The competition to be one of the hundred stories published each day is intense. They are all such great writers. To even get a job they were the finest scholars with marks in the top 5%. Academic marks are valued here. An old sailing coach with a spotty academic record is like a fish out(…)

Melbourne’s famous fast changing weather was on display over the last two days. Yesterday we were treated to a northerly wind that brought dry warm air from one of the biggest, hottest, driest places on earth–the Australian outback. Overnight the freezing winds from the southern ocean (one of the coldest, windiest places on the planet)(…)

  Day 3   As I have a coffee and read the paper on the way to work this morning I stared out at the the huge black limousine of the (local mafia chief ?) whose story will doubtless appear in future “underbelly” TV shows. His faultlessly clean and mirror-like polished car is always parked in(…)

Day 1   The Age   I have been in Melbourne for a week now working on my boat, giving her some much needed TLC after being abandoned and neglected for 10 months.  I also needed to fill my apartment with supplies.  Oddly, the relative chill of Melbourne is at once comforting and confronting.  The(…)

First day and I was full of expectations and excitement. Just finding the offices was going to be an adventure as it was in a part of Brisbane I had never been — north of “the valley”. I set the address in my  iphone map at home were I had wifi to plot the course.(…)

North Queensland wilderness hike I flew up to Cairns for a holiday. Not to hang out in Cairns which is a tourist factory designed to fleece everyone, but to go hiking in the untamed tropical jungle for a week or so. Airfares were booked months before to save money and the rest of the trip(…)