Articles
A trip into the Outback to take some photos
Wednesday 24 October 2007
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror—
The wide brown land for me!—from 'My Country' (1890/1911),
by Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968)
When it comes to the Outback, Dorothea Mackellar had it right: it's a place of stark contrasts. The tourism phrase 'Red Centre', which has now entered common parlance, doesn't quite do the Central Australian terrain justice—I came expecting a land of endless red rock but instead found greens, greys, browns, and yellows to complement the reds. Then there are all the different shades of red—only to be expected, perhaps—such that some are far more accurately described as 'grey' or 'brown'
More Korean Fun
Thursday 23 March 2006
I'm very aware of the fact that I haven't written anything for the site for more than two weeks now. To those who have been on tenterhooks waiting for word of what I've been up to, I'm sorry. I think I was so occupied in Hong Kong and Singapore that I just didn't get the time to sit down and finish off the description of my time in Korea. Also, I suspect that I didn't really want to write about my time there because I didn't want to dredge up the memories of a time which was at times quite boring (with relatively little to captivate a tourist in any one place) and at others unpleasant (dealing with difficult people).
One drawback, or possibly a benefit, of having delayed so long in writing this entry is that things aren't so fresh in my mind, so I apologise
Seoul Traveller
Thursday 2 March 2006
So, I'm in Korea now, and so am back on the great Eurasian continent. Not, of course, that I can do anything about it, since there is currently no way to get from here through North Korea to the 'rest of the world'. In this entry you'll read about my tour to the DMZ which surrounds the military demarcation line which continues to separate the Korean people.
A railway and a main road do run from Korea into North Korea (which is neither Democratic, of the People, nor strictly a Republic since it certainly doesn't exist for the res publica, so I refuse to refer to it as the DPRK): however, the North Korean autocracy refused to allow traffic in, and so both road and railway stand blocked at the parallel of 38°N. It would seem therefore that those Koreans who want
Tokyo
Monday 27 February 2006
No, I haven't been sending out emails to say that I've updated my site. Apologies to those who were expecting me to, but I really don't like unnecessarily filling up other people's inboxes. At the end of my last Travel Log entry I briefly mentioned the site's RSS feed. If you don't know what RSS is, you can find a potted summary of the technology at the bottom of the sidebar on these pages.
If you really can't be bothered with RSS (I do recommend that you make the effort if you've never tried before), I've set up an email-subscription service, to which you can subscribe from the same place. That service (powered by FeedBlitz) basically checks the RSS feed for you and then sends an email to its subscribers when the Travel Log (and therefore, feed) is
Osaka, Kobe & Ise
Monday 20 February 2006
There I was, standing in a chemical factory, minding my own business. Suddenly one of the drums burst into flames: it burned for a few seconds before the heat it was producing (which I could feel from over 30ft away) ignited the surrounding drums. Another few seconds went by, and then the whole room was awash with flame — the fire was lapping up the three other walls. Fine, I just needed to get out of the room while my path was still clear. The sprinklers did their thing (a little bit late, if you ask me) and deposited a fine mist of water over the room. This only had the effect of fanning the flames, and the fire was burning more fiercely than ever.
I stood there, transfixed by the sight of what was going on around me. The renewed vigour of the flames