Wednesday, June 27 , 2018. Episode 3: We didn’t want to leave Dubrovnik- and actually couldn’t! After we split Split, so to speak, Ross and I caught the high speed catamaran down to the magnificent walled city of Dubrovnik. We were due to meet up with our friends, Carol and Alicia Brock, who were flying in from London. We met them at Buza bar, which sits precariously outside the city walls, facing the glistening ocean below. However, the bar was packed. It was standing room only for sardines, so we moved on. Our first stop was Fort Lawrence, a fantastic bastion from which we got super views across the entire city – see first image opposite. There was an outdoor bar by the water at the bottom, so we spent the late afternoon there. After a ... read more

Friday June 15, 2018 Episode 1: Finding Friends in France. Hello to all our friends and colleagues. We are in Paris, at the beginning of a five-week sojourn that starts with a conference and will end on the beaches of the Greek Islands. Going to Europe from Aussie is all well and good, but the long haul flight makes me want to regurgitate the airline food. Both Ross and I really hate long haul flights. However, we both felt that it wasn’t too bad this time round. The first 14 -hour leg took us overnight from Australia to Abu Dhabi on Etihad. For once, we didn’t drink any alcohol on board, but instead took two temazepam and promptly slept a good several hours. During the second leg from Abu Dhabi to Paris, I made good use ... read more

September 17, 2017 Episode 4: The incredible Namib desert, flamingos, geckos…..and Germany! I was giving a lecture at Uni, but when I looked up, all the students were giraffes wearing glasses, craning their necks to see over each other. WTF? Then I woke up, and realised I was simply dreaming. No, I was not back at work, but still here in Africa. We are currently on the road in a hire car in Namibia, having an excellent time. The country of Namibia is large (about the size of NSW). Unusually for Africa, it is very sparsely populated. Only about 2 million people in the whole country. It is a vast land of striking arid scenery, including the oldest desert on Earth, the Namib, from which the country gets its name. It is a safe and easy ... read more

September 8, 2017. Episode 2: Seven days in the heart of the African bush. Greetings from beautiful Botswana, where we spent the past several days on a mobile tented safari, moving around the Northern National Parks and reserves. Home to both the Kalahari Desert and Okavango Delta, Botwsana is one of the top travel destinations in Africa. Much of the country is arid or semi-arid. Yet beneath its parched soil lies a glittering prize, as Botswana is the leading diamond-producing country in the world (in terms of value) and the second largest in terms of volume (after Russia). Such a lucrative resource has driven Botswana’s prosperity, and hence it is a stable, safe and tranquil place with a generally good standard of living, at least in cities. The over-arching national principle here is equality. The proud ... read more

Tuesday July 12, 2016 Episode 6: Bears galore – and a near death experience. Awesome. Incredible. A once in a lifetime experience, and a fitting highlight to the end of our Alaskan journey. This is how I describe the last three days of our Alaskan trip last week, watching massive brown bears feeding on salmon at Katmai national park. This remote place is on the Alaskan Peninsula, inaccessible except by air or sea. We first caught a commercial flight from Anchorage to the small town of King Salmon. From there, small float planes (seaplanes) ferry people back and forth to Brooks Falls, the entry point to Katmai (a short 20 minute flight). At Brooks, there was a visitor centre, national park office, a lodge/bar/eatery and a campground. The campground was encircled by an electrified fence, which ... read more