Category: Australia
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How to ‘do’ the top town
Getting close to crossing borders again – head to the top of Oz: Darwin Once considered the wild west, Darwin was a haven for maintenance avoiding men; dodgy people who needed to disappear, 20th century vagabonds and a town with a drinking culture to set galactic records. When Cyclone Tracy blew into town on 24…
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Staycation or how to swing a few days in Sydney – good vibes all ’round.
Sydney likes nothing better than to celebrate the ‘new’. Always up for a party, the city by the harbour turned its attention to the latest Vibe Hotel Sydney Darling Harbour. Restrictions on borders are being relaxed (at time of writing) and people want to enjoy the new freedom of being able to move about and…
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Travel: looking for the best doors to capture
A simple wooden door made from fence palings – whatever does the job. On the road to Freycinet, Tasmania. What is it about doors? I can’t stop photographing them. Below are just a few of the recents I’ve slammed but I’ve been shooting them for years. The beautiful coloured doors of Ireland, especially Dublin –…
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Road trip: Go West
Forbes Town Hall. I wrote this post as the smoke pall was settling over Sydney and we were preparing to head outta town to support people in the rural areas. And then the hammer of Covid-19 slammed us, and we went into quarantine. Locked in and not going anywhere. As restrictions are cautiously being lifted…
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How to sip and glamp
In the gentle grip of the grape. When you are ready and able to take a road trip out of Sydney, head towards Orange in the central west of NSW. Rustic but refined, this experience sets you in the middle of classic Australian terrain – generous glamping and a spectacular cellar door next door.…
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How to do ‘heritage hotel’
Amid the tall and slender, new and shiny and fair and funky, there’s a place where refinement and coolness resides in Sydney . . . Primus Hotel Sydney. The Presidential suite. When is a hotel not a hotel? Well, it’s always a hotel if it’s a hotel! But if it’s not a tall, shiny new…
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Anzac Day – Lest We Forget
As Anzac day approaches, it will be a little different from last year. With the full force of COVID-19 lockdown, 2020 saw the remembrance day silent in the streets due to lockdown. The sound of the bugle playing the last post rang out through empty streets of country towns and solitary memorials will had fresh…
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Drumming up light and love
Something happened to me in my mid 30s (a few years ago now) I stopped doing any regular exercise. I had dabbled in yoga and even had personal trainer for a short while. And as a teenager, had played competitive squash and tennis. But time and work and the party life offered little useful movement…
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The (almost half) year that was
I was reading a colleague’s ‘year of travel tales’ and thought I might put my 2018 up in lights too. After a few trips last year that were diverse in their locations I have many warm memories and hopefully some insights into what makes the world tick outside my limited realm. Once I began looking…
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The State I’m in!
Or how I love old cinemas, eccentric architecture and overwrought decor. Shame on you 1960s through to 1980s in Sydney. Just tore down old buildings willynilly to ‘modernise’ the city. And as the bricks tumbled, down came more than 20 old-style, elegant cinemas in Sydney including the Roma, Lido, Lyceum, Regent, Palace and sadly on…