From the category archives:
In Western Australia I drove about 200km south from Perth to spend a few days in the town of Collie, the state’s coal mining and coal-fired power base. Like many towns founded in the late 19th century on underground coal mining, Collie is proud of its history. However, I fear the that townspeople have not realised the [...]
{ 4 comments }
I am never a happy flier. I recently endured a five-hour flight to Perth from Sydney, and then a shorter return one of three and a half hours — don’t ask me why they can’t take the short route all the time! However once airborne, so long as there is no turbulence and no odd [...]
{ 6 comments }
Travelling home after two months on the road, for once I chose to be kind to myself, to unwind slowly and not to let time pressures make me rush past all the interesting turnoffs — as usually happened. Gippsland’s Wilderness Coast is somewhere I definitely want to return to, in another winter, with weeks to [...]
{ 4 comments }
It was just on dusk when I reached Mallacoota, 23 km east of the highway. A stunningly beautiful spot, and quite a large village, but, as I discovered when I drove to the inlet foreshore, its population must explode in summer. What I thought was just a pleasantly green and tree-edged park proved to be [...]
{ 0 comments }
I discovered that Victoria’s Gippsland region, while small by the standards of bigger states, is vastly varied. I had stayed at Mirboo North, with the extremely generous and helpful Kate Jackson and Phil Piper, who had welcomed me, sight unseen. As I left on a frosty morning, with a chilled mist in the air, the rolling [...]
{ 5 comments }
Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is the state’s powerhouse, burning their abundant brown coal for 85% of that state’s electricity. I knew that, but until I went there and stayed to see it in different weather conditions and times of day, I didn’t know it made its own cloudscapes. The eight little dots creating this amazing, yearning [...]
{ 2 comments }
I like the mystery of mist, of fog, of cloud that comes down to join the land. But as a rarity, not a norm. The Macedon area in Victoria is on a high plain, about 700 metres up, above which rise its ranges. ‘Naturally cool’ is the shire slogan. And it is, on many levels. [...]
{ 4 comments }
The quaint Rosebank cottage where I stayed ( courtesy of Mary Delahunty and the Victorian Writers’ Centre) was surrounded by introduced trees and garden plants – and did have a bank of roses. The king of the garden was this giant oak, whose bark was dappled blue with lichen and whose branches reached 15 metres [...]
{ 4 comments }
At Devonport, waiting to board the night boat, Tasmania farewelled me with rain, as it had greeted me a fortnight before, then withdrew its forces to the now familiar lowering dark clouds over its mountains — and turned on a perfect double rainbow. Day or night, Tasmania, your wild skies have won me. In the [...]
{ 2 comments }
In Tasmania I learnt to expect plantations like these when I saw the word ‘forest’. I drove through miles of this to reach the Evercreech Forest Reserve, 52 hectares that wasn’t clearfelled. I reached the tree for which the Forest is famous. The White Gum, Eucalyptus viminalis, is thought to be 300 years old. I [...]
{ 7 comments }
Stonework always fascinates me: the intuitive precision of its craft, the colours and textures of the stones themselves, the patterns they make, the beauty and functionality of what man can make of natural materials. In the case of stone bridges, the engineering skills of the past demand respect. In Tasmania I saw two extreme examples [...]
{ 0 comments }
When you get to a camp spot late in the day you don’t have time to look around much, beyond finding a flat spot for the tent, setting it up and scavenging leftover firewood at cold campsites. I saw enough of Lime Bay, in the State Reserve near the northern tip of the Tasman Peninsula, [...]
{ 6 comments }
Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.
A candid meander through my life up here on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question 'Why do you live way out there?'
