What do quake-shaken Napier New Zealand, cyclone-slammed Innisfail Nth Queensland and hurricane-hammered South Beach Miami have in common? An architecture more normally associated with New York, and LA, and Paris. How so? It’s largely a matter of timing. In 1918, Innisfail was slammed by a cyclone that killed around a hundred people. So bad was the damage in…
I was going through some raw video the other night when I found a two minute slice-of-life as we rode the Peak Tram in Hong Kong back in 2010 – and I remembered being told that it was a funicular railway, rather than a cable car. I asked Shirley if she knew the difference – and…
“It’s not travelling – it’s a mad dash through nine bloody countries in 18 bloody days, that’s what it is! And I have to be mother, and father, psychiatrist, host, teacher, interpreter, peacemaker and jokemaker to a silly crowd of Americans identical to my last silly crowd of Americans.” That was the view of tour-guide Charlie…
As a travel blogger / writer, I follow lots and lots of other travel bloggers and writers. And I noticed today that many of them regularly post pics of food. As do I. That prompted me to take a quick look at the number of food pictures we have from our travels. And particularly of street…
Despite working as a journalist for more than three decades, sometimes a story comes along and just sucker punches me. Tropical Storm Erika’s a good example. It was just a few months ago that I was in Dominica, with my wife, my two sisters, and two friends. We commented on how poor the country was, but…
I spotted a post earlier this week on a blog I follow which referred to one of the little-known jewels in the North Queensland crown, Lake Barrine. In the post, blogger Michael Lai speaks of the lake’s pristine water, it’s beautiful flora and fauna, and (quite rightly) of ‘the best scones and tea we ever had’. But…
I recently had the good fortune to take a round-the-world trip with five middle-aged ladies. (Hmmm .. last time I said that, I got thwacked by my wife, and my sister – but how else am I gonna describe it? We are all well over 45, the dictionary definition of middle age …) Sigh. Take two…. I recently…
I still choke up when I think of it. Hundreds of plaques; each one representing a young life snuffed out building a railway that their countrymen and allies would bomb out of existence in any case. Or the scores of names on a wall, memorializing the men who died as their ship was sunk without…
What do you call a South Pacific island paradise on a grey, windswept day? You call it still gorgeous. And also, Iles Des Pins – or Isle of Pines in English. A part of New Caledonia, the island (called Kwenyii in the local Kanak dialect) has around 2,000 residents – mainly Melanesian Kanaks. Like its…
Recently, I was in Rome at the end of an amazing cruise (It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things: me and five middle-aged women, going around the world by plane and ship – I’ll tell you about it some other time). Anyway, as we checked into our hotel, one of our party spotted a flyer…
Cairns Communications 