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Kangaroo Island South Australia, 2008. It is a while since I’ve “blogged”, as we’ve not been travelling much! Work unfortunately gets in the way of travel! But we’re just back from Kangaroo Island, South Australia. It is a stunning place. “KI” (as the locals call it), is Australia’s third biggest island after Tasmania and Melville NT. Although it has over 500 kilometres of coastline and is approximately the area of Bali, Indonesia, its permanent population is only about four thousand souls. Quite a contrast. To quote the South Australian Tourist Office: “No wonder the UK Sunday Telegraph called Kangaroo Island ‘one of earth’s last unspoilt refuges’”. It is. Kangaroo Island is an intriguing place. It is geologically ancient and special. Being isolated from the rest of Australia for ten to fifteen thousand years, since the end ... read more

Confusing test results with real education is perpetuated and institutionalised through compulsory state and national testing. The testing industry is a four billion-dollar vested interest that produces dubious data purportedly objectifying student progress. These results bear little relation to any sound international educational standard. The US eschews looking at successful overseas examples in this and in so many other ways. I think the closest equivalent to this in Australia may be found in some of the more second-rate Private Schools. These schools have good facilities but are run by politically-motivated educators who have to curry favour with fee-paying parents who cannot see why their child can't be a lawyer or a brain surgeon, even although the child does little work. If the child fails therefore, it must be their teacher's fault and the teacher will find ... read more

What I most liked was the strong connection maintained with the sea in Salem. We went aboard the dinky little sailing ship the “Friendship”, maintained by the National Parks. We didn’t go into the old Customs House (once run by Nathanial Hawthorne) as it cost! There was a craft fair on the waterfront where old-timers and new enthusiasts demonstrated maritime model making, knot tying, scrimshaw etc. Just great! Capstan shanties were being sung by a folk group which included “Bound for South Australia!”. The whaling fleets from these areas established some of the earliest connections with Australia from the 1790s, and this was a pleasant reminder that made me a little homesick. We saw the “House of Seven Gables” and then shot through to the north, to get caught in a traffic jam on the coast. ... read more

Travelling to Xanadu! A Year in the USA.. In Xanadu did Kublai Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round. … It was a miracle of rare device. A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice. …And ‘mid this tumult Kublai heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1816 Like the fabled Xanadu, the United States is a mythological construct inhabiting the minds of men. The fable of this Great Experiment in human possibilities become confused with the reality of living in the United States and the world. This vision of the United States, as the best country where all have freedom, opportunity and the possibility of ... read more