Is travelling about the destination, or the journey? It depends, doesn’t it? On this trip, the journey has been every bit as important to me as the destination. And the one section of the journey that stood above the rest was crossing the Nullarbor. I always thought the word Nullarbor was an indigenous name for some reason, but only in the last year did I discover that it comes from the Latin “nullus”, meaning “no”, and “arbor” meaning “tree”. But long before this, as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to drive across this foreboding place by myself. Of course, these days it is not the vast challenge it once was. There are roadhouses with food, fuel and accommodation at regular, if long, intervals. There is even mobile phone service available at many of them ... read more

I hadn’t finished my last holiday before I was planning the next. Inspired by my weekend last year in Barellan, I purchased a Toyota Hilux and set about kitting it out for some touring and offroading so I could see more of my own country. I set my sights high and planned a trip across the breadth of Australia, from my home in Sydney over to Western Australia to visit my brother and his family, and my favourite wine region of Margaret River. I had a couple of test runs with local four-wheel driving and camping trips throughout the year, and before I knew it, it was time to leave on the big one. My aim for the first day was to spend the morning packing the car, and to reach the NSW regional city of ... read more

After a full-on couple of weeks, our first day back in Santiago was a rest-day and, for me, a chance to catch up on the blogs. I edited and posted all of the Antarctica and Falklands blogs during the day, but generally just stayed in the hotel room and took it easy. Dad did similarly, although he’s not blogging, he is writing a journal and he spent the day getting it up to date. We did, however, have something to do on Sunday night. My travel agent, Vanitha, had insisted we book for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel called Bocanariz. I thought it was because of the food so, not being a foodie, I wasn’t all that excited. Although during Sunday I finally got around to googling it and discovered it was essentially a ... read more

On Tuesday morning we had no excursions because the ship was still on its way to Elephant Island. Elephant Island is best known as the place where Shackleton left Frank Wild and most of the Endurance crew while he and a handful of others took to sea in a modified lifeboat in the hopes of finding help at South Georgia Island. The morning was taken up with talks in the presentation room and a movie called Shackleton’s Captain. We had no idea if we would be making it ashore in the afternoon though. One of our guides said he has been to Elephant Island ten times but only landed two or three times. Another staff member, the resident Antarctica historian, has been coming to Antarctica for over fifty years and has never landed there. So the ... read more

Overnight the ship had steamed up the Antarctic peninsula, through the Gerlache and Bransfield straights, and close to the Antarctic Sound (named after a ship that sank there, not because of the continent, funnily enough). After breakfast, we headed out on another excursion, this time to Gourdin Island. Unlike the previous two days, the weather was not sunny. In fact, it was extremely foggy. As we lined up at the gangway, waiting to get into the zodiacs, we watched each pair disappear into the fog. We could not see more than 100 metres away, so I was hoping the zodiac drivers today had better navigational skills than ours did on the first day. Thankfully, they did. Our zodiac driver eschewed the use of a gps and had a compass instead. He said he doesn’t trust gps’s. ... read more