About Pickled Eel

I live in Sydney, Australia. I am married with four children although most are now out of the house and doing things on their own. We live “up on the beaches” as the area in Sydney is known, although the closest beach is about a ten minute drive away. We are certainly blessed to live in a remarkable part of the world.

Originally from New Zealand, I grew up in a small town of 900 or so people. It was essentially a rural - certainly rustic - upbringing which was no preparation for a move to Melbourne Australia in 1976 and about as far from the bustle of Sydney as you can get.

I work in the private sector and have done so for more than eight years now. Prior to that I was employed by the Department of Defence. The Air Force to be precise. In that time I was fortunate to enjoy a four year period with the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Somehow I found myself doing a lot of travel in the last twenty years, a trip to China in September 2006 sparking the idea of a blog, nicely mixing as it does my interest in writing and other arts. Like many others this is a second blog, coming after the more experimental blogspot on which I cut my teeth.

This blog will give me more flexibility to write about broader things than just travel although I am hoping there will still be plenty of that.

Why Pickled Eel?

The first post I crafted for my first blog was a story about drinking some pickled eel in the backstreets of Beijing. It seemed like an appropriate title for a blog. And was suitably exotic to boot.

My Views of Travel

If you follow this link you will be taken to an interview for Travelblogs.com, an interview with Eric following my few weeks spent in Iraq. It reveals a little more about the Pickledeel. Enjoy.