On Thu 09/Apr/09 I whipped up to Alice Springs to spend time with my partner Marg. Nice flight - especially as I scored a business class upgrade! I did the airline a favour in agreeing to shift seats, for the comfort of another passenger, & got led up to the pointy end of the plane. Margaret went up to Alice mid-January 2009 in her capacity as a social worker, to help deliver the Centrelink component of the government’s Aboriginal Intervention strategy. She was here for 3 months, based in Alice, but spending most weeks out at the various Aboriginal communities. I had managed a rushed visit on the Melbourne Labour Day long weekend but had come up at Easter to spend a week or so of my term break here and then return home with Marg. ... read more

Getting to know Luurnpa Catholic School When you think country school, maybe especially when you think remote outback school, you probably imagine a building with a couple of classrooms and perhaps another space for staff & meetings, etc. Well, Luurnpa Catholic School would provide a delightful surprise. It’s quite a substantial school with several air-conditioned classrooms, staffroom, computer room, cooking classroom, library, admin offices, kitchen/canteen, in-ground swimming pool, covered basketball court, climbing equipment & a grassed footy field. In close proximity to the school are the Brother’s 3 houses to the north, a line of about 10 teacher houses to the east & a few other teacher houses, a little more distant, to the south. The addition of fencing, secure doors, windows & gates, as well as intrusion alarms, sets up a school compound that protects ... read more

The tour lasted the expected time - just over 12 weeks. A long time to be away. A long time to spend living out of a backpack & dealing with all those trials & tribulations that seem coupled to the joys of travelling. A long time to spend, almost every waking moment, in close proximity to friend or even a loved one. (A long time for Marg who's kids all had birthdays, exams & exam results in her absence.) It was almost a regular feature of our travel day to have our afternoon happy hour drinks; to help shed some of the burdens this particular day had provided. An essential part of the day. A means of maintaining ones sanity. This, the last episode of our Asian Tour 2007, is essentially just a photographic entry. It ... read more

Kochi (formerly Cochin) is Kerala's most popular tourist destination. It has a large port & is historically the site of much peaceful foreign contact. Fort Cochin & Mattancherry, the older parts of the city, have quite an assortment of sights & architectural styles as a result of this history. It pretty much came into being as the result of flooding, which created a natural, safe harbour at its current location & silted up the existing harbour, Cranganore, 50km further north. It soon became the major port of the Malabar Coast with the city growing & attracting Christian, Arab & Jewish settlers from the Middle East. European interest in the area had the Portugese, Dutch & British competing, from the early 1500s, for control of the port & lucrative spice trade. Spice markets are still operating here. ... read more

Nepal is certainly a beautiful country, spectacular, is probably a more appropriate description. Its position between India & Tibet has contributed to much of its history. Its own internal history is one of competitive, mini-kingdoms & this is still quite visible today in the form of the three great towns of the Kathmandu Valley - Kathmandu, Patan & Bhaktapur. Beyond the Kathmandu Valley, of course, are the great Himalayan Mountains. Nepal has a population of about 23 million with its capital, Kathmandu, having about 600,000. The temples of Kathmandu, Patan, Swayambhunath, Pashupatinath & Bodhnath all look quite time worn but are all still very lively places with the people using them for their prayer & worship, or because they are tourist 'hot-spots' where they can generate some income. (Bhaktapur has had a lot of German money ... read more