Destination: Australia

Journey Through the Earth

Out in the Whitsundays, Bill Belleville explores the underside of Australian dreamtime

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Ski Travel’s Uncertain Future

The United Nations Environment Program has issued a grim forecast for the future of winter sports around the world, blaming global warming for declining snowfall and shortening ski seasons. Among the predictions noted in the Guardian’s report: Skiing could end in Australia by 2070.


I Heard the News Today

Australian Danielle Brigham always lamented that she couldn't find news about home while traveling abroad. Then came October 12.

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Peter Moore: ‘I Can’t Take Travel That Seriously’

Australian writer Peter Moore has been called the “Jim Carrey of travel writing” and the “backpacker’s Bill Bryson,” and he’s the subject of a recent profile in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s an entertaining little piece. The former advertising copywriter talks about his brushes with danger, his latest book “Swahili For The Broken-hearted” and his next book, which is about a journey through Italy. He says it won’t be anything like the many recent books that romanticize that much-traveled-to country. “I couldn’t write about people sitting around a table getting orgasmic about a tomato,” Moore tells Steve Meacham. “I can’t take travel that seriously. For me, it’s an indulgence.”


Doing 50 in the Hammer Lane

It’s not uncommon for American long-distance truckers to buy motorhomes and continue to travel around the country when they’re retired. Some of them get so attached to their rigs, though, that they don’t want to leave them. Instead, they find old trucks and convert them to motorhomes. Road King correspondent Gary Bricken tracked down a few of them, including Josef and Katharina Schmitz of Dusseldorf, Germany. The couple spent five years traveling around the world in their converted 18-wheeler. “We just finished a two-year trip all over Australia, where we went completely around the country and then criss-crossed it both ways,” Josef told Bricken. “Then we shipped the truck to California and went down into Mexico then back up into Arizona. Now we are on our way to South America for another two-year journey. Everywhere we have been people have been nice.”


Zheng He vs. Magellan

An amateur historian says Chinese eunuch Zheng He was really the first man to sail around the world. Gavin Menzies, a retired Royal Navy submarine commander navigation expert, told the Royal Geographical Society last week that evidence lies in pre-Columbian maps showing results of the Zheng He voyage, ancient Chinese artifacts found far from home and remains of gigantic shipwrecks in Australia and the Caribbean. What does the historical establishment think? According to Sunday’s New York Times, “[T]he fact that Mr. Menzies was given a respectful hearing at the venerable geographical society indicated that his ideas were not being dismissed as those of a crank.”


The Art of Seasickness

tropical fish Photo by Jim Benning.

It was bad enough being seasick. Then Jim Benning became the entertainment.

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“Let’s Have a Butcher’s”

The International Herald Tribune’s Roger Collis explores the differences between British and American English, as well as Australian, Canadian and Indian usage.


Gifts for the World Traveler

Gifts for the World Traveler Photo by Michael Yessis.

Get your autographed Geraldo Rivera Signature Travel Pistol while supplies last. Hurry!

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Lonely Planet Gets Lonelier

Europeans are still traveling overseas. Australians are still traveling overseas. But Americans seem to be staying home—or booksellers think they are—and that’s forcing Lonely Planet into hard times. The mammoth publisher of budget guidebooks, which according to The San Francisco Chronicle had Americans to thank for more than a third of its $45 million in book sales last year, has seen sales plummet since September 11.

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Bill the Cockie

Australia in rock form Photo by Michael Yessis.

In remote Australia, a mysterious man appears from nowhere to help Barrie Lie-Birchall out of a jam. His assistance has unexpected consequences.

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What a Difference Between the Quality of the Items Handed Out by Air France and at the Shelters!

Judie Jones used to live in a Boston homeless shelter known as “The Fright Center.” She hated it. “‘I thought, `Where else could I go that I would be shown humanity and treated with the graciousness of an international traveler?’” Boston’s Logan International Airport was the answer. Boston Globe reporter David Abel writes (readers must now pay a fee to view the complete story) about the 66-year-old Australian who, with several other older homeless women, spends just about every night in terminal waiting rooms. Jones says it’s not such a bad scene.

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Super Budget Traveler

Like countless 24-year-olds, Ramon Stoppelenburg wanted see the world. But instead of slogging with fellow backpackers on a tried-and-true budget itinerary, he built a Web site asking strangers to be his host for a night or two. Since LetMeStayForADay.com debuted in March, Ramon has received more than 700 hundred invitations from people in 52 countries.

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