A Town Like Alice

After three weeks in Queensland, I headed for Alice Springs, a town in the middle of Australia’s Red Centre.
We drove out to the old Telegraph Station, which is where Alice Springs began. Charles Heavitree Todd (for whom the Todd River and Heavitree Gap were named), Superintendent of Telegraphs and Postmaster General of South Australia, sent [...]

Rum Rebellion

While in Queensland, I visited the Beenleigh Rum Museum. I guess it’s not too surprising that, in a country that cherishes its convict heritage, people would commemorate a bootlegging past.
The Rum Museum was filled with artifacts and displays detailing the part rum played in the early days of colonial Australia. It was a more significant [...]

Anzac Biscuits

Well, I’ve done five excerpts from the book, so I thought it might be time for a “detour.” Aside from travel, one of my great interests is food — primarily food history and food as it relates to culture. If you click on the link to Hungry Magazine, at right, you can see a lot [...]

Cooktown

I had been in Australia for a couple of weeks already before I reached Cooktown, a small town named for the great Captain James Cook, whose ship the H.M.S. Endeavour ran into the coral off the coast here, and limped into the mouth of what would soon be named the Endeavour River for repairs. Once [...]

Jackeroo

Moving up the coast of Queensland, I spend a few days in Townsville.
Back at the People’s Palace, I headed to the coffee shop for dinner. A young man at another table grinned when he saw me and asked, “You were just in Airlie Beach, weren’t you?” When I responded in the affirmative, he grabbed [...]

Rainforest Revelation

Yet another excerpt from my book. I hope you’ll continue on the journey with me. This passage is from early in my trip, while I’m still in Queensland.
It is almost beyond words to describe the beauty of the rainforest. It is harder still to express how that beauty affected me. My reaction was almost physical—an [...]

Looking Back/Arrival

Until my book gets released, I’ll share excerpts from the book here. Once it’s out, I’ll start sharing photos and then, in time, move on to other topics and destinations. For now, here is an excerpt from the first pages of Waltzing Australia.
I pull a battered loose-leaf binder off the shelf. It bulges with lined [...]

There must be a reason

This blog will, I hope, accomplish many things. I plan to use it to share photographs to accompany the stories in my book, Waltzing Australia (due out May 2007), and I would like to relate adventures from other trips to Australia, following the one that is the subject of the book.
I also hope to share [...]