Many of us have a book inside that we would like to write if we just knew how – I am not talking about putting pen to paper, but to construct a story that others would wish to read. For years I wanted to write and would throw away my attempts, because I was not […]
This was the second part of our ‘back to back’ cruising from Sydney in Diamond Princess. We spent a day in Yokohama before sailing to cruise the Japanese coast and a single foreign port in South Korea, Busan, which is across from Japan via the southern part of the Sea of Japan. We would stay […]
Majestic Princess Reg. London, 144,216 gt, 3,560 passengers maximum. (will it feel crowded?) There comes a time when winter is all too much as one grows older . . . and older. A few months ago I started to check where to go or what to do, for part of our Sydney winter. Being a wimp, I […]
Writing historical fiction is time consuming to say the least. Each scene that surrounds a character must be true for the reader, and the easiest way to make this scene true, is research and more research. You cannot afford to be wrong, unless of course you do it deliberately, because you are writing an ‘alternate […]
We anchored off Auckland and I could see the lights of the city as I stood my watch from 8.00 pm to midnight. We finally berthed at 6.30 am and worked cargo all day. Everyone on board knew that Maureen was flying out to see me, and they thought that she was from a very […]
M/S Dunera in Malta After a four month voyage in MV Chilka to East Africa, I was allowed ten days leave before the telegram arrived that I as to join MS Dunera in Venice. Three days later I flew with Alitalia from London to Venice, via Milan. Fortunately, ALITALIA didn’t live up to her acronym Always […]
The Silverton Pub. As soon as I saw the local pub I recognised it from various films. Mad Max 2 A town like Alice – Australian min-series from the book by Nevil Shute. Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, to name three that I’ve seen, and I couldn’t count the number of TV adverts. Outside […]
Our next port of call was Tauranga – the above is of the sunrise as was we entered Tauranga harbour, which is a beautiful place to visit. Entering the harbour. Maureen & I were fortunate because our daughter in law’s parents live in Tauranga and had offered to be our guides for the day, and to […]
Life can get crowded as the Arcadia arrives just behind us. Of course our old favourite had to join us Sapphire Princess A short time later Queen Victoria arrived and to top it all Marco Polo slips in . . . Fortunately we were the first to arrive, so had clearance quickly. But to be […]
By 1946 over 500 Japanese had died in Australia. This number included those who died in the breakout of August 1944. The Japanese who died in attempting to escape were buried in a plot next to the Australian War Cemetery in Cowra. The war ended and the RSL (Returned and Services League) of Australia would […]
Eventually I was back at Funafuti airport waiting for the plane to Suva, which is the capital of Fiji. Large international airlines use Nadi, but as my aircraft would be a propeller aircraft our destination would be Suva. The airline that was supposed to fly us (fourteen passengers) failed to arrive, so a substitute had […]
On receiving the contract, I read it quickly and then read it again more slowly and then one more time, after which I decided that I needed help to make the correct decision. I bounced the idea off members of Goodreads , which is a book readers web site, and I was very pleasantly surprised to […]
Our next stop would be the Barossa Valley, which was a six hour drive from Broken Hill. As we headed south it was all open spaces. The pictures above reminded me of Jack Absalom’s paintings. The Australian land has very distinctive smell, for me it is the smell of Australia and I love it! My […]
We spent most of the day of our first day at sea between Sydney and Melbourne navigating around the ship to find out where everything fitted – restaurants, bars, shopping areas etc We had a cloudy morning, which brightened in to a blue sea and blue sky day with very good visibility. We were able […]
