This is where you can find all the day-by-day diary entries for all my trips.
2026 Africa
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Africa – Kruger and a wrap –
Our last stop on this trip is Amaya Lodge in the Timbivati region of the Kruger National Park. Unfortunately the weather has turned bad, but we’ve still managed a couple of game drives. The lodges in South Africa are far more regulated than Botswana or Namibia. This means they limit any viewing to two vehicles…
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Africa – Khwai – Day 32 and 33
We are travelling most of tomorrow, so I decided to wrap up our time in Khwai in a single post. The Okavango Delta is a unique landscape and given we’d seen it from the air, so our next option was to experience it from the water. The local people traditionally travel in a ‘mokoro’ which…
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Africa – Khwai and the delta – Day 31
We were on safari around sunrise after a light breakfast of fresh fruit, yoghurt. In the Khwai Reserve there are less rules about where the vehicles can go and our driver, Africa was very skilled at getting the vehicle into great places for photos off the actual roads. He manoeuvres sometimes surprised me. There was…
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Africa – Chobe and Khwai – Day 30
We had time one more game drive left before leaving Chobe. The lodge has been excellent and our guide has worked hard to find us the things we wanted to see and those things that nature thought we should see as well. Our guide was of the view that many elephants will die over the…
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Africa – Chobe – Day 29
Safari in Botswana is quite tiring with thw early starts at our Chobe lodge. The way things are run in these parts is that everyone wants to be at the gates of the national park at sunrise. We counted seventeen other safari vehicles as we went in. There is also a lodge inside the park…
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Africa – Botswana – Day 28
Following on from yesterday’s game drive we had an early start for our next game drive. In the mornings in the National Park it is more likely to find some big cats. The main attraction here is the elephants though. Many of the elephants that now live in this district originally came from Angola that…
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Africa – Zambia to Botswana – Day 25-27
Sometimes you have days on a holiday that don’t quite go right. Today was one of those days. We were told to be at reception at 6 AM and we were promptly greeted by a tour guide who said he was here to take us to the rhinos. This was expected, but ten minutes down…
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Africa – Victoria Falls – Days 24-25
After a 540 km drive back to Windhoek from Etosha, we had a morning flight to Victoria Falls. There were only 7 passengers on the plane, so we boarded and took off 30 minutes early. The safety briefing purposely omitted the life jacket demonstration because we weren’t flying over any water. I’m looking forward to…
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Africa – Days 21-22 – Etosha (2)
The Etosha National park is centred around a large salt pan left by a lake drying up. It is about 4,800 square kilometres in size and can actually be seen from space. Some years it becomes a shallow lake for a short time if the summer rains are sufficient and the the flamingoes come here…
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Africa – Days 19-20 – Etosha (1)
We had our 90 minute trip back to the pick-up point that left promptly just after 8 AM. It was a cool morning and we weren’t looking forward to the trip in an open safari vehicle. As usual, Orlando had thought ahead and provided fluffy ponchos and hot water bottles. Once back at the pick…
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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 – Getting there
Welcome to everyone following along for another holiday. This one has been in the planning for quite a long time. We generally have a forward plan of the next 2 or 3 trips and having not done a big overseas trip through the ‘COVID years’ we decided that we’d get back to a longer trip…
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2023 Canada – Vancouver to Victoria
A good night’s sleep is always a good way to shake off the jet lag and I slept pretty solidly through to about 7 am, which was pretty good in the circumstances. We had to be up early so we could pack up and taxi to Twassen, which is where the ferries to Vancouver Island…
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2023 Canada – Exploring Victoria
Our plan for today was to explore two of Canada’s more extraordinary ‘homes’. Canada doesn’t traditionally have a whole lot of castles but there are two here in Victoria and both have historical connection to the Dunsmuir family. Our plan was to walk to Craigdarroch Castle, which should have been a shortish walk, however a…
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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No sunrise for you
The plan for this morning was to wake up early, catch a train to the ‘Sunrise Station’ and watch the sun come up over Jade Peak, the highest mountain in Taiwan at 3942 metres. Often the sunrise can be seen with the clouds filling the valley below. The first part of the plan worked well,…
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Welcome to Seoul
We spent most of today travelling so it won’t be a long blog today. Everything went to plan, so I don’t even have a story where we narrowly averted some kind of disaster. We left out hotel in Taipei at 8:30 and arrived at our new hotel in Seoul at 5 PM having lost an…
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Downtown Seoul & some Gangnam Style
Today were out of bed by 7 mainly because we had to navigate the metro again, in order to meet up with a walking tour around the downtown area of Seoul. At this hotel we have access to a club room where they do a pretty good buffet breakfast, which includes the services of an…
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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Day 15 – Kumeu
So the weather today continued being very average with the wind and rain continuing most of the day. We decided to stay in while our friend showed signs of being energetic and went for her daily run despite the weather. Deb and I did not join her, choosing to stay at the house. Following our…
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Day 16 – Auckland and out!
Day 16, which was actually yesterday and was the last day of our holiday, so this will be the last post for this trip. The weather improved enough for us to leave our friend’s house in Kumeu. With most of the day to fill in, we decided we’d head to Devonport, which is across the…
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A Country Drive
Today is our last day in Jaipur and following advice from our guide decided to take a country drive to Samode Palace. This is another of the many Maharaja’s palaces that we are beginning to understand are all over Rajasthan.The drive there was again expertly directed by Deb and google maps although we did seem…
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Mandawa
This is yesterday’s blog, now that I’ve found some decent internet access…. We left Jaipur this morning bound for Mandawa. Deb carefully learned a route out of Jaipur, only to be thwarted by road works that are not updated into google maps. We eventually worked it out and found the correct toll road away from Jaipur.…
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Bikaner
We only had the one night as Maharaja / Maharini in Mandawa, but it was truly a great experience. We also had the opportunity to have dinner with a Dutch couple we had met and between the four of us it was great to compare our relative India experiences. Although it may be a little…
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 – Kruger and a wrap –
Our last stop on this trip is Amaya Lodge in the Timbivati region of the Kruger National Park. Unfortunately the weather has turned bad, but we’ve still managed a couple of game drives. The lodges in South Africa are far more regulated than Botswana or Namibia. This means they limit any viewing to two vehicles…
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Africa – Khwai – Day 32 and 33
We are travelling most of tomorrow, so I decided to wrap up our time in Khwai in a single post. The Okavango Delta is a unique landscape and given we’d seen it from the air, so our next option was to experience it from the water. The local people traditionally travel in a ‘mokoro’ which…
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Africa – Khwai and the delta – Day 31
We were on safari around sunrise after a light breakfast of fresh fruit, yoghurt. In the Khwai Reserve there are less rules about where the vehicles can go and our driver, Africa was very skilled at getting the vehicle into great places for photos off the actual roads. He manoeuvres sometimes surprised me. There was…
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Africa – Chobe and Khwai – Day 30
We had time one more game drive left before leaving Chobe. The lodge has been excellent and our guide has worked hard to find us the things we wanted to see and those things that nature thought we should see as well. Our guide was of the view that many elephants will die over the…
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Africa – Chobe – Day 29
Safari in Botswana is quite tiring with thw early starts at our Chobe lodge. The way things are run in these parts is that everyone wants to be at the gates of the national park at sunrise. We counted seventeen other safari vehicles as we went in. There is also a lodge inside the park…
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Africa – Botswana – Day 28
Following on from yesterday’s game drive we had an early start for our next game drive. In the mornings in the National Park it is more likely to find some big cats. The main attraction here is the elephants though. Many of the elephants that now live in this district originally came from Angola that…
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Africa – Zambia to Botswana – Day 25-27
Sometimes you have days on a holiday that don’t quite go right. Today was one of those days. We were told to be at reception at 6 AM and we were promptly greeted by a tour guide who said he was here to take us to the rhinos. This was expected, but ten minutes down…
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Africa – Victoria Falls – Days 24-25
After a 540 km drive back to Windhoek from Etosha, we had a morning flight to Victoria Falls. There were only 7 passengers on the plane, so we boarded and took off 30 minutes early. The safety briefing purposely omitted the life jacket demonstration because we weren’t flying over any water. I’m looking forward to…
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Africa – Days 21-22 – Etosha (2)
The Etosha National park is centred around a large salt pan left by a lake drying up. It is about 4,800 square kilometres in size and can actually be seen from space. Some years it becomes a shallow lake for a short time if the summer rains are sufficient and the the flamingoes come here…
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Africa – Days 19-20 – Etosha (1)
We had our 90 minute trip back to the pick-up point that left promptly just after 8 AM. It was a cool morning and we weren’t looking forward to the trip in an open safari vehicle. As usual, Orlando had thought ahead and provided fluffy ponchos and hot water bottles. Once back at the pick…