Offbeat Australia is off the truck and into the bookstore this week. Revamped, updated, the guide is Cassowary Crossing in new plumage, with new websites added, a smatter of new entries and the whole overhaul of ticket price and opening hours revisited.
The re-issue owes much to Ali Watts, my publisher at Penguin, who rightly insisted […]
For offshore surfers, Australians can’t speak today. Awfully sorry, but the nation holds its breath this afternoon - or for three holy minutes round 3pm as every punter stands mesmerised by the babbled poetry of Dolphin Jo/Eskimo Queen/Zipping/The Fuzz/Et Cetera over the SkyChannel.
Yes, the Melbourne Cup has shrugged off the side-effects of equine flu, drought […]
There are two type of people in the universe. Those who want to be travel writers - and the Third World. To help you realise that hotly shared ambition, here’s Part B of the Q&A:
3 Best and worst things?
Waking up on the road, knowing your day will be unique. Even if it’s a trip […]
Last month the Victorian Writers Centre [http://www.writers-centre.org/] grilled me on the sidelight of travel writing - does it pay? How much? And how the hell can a literate bum get away with it?
At least a bunch of questions along those lines. See if you can’t derive your own brand of sense from Part A, as […]
Captain Cook chased a chook
All around Australia
He lost his pants in the middle of France
And landed in Tasmania.
If a kid’s ditty sums up your Captain Cook knowledge, then let me recommend two things:
1) Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Cook Has Been Before, the salty romp by Tony Horwitz who retraces the wake of Cook’s great […]
I’m locked into lockstep with seven burly locksmiths – left, right, left, right – but fast. It’s conga on speed. The quickest queue in the west. Red sand is flying. Muscles ache, as hordes of cowboys and all-leather bikies cheer us on.
Around our midriffs is a boat – a hollow canoe. Eight torsos poke above […]
A friend has 200 snow domes in her hallway. The most exotic one comes from Paris: a midget Eiffel tower copping a blizzard every time you shake the glass. Most of the domes hail from down under – even the implausible Uluru. The whole set is backlit to give the cabinet a kitsch splendour.
Pam, a […]
Curiosity is in the eye of the beholder. What’s curious to me may be so-so to you. That was the dilemma in writing a book like Cassowary Crossing – choosing the outright peculiar from the vaguely odd.
Take Magnetic Island for example. I’ve only just returned from this scuba oasis off northern Queensland, with sunburn on […]
Travel and danger seem to go together, like fish and chips, or Black and Decker. As soon as you leave that door, say the insurance brochures, a piano is liable to fall on your head, or a bloodless coup in Eastern Europe might cancel your raft trip.
Somehow I survived researching this offbeat guide, driving around […]