Category: Travel Writing
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BACKSTORY PART ONE: The House of Blakiston.
I come from Geraldine. Someone had to. My hometown, Geraldine, on New Zealand’s South Island, doesn’t have any notable citizens. We can’t lay claim to being the birthplace of a great politician, or an eminent scientist, or even some famous deviant, serial killer or chef. The closest thing Geraldine has to a celebrity is Jordan […]
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KELI MUTU: THE LAST ADVENTURE
Sean, Thierry and I made an early start to climb up to the summit of Keli Mutu¹ in time for the sunrise. We left the Losman² at 2:50 AM and walked up the road to where a path led down to a small stream and a waterfall then began to climb steeply up the mountainside. […]
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NORTH BY NORTH-WEST
“When vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings…” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness North of Westport, State Highway 67 followed the coast on a narrow, scrubby littoral. The outer edge of the Denniston Plateau, where vast amounts of coal were hewn from the earthquake-rumpled landscape during the late nineteenth and early […]
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THE GATES OF HELL
Out here nothing changes,Not in a hurry anyway.You feel the endlessness,Running from the light of day… – Goanna, Solid Rock. East of Borroloola the back left tyre of my four-wheel-drive exploded. I was driving fast, too fast, probably, on a hellish stretch […]
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CROCODILE COUNTRY
Out where the river broke,The bloodwood and the desert oak… – Midnight Oil, Beds Are Burning At Roper Bar I was swimming with crocodiles. And not the harmless freshwater variety, either. These were the real deal: big ‘ol, bad-tempered, drag-you-under-and-drown-you saltwater crocs. […]
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IRON AND GOLD
the emu-sextons pay me a last cursory glance… At Menzies, a dead-on-its-feet mining town a hundred kilometres north of Kalgoorlie, I turn off the bitumen highway onto a rutted track bulldozed through the red dirt landscape of Western Australia. My rented car moves about on the loose surface like a schooner under sail on a […]
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UNDER THE SUN
You’re in by Karumba,Where the fishing boats come in;I can’t believe this feeling,But I wish that I was there,Every passing day… – Goanna, Every Passing Day Fifteen nautical miles north-west of Karumba the oppressive air presses down on us with an almost tactile force. Thunderheads massed […]
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SHADOWS ON THE HILL
The river stretches a braided thread of silver along the valley floor. Morning in the High Country. On a hillside far above the Phantom River, a musterer gives his sheepdogs a command: “Speak up!” His four black and tan huntaways immediately set up a cacophony of loud barking. The musterer joins in with his own […]
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MONUMENT
And so I came, at last, to my final destination in India: the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. I had wandered through the stone garden of the Park Street Cemetery, sat quietly in the grand neo-Gothic St. Paul’s Cathedral and walked along busy, crowded Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road to the gardens of the Maidan. The […]
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JAHANGIR’S GARDEN
…the tomb of Nithar, lies reflected in the shimmering pool. In Allahabad I find a secret garden. I have been walking for hours: exploring the parks of the city’s centre, the exquisite domed buildings of the University, the sad, barricaded, derelict cathedral. I have fallen asleep on a concrete bench beneath a shady tree in […]
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