The 747 is roughly 200 tonnes of aircraft and 200 tonnes of fuel. Pretty amazing weight when their take off and flight it so elegant and graceful. They say fat people make the best dancers – sure on their feet and confident about handling their bulk. But I would be reluctant to label the 747…
I am never sure which is worse – the security routine or the duty free rigmarole. Departing Sydney now requires anything that might be a cream or gel or liquid to be packaged in a small plastic bag – if you wish to take it on board that is. Even your toothpaste. And the quantity…
I have a real soft spot for the city of Sydney. All the things we say about it in our promotional material is very clichéd but, in most cases very true and in which lies its appeal. Brash. Loud, Flamboyant. International recognition. That unique harbour. All true and part of the formula. On an autumn…
FuelMy Blog and lastminute.com invited 300 words describing an ideal weekend in a competition, the prize for which is business class travel to “the continent” – but for UK residents only (it did sound too good to be true). No matter, it was an interesting challenge. No doubt competitors will write in anticipation of an…
My family have been here for years. I came here fifteen years ago after all my brothers and sisters pressured me to come and be a family again. But initially I was reluctant to do so since I could not speak English. I could speak six other languages but not English. I was living in…
With Australians having been intimately involved in the Vietnam War there was a certain hesitancy, a cringe even, on arriving in a place that had once been a battlefield and many of the folk around us considered enemies. Vietnamese have no such cringe. They are out there running just as hard and as fast as…
If you stop for very long [in down town Ho Chi Minh City(formerly Saigon)] – say two or three minutes – chances are good that you will be tapped on the shoulder by someone wanting to practise their English. This has now happened on the steps of the Opera House, on the banks of the…
In the early summer months of 1984 we drove 3000km north to the tropics for a holiday. Yup, pretty crazy. On our second day we drove into a wall of dust near Dubbo. It was a wall not unlike this one pictured in 2002 near Griffith. The outstanding difference was that in 1984 there was…
This is going to look like a plug for QANTAS. Consciously not so, although I do admit enjoying boarding a QANTAS flight at a foreign destination after being away from home for a few weeks and hearing the flight attendants and their accents from home and seeing their relaxed way of going about things. And…
My first travel journal of any substance was an old hardback invoice notebook that I had lifted from one of the local farmers – from a pile of old stationery in one of his sheds. I must have assumed he had less need of it than I. It went with me to Stewart Island in…