The contrast is absolute. Today we walk through a fecund eucalypt forest in the Otway National Park. It’s a sharp, winding 500-metre climb through grand, goal post straight gums, dotted with occasional grey bulges that sporadically stretch a rear leg and scratch behind a furry ear. They are koalas, still electrifying to witness in the …
Tag Archives: travel
Mildura, Victoria
You can’t live without hope that things will change for the better You can’t live without the dream of someone reading your letter – Colin Hay, Next Year People ‘It’s a dust bowl.’ These are the parting words from our host in Adelaide when we mention we are heading to Mildura that day. I only …
Penong, South Australia
The endless black ribbon stretches in front of us. The Nullarbor Plain, an expanse cloaked in stories of endless nothingness, is an uninterrupted void topped with a highway that unravels flat and dead straight. The road runs east from Western Australia, neatly meeting the inside of the Great Australian Bight near Eucla, just before the …
Pot Alley, Kalbarri, Western Australia
So here’s a nasty little gash in the West Australian coastline, where the ocean water surges and boils. The waves brutally invade the small beach before retreating again, only for the thin strip of sand to be reconquered by the next violent roller. The water, whipped by a constant south-westerly, heaves in before sucking back …
Carnarvon, Western Australia
The four of us are lying on our backs, with our legs on a shelf so that our calves and feet are above our heads. Eddie is on one side of me, Sandi to my right and Frank next to her. Eddie and Frank are dressed in astronaut suits. It’s a very small space, and …
Point Quobba, Western Australia
Little patterns have settled as we move across the country. I wake first and get coffee, the boys stretch and groan and creep up to where Sandi still lies and crawl in around her. Little patterns. We have sandwiches for lunch and Frank doesn’t have tomato but Eddie does. Little patterns. We do a grocery …
Cape Range National Park, Ningaloo Coast
The exquisite Ningaloo Coast. The flour-white sand is littered with tiny shells of intense complexity and colour that softly crunch as they give way to your feet. The translucent, invigorating salt water swirls softly in the bays, with Dotted Darts and Blue Snapper lazily swimming in a few feet of water beside the shore. The …
Eighty Mile Beach, Western Australia
It’s mid-afternoon and we are all lazing under the shade of the tent awning that staves off the intense West Australian sun, reading or dozing, after a morning fishing on the brilliant white beach. For the last few hours we have been baiting up lines with inch long silver slices of pilchard, the red innards …
Gnylmarung, Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia
Twice now we have stopped for longer periods and stayed with generous friends, once Darwin and now in Broome. Twice we have spilt from the car, initially with whatever was in hands reach, pillows, keys, books and shoes and then slowly adding more as things are pulled from the trailer. We create little piles of …
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Broome, Western Australia
Song lyrics keep ringing through my head. There’s the one about six days on the road and making it home tonight, but the main one is from Neil Murray. In his song ‘Good Light in Broome’, he tells the hard-bitten story of a bloke struggling through his life, limping from one disaster to the next …
Big Country 