This is a brief collection of some of the travel pieces I’ve written for friends and family, and occasionally for the media as well. Please note that all works are copyright so please do not reproduce, print or publish without permission.
A Little Note from Paradise: So I moved house today.Rather, I left the hotel I was staying in and moved into Mike’s place.Mike isn’t here, so I hope he doesn’t mind that I moved in.I have mixed feelings about the move.On the one hand, I no longer have the hassle of wondering which cable TV channel to watch from my hotel bed.I can’t watch anything at all.The TV was stolen ten days ago. Click here to read more…
Bangkok Insomniac: Too jacked to sleep I lie on the bed on the 16th floor of my Bangkok hotel. The clock on my sideboard says it’s 0041. The clock in my head says it’s 0341. Which means it is something akin to 21 hours since my body was last catapulted from sleep in a Brisbane hostel. Hard to explain, then. Click here to read more…
Just Another Day in the Office: Through the windshield of the De Havilland Twin Otter, Makira’s main airport appears as a strip of green grass sliced between two walls of encroaching bush. It is cut across the top end of a narrow headland, from one rocky shore to the other, so that as we approach the touch-down the wheels hang scant feet above pounding surf, restless and white against the dark reef. Click here to read more…
The Book of Journeys: And so it came to pass, in the last year of Bush the Inadequate, while the nations of the world gathered together to play silly games, that he who is called Verbose, travelled in the East. Click here to read more…
Fish in the Forest: You could knock together a hotel, pop in a pool and an open-air bar, and justifiably call it paradise. But the ten thousand Manam Islanders who are forced to live here will tell you it’s more like a prison. Click here to read more…
In Search of Kepsy: I met a man in June.His name was Kepsy.He lived and worked on the volcanic island of Karkar, an ominous, cloud-shrouded mountain visible on clear days across the sea from Madang Harbour. Click here to read more…
Bow Hut or Bust: I always have mixed feelings leaving the parking-lot at the start to a backcountry trip. On the one hand, there is an element of excitement, of anticipation, and that sweet jangling of nerves that gets the heart beating just a bit faster in preparation for the exertion and excitement that’s on its way. On the other hand, there’s a touch of fear, because every trip has an element of the unknown. Click here to read more…
Gordon Gauntlet: There is something about being caught in a snowstorm that I love. I don’t think I’m unique in the outdoors community in this regard. It’s a beautiful sensation, an isolation from the rest of the world, where the white envelopes you, cold and heavy and tangible. Click here to read more…
Yoho Dreaming: I believe every skier has a dream. It hits you early in the morning. You get yourself out of the hut, while the sun is still just a pale glow behind a distant ridge of mountains, and the air is brittle, as if a loud noise will shatter it, sharp against the skin and in the lungs as you breathe it in, breathe it out again and watch your breath hang in the stillness. Click here to read more…
The Photographs I Cannot Take: Surrounded by the old-world charm of the hotel I’m staying in, I look out from my room over foaming breakers rushing in from the ocean and dashing themselves against a sea wall. But between me and the rest of the world is a sign, stuck to the glass, that reads, “Security prohibits photographing the precincts of the hotel from windows”. Click here to read more…
A Day in the Life Of…: 6.00 am. I awake to the sound of birdsong. It is the dawn chorus of bowerbirds and migrating swallows as the orange sun breaks above the lip of the savannah grasslands and casts long shadows in dry yellow grass, kissing the bark on spiny acacia trees. Click here to read more…
The Threat of ‘Terrorism’: I think it would be fair to say it’s extremely difficult to turn on a major international news network without being bombarded with messages about terrorism. If it’s not news about a suicide bombing in Fallujah or Kandahar, then it’s an embassy being placed on high alert in Jakarta, a Special Operations raid in Bradford, or some new airport screening measure designed to keep us safe. Click here to read more…
WanderLust 
interesting blog. and awesome photos. will be dropping by more often =)