Tag Archives: australia

The white sandy beaches of Fraser Island

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Last night I had a dreams with three apparently memorable components. One was about bunking off work to go to a sixth form reunion, another was something very messy involving mashed potatoes and gravy and the last one was being back on Fraser Island.

I suspect it is in part a hankering for the sunshine as the autumn begins to encroach. I don’t feel like we had a particularly amazing summer weather-wise and as much as I find the changing of the leaves a beautiful sight, I don’t like that damp chill in the air when I get up to write at 6am. I want blue skies and warm sunshine and white sand. And peace. So it’s no wonder really that in my dreams I would go back to a place like this:

Lake Mackenzie Fraser Island

Now forgive the picture quality, because this was taken with my first ever digital camera, given to me as a parting gift from a dear friend before I set off to adventure around the world. This was back when 2megapixels didn’t mean anything to anyone but it was about the best you could get for under five hundred quid. Now you can get a burner phone with better. How quickly the world has changed in a decade.

I’m so lucky to have travelled to so many places and god willing I hope to travel to many, many more. For these are the places that are the source of my inspiration and the memories that I can keep returning to on the mundane, cold days to remind me of just how privileged I really am.

So this is a Throwback Thursday to sunshine, but a present day moment of gratitude.

The best city on earth: Sydney

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Sydney Opera House

Given the events of this week, it seemed a perfect choice to do a Throwback Thursday to Sydney. Sydney was my home for a while a few years ago, and a place I’ve once again visited in the past six months. In fact, as I sat here twelve months ago, the plan was to be living in Sydney right now. So the siege this week was something I saw with the detached sense of someone who wasn’t there, but could quite easily  place myself at the scene mentally.

The ‘I’ll ride with you‘ hashtag, appearing so quickly and easily during the events, reminded me of why I love Australia (and Aussies) so much. While much of Europe takes its typical approach to these sorts of things – I’m thinking the approach that always seems to lead to war – and America certainly isn’t much better, Australia instead embraced the theory of mateship that it knows itself for. No one needed to feel unsafe because of the actions of a madman. We’re all in this together. Not send them back to their own country or they’re all coming over here and stealing our jobs/benefits. It is a different culture. A different world. One which is far away, but always in my heart.

This is how it looked when I first saw it and digital cameras were very much in their infancy. There is something about being in Sydney that is so unique – there is no way you can confuse it with any other part of the world:
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Sydney is my favourite city in the world. I’m not a huge fan of cities. I never dreamed as a kid of wrapping up all my possessions in a knapsack and leaving home to find my fortune with the big lights. But Sydney gets so many things right it’s hard not to fall in love with it a little bit more every time.

Sydney Water Views

Of course, the fallout from one madman’s events will continue to land for a while to come. I just hope that the people of Sydney are able to continue with their first response of compassion and understanding as the grief rolls through.

It’s no understatement that my time in Sydney went a long way towards shaping who I wanted to be and what I wanted from my life, in terms of quality, writing, experiences and relationships. And this summer, when I walked back to Manly Wharf, it was a place that still felt like home…

Manly Wharf

Book Review: Down Under by Bill Bryson

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Confession: this is not the first time I have read Down Under. The first time was just before I visiting Australia a decade ago. I didn’t actually buy the book for me. It was a Christmas present for my mom after I somehow got confused about her request for the latest book by Bernard Cornwell. Don’t ask.

The book itself gave me so much help in planning my trip. I had twelve months to travel and the guidebooks were all so uniform. Catering to either the backpacker (party!!!) or the high end tourist (out of my budget), they were great for the overview. There was something different about Down Under though. It made Australia seem alive to me before I even got there. It certainly made me want to visit places I would never have normally considered.

Now I find myself tantalisingly close to Aussie again, but yet still so far away. Despite the fact it is closer now than it has been in a good many years, my next planned trip out of New Zealand is going to be to the States and Canada. That’s been planned long before my sudden move and not going to change now. So, in an attempt to remind myself of what I had been holding onto for so long, when I saw Down Under in the library I couldn’t resist getting it.

Even for those that have never been, Bryson’s storytelling is instantly accessible. He is evocative without ever being grandiose and at times brutally honest in a way that anyone aiming for a commercial tourism book would never be.

downunder

 

From his terrifying assessment of the wildlife (why is it so likely to kill you anyway?) to exploring the cities (I personally think Canberra gets an unfair rap), Bryson covers it all. Plus he’s right; unless you live there, you never remember the name of the Prime Minister. Sometimes, I suspect, you don’t remember even if you’re Aussie born and bred.

So, this wasn’t the first time I read it and it won’t be the last. Hopefully, at some point in the next twelve months, I’ll be in a position to see it all for myself again too…