Riding the High Country

One of the things I really wanted to do while I was in Australia was ride horseback across the mountains in Victoria. Perhaps I’d seen the movie The Man from Snow River a few times too often, but I found the near mythic connection with Australian culture and horses to be too hard to resist. [...]

Hamersley Range

The book is almost ready to be printed. The cover is done, and I’ve seen the proofs. So by this time next month, I may be able to announce the book’s release. Once the book is in print, this site will focus primarily on sharing photos that illustrate the book and relating other travels, including [...]

Now For Something Completely Different

While the main focus of this site is pretty clearly Australia, including my adventures in and writing about the sunburnt country, I also want to share other destinations and interests. I travel a fair bit, and have seen some things I hope to share. I also write about food: primarily food history, but also food [...]

Boabs

If you rotate Australia slightly, you will see that it looks as though it would fit fairly snuggly into the eastern curve of the African continent. According to the theory of plate tectonics, that is, in fact, precisely where Australia started out. Aside from shape, another bit of evidence of the one-time proximity of these [...]

Cooktown revisited

When I included an excerpt about Cooktown in my March 20 post, I was not yet posting images (had to read all thos FAQs on how to do it). But I don’t want you to miss seeing some of the places I’ve already described here—and that I’ll describe in far greater detail in my book—so [...]

Ghost Gum

The eucalypt, or eucalyptus (either form is acceptable and correct, but it’s usually “eucalypt” in Australia—or else they just call it a gum tree) is the signature trea of the Australian landscape. About 75 percent of the trees in Australia are eucalypts. However, not only are most Australian trees eucalypts, but most eucalypts are Australian. [...]

Outback

From time to time, I write poetry, either when needed for an occasion or simply when something moves me deeply. Not entirely surprisingly, I’ve written a bit of poetry about Australia. I love all of Australia, but the outback, particularly the Red Center, really makes my heart sing. So I thought I’d share a bit [...]

Me and the Wallabies

I mentioned in the Koala post that I prefer kangaroos to koalas. I should have included wallabies in that statement of preference. Most people think the difference between kangaroos and wallabies is size. Most kangaroos are bigger than most wallabies, but the size difference does not always exist. The Kangaroo Island kangaroos, for example, are [...]

Katherine Gorge

It has been a little while since I shared an excerpt from the book (the page building is coming along nicely, by the way), so I thought I’d return to the narrative briefly—until I have a little free time to scan some more slides to share with you.
After the camping trip in Kakadu, I returned [...]

The Baby on the Train

One of the hardest aspects of writing, for me at least, is cutting things out that don’t really belong, that don’t truly advance the story, or that simply interrupt the flow. However, as William Zinsser noted in his classic book On Writing Well, “Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can [...]