Australia is a land of two halves.  With a population of some 20 million on a continent on the scale of Europe, the land is hideously underpopulated.  Over half of this thin number is huddled in a handful of all-but-English metropolises, with the remainder scattered across a vast and unique wilderness.  I have been here a month, and am departing ( Read more... )

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Well, you'll all be relieved to know that your intrepid blogger did not get nibbled by sharks. The dive was interesting, despite not seeing all that much, and almost being swept into the coral a number of times by currents (I use my hands a lot for fine control - which isn't so good when you're holding a bloody great torch!). It was a full moon, ( Read more... )

Written on 25th February 2008Only two days now until I head deep into the southern hemisphere. I was struck yesterday - yes after almost two weeks - by my being pretty much on the equator. At noon, walking along the beach under a scorching sun, I couldn't figure out whether it was hitting my front or back. Turns out it was neither - the sun was ( Read more... )

In a break from my regular transmissions, I am in a tiny little Island, called Gili Trawangan, off the North coast of Lombok in Indonesia. Tonight, in a rather random turn of events, I have spent eating Sashimi, and watching the seaside restaurants and bars get flooded by bloody huge waves - the aftermath of an earlier earthquake and Tsunami off ( Read more... )

In the south of Phnom Penh, there is a hill, and here, in the seventies, lay the 'Tuol Svay Prey' high school. With the advent of the Khmer Rouge, these four buildings were ensheathed in two folds of corrugated iron sheeting, and dense, electrified razor wire ( Read more... )

I apologise for my lack of correspondence over the last week or so - yet I didn't feel I could write of my travels untill I had recorded some sketch of my time in Phnom Penh. Both for you, dear readers, and for myself - as this log is a diary and a record of my memories too. However, I found myself unable to do so until the sharpness of those ( Read more... )

Once in a long while, you just want to be able to burn a memory onto the surface of your mind, lest in the passage of time it should dim and fade ( Read more... )

Again a rather brief update this - I'm back in Khao Lak (have a look back in the journal to about November 2004 for last time!), after a bus Odessey across Thailand and multiple changes. I'll be sailing to some offshore Islands to drift with the fishies for a few days ( Read more... )