Australia:

An old Mini to Kabul, a new one to Istanbul

24 May 2013 | Living

▲ 1972 – our Mini in Eastern Turkey with Mt Ararat in the background, that’s where Noah landed the Ark Back in 1972 Maureen and I drove a Mini we’d bought in London for £65 to Kabul in Afghanistan, sold it for a small profit and carried on all the way to Sydney...

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The Dark Tourist book cover

The Dark Tourist

28 March 2013 | Media

Since I’m finishing writing a book to be titled Dark Lands – Colombia is the last chapter and my Colombia travels concluded last week – I thought I’d better read Dom Joly’s The Dark Tourist. Mr Joly is a British comedian and he’s very popular with the British, or ...

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Mobile Data Charges – avoid Telstra!

8 February 2013 | The rest

Using your home country mobile phone when you’re overseas – roaming – can be extraordinarily expensive, particularly when it comes to data charges. Of course figuring out just what it’s going to cost can also be extraordinarily difficult. I have two mobile phones, one...

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Art in Hotels

5 February 2013 | Culture

  In recent weeks I’ve stayed at two favourite hotels, both of them with a heavy emphasis on art. The Imperial Hotel is a stone’s throw from Connaught Place, the centre of India’s capital New Delhi. It’s a throwback to the old Raj era and it’s simply packed wit...

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Fire in Tasmania

6 January 2013 | Places

I went down to Tasmania with some friends a few days ago and managed to run into the state’s worst bush fire in years. From our holiday shack on Steele Island, about 50km east of Hobart, we could see the smoke blowing over the ridge to the north. The road to Port Arth...

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