This is where you can find all the day-by-day diary entries for all my trips.
2026 Africa
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Africa – Day 1 – Exploring Capetown
We are back travelling again, this year deciding to explore Southern Africa. We were up at 4am to catch a flight to Sydney, where we transited for a long 14.5 hours to Johannesburg and the a short flight to Capetown. Including the layovers it was about 28 hours end-to-end. The long flight was largely in…
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Travel Journals
We didn’t rush out this morning as Brisbane woke up under a low grey sky. Our normal view of the city buildings from Camelia Avenue was almost completely swallowed in fog with only the tips of the tallest buildings poking through.
2026 Stanthorpe in Winter (3 posts)
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July 2026 – Day 3 -Stanthorpe in Winter
The narrative describes a day spent exploring the Granite Belt, beginning with a visit to a Farmers Market before touring local wineries and tasting distinctive wines. Highlights include dining at Essen and indulging in gin tastings. The experience concludes with a sense of satisfaction in discovering quality food and wine in the region.
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July 2026 – Day 2 -Stanthorpe in Winter
The day began with a challenging wake-up in cold weather, leading to a quick breakfast of microwave scrambled eggs. The journey included visits to a winery, local shops, and a unique lunch at Josie’s, where local ingredients starred. Despite some mediocre experiences at tastings, the day ended cosily with photo sessions of wildlife and a…
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July 2026 – Day 1 -Stanthorpe in Winter
The journey begins in foggy Brisbane, heading towards Stanthorpe. Stopping at Warwick, to visit an art gallery featuring a textile exhibition. Next, the famous apple pie at Sutton’s Juice Factory before checking into Whiskey Gully Cottages. The day concludes with a farm-to-table dinner and stargazing, capturing the serene countryside.
2025 Central Europe (26 Posts)
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2025 Europe – Day 1 – Rotterdam
Welcome to the 2025 edition of the ‘Beats Working’ blog, an account of our holiday for this year. Without giving too much away, this trip takes us through The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. One thing I can share is that Europe is a long way from Australia and this time we…
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2025 Europe – Day 2 – Delft
We woke up to another beautiful day here in Rotterdam with a warm 29 degree day forecast. Today’s plan was to head to Delft, another city close by with a rich history. We opted to catch a bus which was a pleasant drive through the suburbs that artfully dodged the motorways, taking us on a…
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2025 Europe – Day 3 – The Hague
We woke up to a grey day in Rotterdam this morning and were confronted with some misty rain as we left our room for breakfast, which prompted a quick detour to collect our wet weather jackets. Ultimately, these were unnecessary, so I do hope my jacket enjoyed it’s day out being carried, rather than worn.…
2024 Sri Lanka (20 Posts)
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2024 Sri Lanka – Day 1 – Exploring Negombo
Finally, the days have rolled around again and it’s time for holidays. With a scheduled 10:30 flight out of Brisbane it was pretty much ‘get up and go’. It all started out pretty well, the Uber driver was on time, but that was about where the on-time part of the day ended. We were taking…
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2024 Sri Lanka – Day2 – Negombo Fish Markets
After a solid night’s sleep we were up and had breakfast at the hotel. They did ring the room at about 8:30 to ‘politely’ remind us that they close at 9:30. Today’s main activity was to visit the Negombo Fish Markets which are recognised as one of the larger fish markets in Asia. The local…
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2024 Sri Lanka – Day 3 – Negombo Lagoon
Today is the last day doing our own thing, so we left the hotel after breakfast, firstly to drop our clothes off at a local laundry and then to find a tour to Negombo Lagoon. This is achieved by supporting Sri Lanka’s cash economy – a tour agent, a tuk tuk driver and a boat…
2024 Central Australia (5 Posts)
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2024 Uluru – Day 1
I have always felt decidedly un-australian for not having visited the next most famous Australian thing after the Sydney Opera House, so after finishing up my last job having given 3 months notice and our 25th wedding anniversary creeping up on us, we decided it was time to visit Uluru (formerly known as Ayres Rock).…
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2024 Uluru – Day 2
I think I mentioned yesterday that sunrise here is quite late. Neither of us slept particularly well, which for me is a common experience on the first night away. We decided we head Kata Tjuta for some sunrise photos. We arrived at the park entrance a little early, so had to wait in a queue…
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2024 Uluru – Day 3
With the outside temperature forecast for about 2 degrees, we decided that a sleep in was in order for this morning. We eventually went to get some breakfast at the cafe and then went to the IGA to stock up on some lunch goods. Our plan today was to do the walk around the base…
2023 Canada (26 Posts)
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2023 Canada – Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise
We left Jasper this morning bound for Lake Louise on the Icefields Parkway. This road is featured in ‘National Geographic’s Top 10 Scenic Drives’ and is definitely the most scenic drive I have driven, although there’s a couple in new Zealand I rank highly (Milford Sound and Queen Charlotte Drive in Marlborough). We only needed…
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2023 Canada – Around Lake Louise
One of the problems with a location that is as iconic as Lake Louise is that everyone wants to visit. This also means that the surrounding attractions have also become so popular that the local authorities have now had to regulate visitors. There is a well developed system of shuttle buses which are the best…
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2023 Canada – Banff
Any one who knows me would know that I dislike a queue, so after yesterday’s experience of queueing for breakfast, ‘we’ decided that ordering an in-room breakfast might be a better option for today. I had some scrambled eggs and sausages that all arrived on time. I also ordered Deb a Nutella chocolate croissant. I…
2022 South Australia (14 Posts)
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2022 South Aust – Day 1
Like everyone else the last couple of years have been a bit ‘hit and miss’ for holidays. While some have ventured overseas, we’d decided to leave that until next year. You may recall in 2020 we did some travelling around southern Queensland, mainly because we weren’t allowed to go interstate. It proved to be an…
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2022 South Aust – Day 2
With plenty on the agenda we were didn’t linger too long before getting up and on with our day. The first order of business was picking up our rental car. In a major contribution to our step count, we walked to Hindley Street to the car rental office. We stopped off for coffee and a…
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2022 South Aust – Day 3
We had a bit less on the agenda today, with the main object being to start our trip to the Yorke Peninsula. We left our apartment in the Adelaide CBD hoping to visit the Adelaide Central Market, but unfortunately these were closed, so we went to the Showgrounds for the weekend farmers markets instead, which…
2020 Holidaying at Home (6 Posts)
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The Journey Begins!
Finally, holidays have rolled around again. With a busy football season for me and a successful art exhibition behind both of us, we are off to Cuba and Costa Rica, with a few days in Mexico to break the two touring parts of the trip. We’ll be starting the main part of the trip in…
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Mexico City to Cuba
Where I left yesterday was where we were planning to get some hours of sleep in real beds after a long day of travelling and sleeping in aeroplanes as the mood arose. Our hotel room had two beds which were clearly designed for little Mexicans to share and as it turned out both of us…
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Exploring Old Havana
It was a bit of a confusing start to the day today. We knew we wanted to get up at 7 am, but as we went to bed last night we realised that we’d skipped ahead 2 hours as part of our travels. Neither of us was 100% convinced as our phones don’t work here…
2018 New Zealand New Year (15 Posts)
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Taking off to New Zealand (again)
So finally, Christmas holidays are upon us. I tried hard to sleep in until 8 o’clock, but I alway love a holiday escape, so I woke up around 7:45 and Deb graciously said I was allowed to get going. So with the final items packed, and Scott (our house-sitter) all instructed we caught our cab…
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Feilding, Levin and Christmas Lights
As we adapt to the timezone and fitting in all the activities a late start was required this morning. We dragged ourselves out out of bed and drove up to the main centre of town to find some breakfast. With Feilding being a smaller town and no guarantee about what would be open on a…
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Christmas Day in Feilding
Having stayed up rather late, or early as the case may be to complete last night’s blog, I had another sleep-in this morning. Being Christmas morning, we organised our usual Christmas breakfast of croissants and champagne… oops a Methode Champenoise, which means sparkling wine made like the French make it, but arguably not as good.…
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And we’re off again!
Well… It’s that time again… Our next holiday is upon us. This time we are heading up to Asia to take in 3 great cities and a little bit of countryside as well. The plan was that September / October would be a fairly quiet time for us both, however I did send out my last…
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Hot Springs, Cats and a tall building …
After some much needed sleep, we woke up this morning around eight. I was feeling well rested and ready to explore. Our first order of business was breakfast, so we took the quieter option of a light breakfast in the Club Room of the hotel. We then went to the Taipei Main Railway station a…
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Temples, shops and night markets
We had another slow start to the morning after a pretty busy day yesterday. I registered my second consecutive day of 17,000 steps, which means Debbie topped 20,000 (short steps). We had the buffet breakfast at the hotel, which offers lots of choices including omelettes and waffles, so I had both. Our first stop today…
2017 Family Wedding (8 Posts)
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Watch out Melbourne!
It’s not often that I look forward to heading to Melbourne to find some better weather, but it is indeed a miserable day here in Brisbane. it’s looking like a warm week down south…. As opposed to a wet one here… Of course, the journey to Melbourne is not about the weather, but for Amy…
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In Transit and …
I was a little excited to finally be getting away for our week in Melbourne, so didn’t sleep as long as Debbie would have liked. We finished our packing and headed to the airport. Interestingly, the taxi company was offering a fixed fare of $38. So I wonder if they’ve worked out that competing with…
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Shop till you drop!
Today was my designated shopping day. Due to the wardrobe in our new house having an unfortunate tendency to shrink my clothes, I’d decided before this trip that I would buy a shrink-proof shirt while down here. This decision resulted from a 15 minute battle with another of my favourite shirts to get the top…
2016 New Zealand New Year (17 Posts)
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Packing the bags again!
Well, it’s almost time to pack the bags again and get on the road for some holiday time. It seems like so much more longer than 4 months since I last fired up the blog, but it seems I have crammed a lot into that time… a couple of trips to India … as well…
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Day 1 – Welcome to Wellington
After escaping a couple of final dramas on Friday evening, I was given the all clear to officially be on holiday. So I make a home cooked beef roast and had a couple of cleansing wines while getting packed. It was an early start this morning and interestingly enough as I opened the door to…
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Day 2 – ANZACs and Cable Cars
Firstly, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am having some dramas with the Tumblr platform with uploading pictures. Sometimes it take hours … sometimes it just doesn’t work at all. Hence the delay on yesterday’s blog. It has hard to come up with a title for today as we walked all over…
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Welcome to the new home!
Hi Everyone After some challenges with my former blogging platform I decided to move the Travel Blog that you have all come to expect to a new home on WordPress. I’ve resisted this move for quite a long time, mainly due to my distrust of all things WordPress, given their record in the Cyber Security…
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And we’re off again!
So the countdown finally reached zero. I was well and truly ready, having decided a few weeks ago that I would leave my current job prior to going on holidays. This meant that my lead-up week was fairly quiet except for some farewell social events with my former valued colleagues. Deb, on the other hand, had a…
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Getting around New Delhi
A sleep and a shower since my last post, and we were ready to start exploring. We stuck with the ‘western’ breakfast – I had an omelette and Deb found the pancake station. A few pastries to complete the healthy options and then it was time to meet our driver for the next few days.…
2015 New Zealand Winter (20 Posts)
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Firing up the blog … again
Two weeks to go and we’ll be travelling again. It won’t be as lavish as last year… and not as long. This time we will be spending a bit of time in Central Otago. The rough plan is to start with a few days in Deb’s home town – Dunedin … prior to heading up…
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Excitement builds!
A quiet day today, to get ourselves organised. After a hard week, the work is as done as its going to be and is now left to my highly esteemed colleagues. Mum and Dad dropped in for their usual pre-trip coffee visit en-route to have lunch with Aaron and Emily. Deb, Jess and I decided…
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Day 1 – Up and away
An early start was in order to get us out the the airport in plenty of time. With our arrival achieved, it was on with the formalities. With my Velocity membership about to revert to Silver, I was hoping to squeeze the last little bit of value out of my Gold membership. Why does all…
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Count Down is over!
Wow! … So after counting down from over 200 Days… (longest count down EVER!) … Finally, it’s down to one more sleep! That means one more day to get all the work stuff in a fit enough state to leave to others…. not perfect … but will have to do. So for those of you…
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Arrived! Updated!
So just a quick post today to let everyone know that we have arrived in Paris safely without incident… however not so sure I’d embrace the 2:30Am start again after a working day… we both really started to feel it today on the last segment… The A380 from Dubai to Paris had a little more…
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Getting lost in Paris …
We started today at the Ibis Hotel at the airport (where we stayed last night to avoid the difficulties of trying to navigate trains and taxis after being awake for 24 hrs) … and having woken up a tad early … due to the circadian rhythms… It was dark and rainy… not Queensland rain… just…
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Travel Journals
We didn’t rush out this morning as Brisbane woke up under a low grey sky. Our normal view of the city buildings from Camelia Avenue was almost completely swallowed in fog with only the tips of the tallest buildings poking through.
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Africa – Days 16 – 18 – Damaraland
The lodge that we stayed in had a short-cut to the Rock Arch via a locked gate and the first order of the day though was to visit this most instagrammable landmark on our way out of the Spitzkoppe area. As well as some pretty people, there were some more Rock Hyraxes to take photos…
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Africa – Day 14 – Spitzkoppe
After a busy day yesterday we didn’t rush to wake up this morning. By the time we went to breakfast, most other people had been and gone except for a couple from Germany. After a chat, they, like so many other we’ve met are following a similar itinerary to ours. I had a delicious plate…
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Africa – Day 12-13 – Swakopmund
Being the caring soul I am, it seems that I’ve shared my disease with Deb, so yesterday she had to get through a day of feeling quite ill while we spent six hours in the car driving to Swakopmund. The roads are average at best, at times quite badly corrugated and challenging to drive. We…
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Africa – Day 11 – Sossosvlei and Camp Surrounds
I woke up this morning feeling much better that yesterday, so I was good to go on the trip to Sossosvlei dunes and Deadvlei. We left early enough to see the sun rising and some hot-air balloons. The camp we are staying at has a private gate into the Namib Desert Park, which is broadly…
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Africa – Day 8-9-10 – Travelling to Windhoek and Sossusvlei
Today we left Capetown. We had a driver booked for 7am who took us to the Capetown International Airport. It’s a modern airport and there were no queues so we got through the formalities quite quickly. We had some breakfast in a cafe once we were airside and once again there did seem to be…
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Africa – Day 7 – Bo Kaap and the City Precinct
Once again we took the opportunity to sleep in a little before we hit the safari part of the holiday. The apartments we are staying in are much busier this week than last week, such that we had to wait a few minutes to get a table for breakfast. Once fed, we caught an Uber…
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Africa – Day 6 – Cape Wine Country
Despite the forecast of a cloudy day, it was all clear skies in Capetown today. We had another day with Armando today as we looked to explore the Cape Wine Country. Once he picked up up we did a quick tour of the Bo-Kaap district and the Parliament precinct before stopping for coffee at Truth…
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Africa – Day 5 – Kirstenbosch Gardens and Table Mountain
It’s another cracking fine day here in Capetown and we’d planned to go to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The gardens are nestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain in the suburb of Newlands. When the British took over the colony in the land was granted to a British offocer who built a house and planted chestnut…
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Africa – Day 4 – Robben Island and MOCAA
We’d booked our Robben Island tour with Booking.com before we came away, and had been given strict instructions to pick up the tickets before the day from the ferry terminal. This actually didn’t turn out to be quite correct according to the ferry terminal lady, so we went away and Deb had a most unsatisfactory…
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Africa – Day 2 – The Cape Peninsula
We’ve adapted to the timezone pretty quickly and were ready to wake up when 7:00 AM rolled around. We had a guide organise to pick up up at 8:30 for a tour of the Cape Peninsula. Our guide, who goes by the name Armando, or any similar variation, was recommended to us. He was knowledgeable,…