When Typhoon Haiyan (or Yolanda, as it was called here) hit the center of the 7100 islands which constitute the Philippines nation, we had just arrived in Manila in the far north on the island…
There’s but one road running through the small town of Sagada, home to one of the six traditional tribes of the highlands of northern Luzon. To get there, you meander along the precipitous sides of…
We felt nostalgic and saddened as we prepared to leave our home in Melbourne and the country of Australia. We’ve loved all the quirky charms of the city - its trams, its hidden laneways, its…
We did not notice him for several minutes, sitting quietly at one edge of the large open-sided octagonal hut. He was hunched over a book, slowly reading through what we soon learned was a Bible.…
About an hour north of Brisbane, with about three hours driving left to reach Hervey Bay, the phone suddenly indicated we had gotten an unnoticed call. The barely listenable message said something about challenging weather…
Everywhere in Oz we see a construction boom. Even from our patio in Melbourne we can see over a dozen cranes, and we know that others are just out of view because we have been…
“One, two, three, go!” yelled the father and his pre-teen son and daughter, as they cannonballed into a circular pool, fortunately quite deep though just 4 to 5 meters wide. The mother snapped the picture…
We’ve long believed in seeing the terrain a step at a time, feeling the landscape while we hike up hillsides and into valleys, or feeling the texture of a city while prowling its streets and…
We walked through the streets of Darwin in the early Monday morning. We expected a quiet city after our red-eye flight dropped us into town before dawn. With nothing open, we took the opportunity to…
At the newly made hut operated by the Park service, we tried to check in for our three hour Darngku Heritage (pronounced darn-djoo) tour of what the maps call Geikie Gorge (pronounced geeky). Dozens of…