthday for my…
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Firedoor
Which is the best restaurant in your city? Last year, for my wife’s birthday, we went to Firedoor in Surry Hills for lunch. It was expensive. But it was also a special occasion, and it turned out to be a memorable meal. The food was excellent, the atmosphere relaxed and warm, and the service managed…
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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…
