Going Back to Portsea ... The Officer Cadet School was never a place that attracted me back for sentimental visits. I think that I drove down once with the family when they were quite young, and turned away at the gates without going any further. I was glad to be overseas when it closed and was absorbed into the Royal Military College, Duntroon. That, at least, let me avoid avoid going back. Even then, I couldn't avoid begging letters from past graduates flogging this history or that limited edition sketch of the old buildings. After the Officer Cadet School closed, the site was taken over by the the School of Army Health, and I visited it on several occasions in the early and mid-1990s. It had started to lose its horror, and become just another set ... read more

Heading Home After nearly a month away from home alone, I was finally on my way back. Getting from Quito to Canberra was not going to be easy. It couldn't be done in one hit unless one went up to Miami, across to LA and then to Sydney, and even then there were some quite long breaks. Another route seemed to end up in the US mid-West for half a day in some city whose name I barely recognised - not enough time to go anywhere, but too long just to hang around the airport without getting horribly bored. So I had stayed a couple of extra days in Quito, and was now on my way to Santiago for a couple of days before catching a LAN Chile/QANTAS code share flight back through Auckland. The plan ... read more

The long road north The travel dossier entry makes it look so easy - 'we drive north through the Sechura desert to the tiny beach resort of Punta Sal'. It doesn't say 'we will abuse the driver by forcing him to drive for nearly 14 hours with as few rest stops as possible, give him almost no help when he has a flat, ask him to turn the truck in an area that would be tight for anything bigger than a small car, and still expect him to drive the rear wheels'. Nor does it say 'at every opportunity there is to make take a wrong turn, the guide will'. But it should. If I had thought that the first travel day was long, this day was longer. We started earlier, finished later, and Lisa got ... read more

Arrival - Day Zero Its strange to think that this is the first overseas trip that I am really doing by myself. Every other time that I have travelled outside of Australia, it has been with spouse and when the children were at home, them as well. In the middle of the night last night, I arrived at Lima airport, and about 90 minutes later was getting out of the airport bus at this hotel. Tomorrow I join a Kumuka tour, and will overland over the next 20 days, ending up in Quito. Lisa, the tour guide, has rung and made arrangements to meet me, as it appears that I am the only one joining the group here at Lima. So there are no other pax here to share my concerns and expectations with, which was ... read more

In October 2003, E and I stayed at a resort on the Coral Coast of Fiji. This is a stub to remind me to get the rest of my diary transcribed!... read more