Home (West)

Mummy & Daddy Bloody hell Australia is a big country. I was happy to have my knitting to keep my company for the 4.5 hour flight time. Having already flown Qantas and Jetstar, I was now with Australia’s third major airline and wow have they put a stop to anything complimentary. I’m glad I had…

Quick Stop in Melbourne

Aussie Synchrotron I landed at 2:30pm and didn’t waste any time. With only two nights in Melbourne, I was straight off to my first meeting. My most expensive Uber ride ever skirted the city which looked the same size as when I’d last seen it (2014) but twice as dense. Every skyscraper that looked familiar…

Home

I hadn’t set foot in Australia since early 2019. Since then, most of my friends had brought children into the world, my best friend was getting married and I hadn’t seen my “home” Brisbane. It was time. I was ready. Getting There My journey started at 1:50am. After a quick shower, I was surprised to…

Car Week

Winding up my new job was a breeze. I was going to be away for a month, but there was no rushing to meet deadlines, or working frantically to tie up loose ends, it was pretty straightforward. I still had time on my last day to remove a huge cactus stump from the backyard and…

Havasu

Familiar Donkey Territory Feeling buoyed from watching the first grand prix of the year, we took the afternoon to pack. We said our goodbyes to Deb and Cleo gave us a look of utter abandonment through the bedroom window as we drove off. With only an hour of daylight left, we went to our old…

Winter with Berta

It shouldn’t be all about the van, but it really is… Since coming back from our October trip, we gutted Berta and started from scratch. This time we were building up the interior for real. We’d garnered enough information from our test builds to know what we wanted and so we set to it. Fully…

The US Grand Prix

Next year there will be three Formula 1 races in America, but Austin will always have the title of US Grand Prix. Miami and Vegas aren’t real race tracks, they are events. Austin hosts a world class circuit that produces world class racing. A Wander Down the Strip We’d only parked Berta the day before…

Berta’s Fall Falter

Berta didn’t fall, but she did falter a little… Lizzy and Rory We’d spent the last two days hanging out with my great mate Lizzy and her 2.5 year old son, Rory. As you do when you meet at the airport, we’d figured out that we hadn’t seen each other in nearly four years and…

Berta’s Summer

I needed a holiday (as always) and Dan’s business goings-on meant that we could get away for a week and a half. We didn’t need any more invitation than that. I messaged Dan’s Mom and asked if they’d be around in Phoenix for a visit. She was recently retired and assured me that yes, they…

Car Week

It is exactly how it sounds. “Car Week” in and around Monterey, California, is a celebration of the automobile.- those that race, those that sell and those that shine. What I love about it is that despite the rarity and eye-boggling price tags of a lot of these cars, no event has a museum vibe….