Blogs from Oceania - page 7865

4 May, Monday: After a late night packing the gear I left this morning about 7:45. On the trip up through central Victoria I used the full tank and two of the three spare cans of fuel. This will give me a range around 780 kilometres, which is well within my longest distance between service stations. It was a long days driving to the border town of Wentworth, which was reached around 5:00 that evening. Did 356 kilometres today was advised by the police at Wentworth not to take the Menindee Road due to recent rains. I booked into a caravan park called Willow Bend, which rests on the banks of the Darling River. Car went well but the weather is overcast. 5 May, Tuesday: The Silver City Highway is great. At Broken Hill I stayed ... read more

I was only 6 weeks old when I embarked on my first trip with my mother. I don't remember it but she tells me it was to Sydney.... read more

Left Canberra with Ken and mum in the front seat. Peter was in the back, cracking corny jokes, and also little Peter Bondfield - who was never a dull moment. Then there was me. We arrived in Newcastle that evening then went strait to our hotel. Gradually all the relations arrived and the night ended with corny stories about our mum and dads past. Controlled of course by Auntie Nancy. Next day we went to the Parthenon milk bar in the morning then the wedding in the afternoon. The reception was without alcohol so Peter Meadows, Dwight and I slipped off to the pub for an hour. When we got back we had some funny looks but that didn’t matter because everything was fine. The night after the reception we went out to the R.S.L. ... read more

I was fortunate enough to be sponsored through my undergraduate Chemical Engineering degree at the University of NSW via a CSR cadetship. For those old enough to remember, CSR was originally the ultra-conservative Colonial Sugar Refining Company. Amongst the benefits of this cadetship were that they paid you some pocket money along the way so you didn’t have to spend nights or weekends working in bars, and also you knew you had firm employment on graduation, although you didn’t know where. So just after graduation at the end of 1971, I was waiting to hear from my employer whether I was to be assigned to one of the North Queensland sugar mills, one of the capital city refineries, or one of the many divisions that CSR had purchased in the building materials sector. But by some ... read more

We arrived at Tahiti from Fiji, via the French airline UTA. Our hotel on the beach was a series of separate structures modeled to resemble huts. Each one had a conical roof. Sightseeing around the island included the Tomb of King Pomare V, Venus Point, where Captain Cook landed in 1769, and a Tahitian Marare. A Marareis a ceremonial or sacred space. The marae consisted of a rectangular yard of basalt rocks and coral slabs with an altar (ahu) of vertical stones inside. We made an interesting stop at a church where the artwork depicted Biblical figures as Polynesians. There was also time to walk around Papeete, a tropical town with a very French flavor. On a side trip we flew over to Bora Bora, about 162 miles (260 km) from Tahiti, on an RAI DC-4. ... read more