I’m jumping around all over the place with my New Zealand memories, using those that particularly stand out in my mind. The night before heading down into Wellington, I stopped in the lovely art deco town of Whanganui.
Continue reading “NZ Memories: Whanganui and The Durie Hill Elevator”
It was recommended, while in Rotorua, that I visit Whakarewarewa Living Maori Village, which is to say people here still live in the traditional way. As I arrived, a guide was explaining the enormously long, original name of the village, to a group of school children. ‘Te Whakarewarewatanga O Te Ope Taua A Wahiao,’ she said, slowly. ‘Three hundred years ago, a warrior chief named Wahiao, got together an army to get back at the people who killed his father. And so that’s what the name means: The Gathering Place of the Army of Wahiao.
Continue reading “More New Zealand Memories: The Living Maori Village.”
I returned to New Zealand in 2014, this time to the north island. I’d been looking at photos of Rotorua’s thermal wonderland for years. This was my chance to see it for myself. Rotorua is a nice town, set around Lake Rotorua.
While preparing my book, Hangi, Haka and Hobbits: Notes from New Zealand, the second in my Planning to the Nth trilogy, for publication in print, memories are flooding back.
I’ve featured several heritage mansions in the past but I think the queen of them all would have to be Werribee Mansion. Part of the Werribee Park Estate, it’s an insight into how the other half lived when the other half had so much money they didn’t know what to do with it. Continue reading “Werribee Mansion, Melbourne.”
There comes a time when you absolutely have to get out of your house away from routine and what feels like duty and into the real world. Last Thursday was one of those days.
I headed up into the hills, to a nice little village with the delightful name of Emerald. It’s one of the stopping points for the Puffing Billy Heritage Railway. The century-old steam train runs for 24 kilometres on its original track through the forests and farmland of the Dandenong Ranges, from Belgrave to Gembrook.
This week, I’m blatantly using my blog as an advertisement. My ebook, The Edge of the World: Next Stop Cape Horn, has been for sale on Amazon for two years and at last I have it available in print. 
In 2006, I set out in my little hatchback to begin the first of four road trips around the island of Tasmania, south of where I live in Melbourne, Australia.
Continue reading “The Edge of the World: Next Stop Cape Horn”
Continuing my exploration of Victoria’s Gippsland, I decided to check out the historic gold-mining town of Walhalla.
Sorrento is at the far end of the Mornington Peninsula, one of the two arms that almost enclose Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay.
They were having one of their street markets, and though the weather looked ominous, I decided to risk it and go down for a look.
My travel memoir, Is This the Road to Stratford?, has now been published with Amazon for three months. Time to celebrate! For 5 days, from Thursday 15th June till Monday 19th June, I am offering the Ebook for nothing – zilch – FREE.
In 2011, I landed in Manchester. In a malevolent rental car, baffled by indecipherable road signs and huge roundabouts, I journeyed from Yorkshire through Derbyshire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, to London.
Continue reading “Free Book Offer: Is This the Road to Stratford?”
Planning to the Nth 