One of the ‘organized’ items on our tour was an evening at Norfolk Island’s famous fish fry. We’d been before on a wonderful summer evening, gathering at Orn Da Cliff for the event. You’ll no doubt work out from the name that the site is high up on a cliff, facing west. The sunset on…
When I signed us up for this trip to Norfolk Island I suppose I had a fond notion that the advertised 200th anniversary was for the arrival of the Pitcairn descendants of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Silly me. Elementary research would have shown me that 2025 was the anniversary of the establishment of Norfolk’s…
Norfolk Island. It’s a speck in the South Pacific about 1,600 km east of Sydney. At about 8km long and 5km wide, the island is an erosional remnant of a once-larger volcanic structure sticking out of the sea. It enjoys a sub-tropical Goldilocks climate, beautiful scenery and a laid-back lifestyle. Perfect for a week of…
Quite a few years ago I accompanied Peter on a business trip which required him and a few colleagues to visit Belgium before moving on to the Netherlands. We stayed overnight in a hotel in Brussels with the intention of catching a plane to Amsterdam the next day. It takes about 55 minutes, one of…
It’s coming on to 18 years since we moved from Victoria to Hervey Bay. Peter was having some medical problems and a doctor told him to take a couple of weeks off, get away from winter in Melbourne and go and lie on a beach somewhere. We did that. The beach was Brampton Island off…
It has been three weeks now since the Australian federal election where the Labor party won in a landslide. Since then the media has been full of finger-pointing, navel gazing, and blame attribution. There have been some thoughtful articles about what went wrong but the conservative side of politics has now disintegrated into an unseemly…
I am absolutely delighted to announce that after nearly eight months of a house in turmoil our renovations are pretty much finished. I never thought I’d be pleased to be able to do some vacuum cleaning but I was. Despite the tradies’ best efforts to keep the dust and fragments outside it’s sneaky stuff and…
The federal election is on today – 3rd May 2025. But I’ve had lots to say about what’s important to us and who we’ll be voting for. I fear the result will not be what we want but time will tell. All I can say is that at our age we’re starting to be able…
Today is Anzac Day, when we in Australia pay respect to all those who served in Australia’s wars – or should I say, the wars where Australians joined in to support others. World War II was the only conflict where Australia was directly threatened. 25th April is the day in 1915 when Australian and New…
It’s Easter and this is one of the rare times when Orthodox Easter coincides with the usual Christian Easter. Because it is a lunar festival, and the Orthodox Christians churches primarily follow the Julian calendar, while Western churches use the Gregorian calendar, the date of the first full moon after the equinox can be several…