Postcard: Kastellorizo, Greece

I had not planned to visit Kastellorizo, just a few kilometres off the coast of Turkey. In fact, I had never heard of this Greek Island nor the deep connections the people have with Australia. I did vaguely remember seeing Mediterraneo, the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Winner in 1992 but did not know it […]

Skara Brae and V. Gordon Childe

Tourists strolling the ancient, Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae will note the site owes its “current presentation” to the Australian archaeologist who excavated it between 1928 and 1931. Vernon Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957) was never well-known in the country of his birth and has mostly been lost to history. However, Childe is well-worth exhuming […]

Asia Education Foundation: Australia-India #BRIDGEprogram2017

Cultural exchange is a very important value for the school I serve. “A Wider World View” is encouraged through hosting guests, especially from our region of Asia, as well as travelling overseas. This year we have students and educators from Indonesia, Korea and India involved in exchange projects. This week the Australia–India BRIDGE School Partnerships Project flowered […]

#Bookstores in New York City #NYC #bookshops

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”  Neil Gaiman “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can. A smarty-pants, the kind you […]

#India #photography #streetphotography

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” Robert Capa I travelled to India three times in the 1990s spending about 8 months on the sub-continent without taking a photo. My philosophy: that life was for living not recording and about the moment largely revolved around a romantic notion that one did not need […]

Asia Education Foundation: Australia-India #BridgeProject

Sonia Chhabra, Headmistress at Bal Bharati Public School in New Delhi, is my exchange partner and made her home an open, warm and friendly place for me to live happily these last two weeks. Her husband Rohit and two sons, Siddant and Shaurya, are intelligent, creative men who shared their knowledge and ideas about life […]

NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship Study Tour: San Francisco #4

San Francisco is a wonderful city to explore with many homes and buildings having memorable architecture.  Tacy Trowbridge hosted my visit to Adobe in San Francisco (located in an amazing building). Tacy is Head of Adobe’s Education Programs and I had the privilege of meeting with her team including Johnson Fung and Terry Fortescue. Tacy, formerly an English and […]

NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship Study Tour: Washington #3

“The Genographic Project is an ambitious attempt to answer fundamental questions about where we originated and how we came to populate the Earth. Through your participation, you can play an active role in this historic endeavour.” The National Geographic Society is headquartered in Washington. The Society believes in the power of science, exploration and storytelling […]

NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship Study Tour: New York #2

“From its inception, a PDS education was founded on relationships and learning by doing; it valued play as creative cognitive growth and working together as a means of effective progress and the promotion of democratic values. It was about openness to opportunity and growth rather than right answers and closed minds.” Visiting schools is always […]

Travelling in Japan: Books & Bookshops

“As in China, the Japanese literati were an unstable combination of two opposites – Confucian scholar and free-minded Taoist – so they tended to lean to one side or the other. Beian and Bosai represent the two poles. Beian was a strict moralist who refused to teach dubious people like geisha or Kabuki actors, and […]

Travelling in Japan: Tokyo

“Tokyo offers a lot of spectacle and confusion. This is just a facade. Behind the neon glare lies a steady rhythmic and miraculous everyday world that can be yours if you want it to be.”  Tokyo Totem We walked Tokyo for a week in an attempt to make it “ours”. The weather was good, around […]

Travelling in Japan: Kinosaki Onsen

We only had three weeks of our month in Japan planned with accommodation booked. This gave us the freedom to use our JR Passes flexibly in where we went. The idea was to chat with Japanese people about where we might like to explore and see what emerged that we may not have found back […]

Travelling in Japan: Ibusuki and Kagoshima

The longhaul train trip to Ibusuki, south of Kagoshima, was relaxing and offered great scenery with the opportunity to read for long stretches uninterrupted. We had no real reason for travelling to this small seaside town other than it was about as far south as we could go and there were potentially interesting onsen experiences. […]

Travelling in Japan: Osaka & Himeji

“Welcome to Osaka. Few major cities of the developed world could match Osaka for the overall unattractiveness of its cityscape, which consists mostly of a jumble of cube-like buildings and a web of expressways and cement-walled canals. There are few skyscrapers, even fewer museums and, other than Osaka Castle, almost no historical sites. Yet Osaka […]

Travelling in Japan: Hirosaki

Hirosaki is singularly the most Japanese city I know. Will Ferguson We stayed in Hirosaki not because I can’t read Japanese train timetables at all well but because sometimes Hyperdia is wrong (said the JR ticket office assistant). However, it proved to be a most serendipitous visit. The heavy snow that had descended on us at Hakodate […]

Travelling in Japan: Hokkaido

Japan is not a small country; no matter what the Japanese themselves may think. The main island of Honshu alone is larger than Great Britain. Were Japan in Europe, it would dominate the continent. Japan is larger than Italy, larger than Norway, larger than Germany…on a map Japan looks small because it is surrounded by […]

September-October 2015: My Reading

But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting or repugnant. Only literature can give you access to a spirit from beyond the grave – a more direct, […]

The Solitary Traveller IV: The South Downs Way

The name ‘Sussex’ derives from the Kingdom of Sussex, according to legend it was founded by Ælle of Sussex in 477 AD, then in 825 it was absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex and the later kingdom of England. The region’s roots go back further to the location of some of Europe’s earliest hominid finds at […]

The Solitary Traveller III: York and Durham

York is a ‘Scandy‘ town but not Durham. York & Durham Arriving in a very old city is a strange and wonderful experience. Often one may have relatively little knowledge of the geography, history or people but on arrival, there’s always a gut feeling one has about the place or at least a response as […]

The Solitary Traveller II: Isle of Man

I have read many times, in brochures, books and websites that the Isle of Man is a microcosm of Britain. Mostly, this is said in reference to the natural environment but it applies to history, architecture and many other features of life on the island. My trip to Mannin, voyaging aboard the BEN-MY-CHREE, was about walking […]

August 2015: My Reading

The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Richard Bach As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Tony Judt   I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at […]

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