A Home Among the Gum Trees

Jervis Bay, Australia

January 2015

“I have some bad news.”

Great. Just what I needed.

I was on the phone to my boyfriend, about an hour before I was due to get on a train and head south from Sydney to a house where he, I and a bunch of friends would be staying for the next few days. It turned out that the bad news was that the house, for reasons which were never fully explained to me, apparently didn’t exist. The friend who had booked it seemed to have fallen victim to some kind of internet scam and now we had nowhere to stay. It looked like we wouldn’t be going after all. 

When The Rains Come

Sabeto, Fiji

June 2011

Sydney’s weather seems to have been going through an experimental phase for the last few weeks. It’s been embracing the tropical idea of afternoon thunderstorms, every afternoon. This type of behaviour might be expected, or at least tolerated, in mid/late January, but the fact that it’s started happening in early December has got everyone a bit confused. It has resulted in some pretty stunning cloud formations though, so it’s not all bad. 

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Grindelwald, Switzerland

December 2010

I will be upfront: I don’t like skiing. I find it painful and uncomfortable and I’m terrible at it. Someone once suggested that if I didn’t like skiing, maybe I should try snowboarding, but I felt my incoordination and general ineptitude at physical activity really ruled that out before I even got started. So, when one is spending a week in a Swiss skiing village with absolutely no intention of going either skiing or snowboarding, what do they do? Go tobogganing of course! 

Tasting Plate – My Top 5 Most Memorable Meals Overseas

I am one of those travellers who, at least in part, travels to please their stomach. When I write about my day’s adventures in my journal, the entry almost always starts with something along the lines of “This morning I had …… for breakfast”, ends with a detailed description of my dinner, and along the way is punctuated by notes on what I had for lunch and various snacks throughout the day. In honour of this obsession, and because of my conviction that you can tell a lot about a place by its food, I present to you the top five most memorable meals from my travels so far. 

Sea, Tea & Rugby

Nasikawa Vision College & Navola village, Fiji

June 2011

It’s not every day you come home from school and find yourself sitting on the pandanus-matted floor of a two-room concrete house drinking Fijian-style tea (that is, lemon-leaf tea with at least a heaped spoonful of raw sugar) while watching a VCR recording of the Wallabies playing the All Blacks. Being neither a habitual tea-drinker nor a rugby fan, I was feeling a little out of my depth, though rather enjoying the ride. 

A Tale of Two Cities

Moscow & St Petersburg, Russian Federation

July 2013

The domes of St Basil’s Cathedral.

St Basil’s Cathedral stands as a monument to a peculiarly Russian type of excess: the interior plastered with gold-encrusted icons, the electric brilliance of the multicoloured roofs of its nine component churches, the sticky closeness of the endless horde of sweaty tourists – I had not expected Russia to be such a colourful place! I had also not expected Russia to reach temperatures of 30^oC every day. I had not expected Lamborghinis in the streets, gold leaf by the bucketload, or a restaurant called ‘The Idiot’. Clearly Russia is a place that defies expectations.