Souvenirs – an Australian Stammtisch
10 June 2020 | Culture
Souvenirs are an important part of travel and over the years I’ve bought some truly terrible souvenirs. Most of them, I’m glad to say, precisely because they were truly terrible. You know the process: ‘Oh my God, that is absolutely awful. I must buy it.’ Most of my re...
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Cold War Relics – in both directions
4 August 2016 | Places
En route to the Chernobyl reactor and the ghost town of Pripyat we made a short detour to an amazing Cold War site. Here’s my diary entry: ‘a fascinating diversion to the Duga-3 early detection array (aka Russian Woodpecker), where the Russians watched out for missile...
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Aerial Views – San Francisco-Beijing
9 October 2013 | Places
Took United Flight 889 from San Francisco to Beijing, a flight that arcs way north, crossing Alaska and reaching just south of the Arctic Circle then crossing Siberia, across the Sea of Okhotsk (where the Russians shot down a straying Korean Airlines 747, killing all ...
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Moby Duck & Ducie Island
25 April 2011 | Media
Sub-titled ‘The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them,’ this is a great book. The foolish author foolishly get interested in the story of the c...
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Animal Life in 2009
22 December 2009 | Living
I've been posting some 'end of 2009' lists in an assortment of categories, starting with Aerial Views, then with Hotels (good and bad), Other Transport, Music, Cars & Drives, Galleries & Museums and Books. Today it's my Animals & Wildlife of 2009.
There...
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