Steve Jobs, the charismatic founder and CEO of Apple has died. That’s old news now though, he died on Wednesday, but I’ve been in the Australian outback and I only found out yesterday when I saw an email from a friend with the title ‘Jobsy.’ I immediately knew what the email would tell me, that Steve Jobs had succumbed to the rare form of pancreatic cancer he had been fighting.

I didn’t know Steve Jobs, or rather I didn’t know him much more than other people who use and enjoy Apple products. I’d heard stories of his tight control on [...] Continue Reading…

On this road trip greetings and goodbyes are the punctuation. I’m constantly meeting new people and seeing new places, then after a few days I say my goodbyes and I leave them to continue north. If there are any moments of this ongoing adventure that I don’t like, I suppose it would be the string of goodbyes that fade in my wake. But then, just a few minutes later as the road stretches before me, I get that buzz that only the road ahead can give you.

There is a romance in a life spent on the road, a life [...] Continue Reading…

As I crossed the state line from New South Wales into Queensland I was welcomed to the ‘sunshine state’ by the Gold Coast. Sitting in traffic amid the towering hotels and apartment blocks all trying to catch a glimpse of the sea, I found myself feeling penned in by the concrete that seemed to be swallowing me like it had surely swallowed the very things that once earned this place such an alluring name.

People had told me that the Gold Coast was something of a soulless place. “It’s like a little bit of America got marooned on the southern [...] Continue Reading…

I don’t know who it was, but someone told me that I would love Byron Bay because it was “full of hippies and tie-dye T-shirts.” I’m pretty sure that was a sideways jab at Byron Bay and myself, but it was enough to tweak my curiosity about the place. Not having done the slightest bit of research or even read even the merest of descriptions about the place, all I really knew about it was that it was a backpacker hot-spot with an alternative vibe, located in the far-northeastern corner of the state of New South Wales.

I saw two [...] Continue Reading…

It’s quite strange sitting here in Australia reading the BBC news website and seeing the disturbing images of riots that have swept across the UK, alongside an ad (yes ads appear on BBC outside the UK) encouraging me to visit the country. The ad reads ‘Britain. You’re invited.’ As my eyes look back at a picture of some looter walking out of an electrical store with his arms full, I think to myself, No you’re okay Britain, I think I’ll stay here.

This kind of violence could happen anywhere, of course. However, seeing video footage and images of masked ‘hoodies’ [...] Continue Reading…

I was a passenger in a stranger’s four-wheel drive making its way through a dense forest at night. Outside the headlights illuminated the rough and challenging road that climbed, dropped, and twisted before us. I was somewhere near Byron Bay in the far north east of New South Wales, but really I had no idea where I was with any degree of accuracy. In fact, right there in the darkness as I looked across at the stranger driving, it occurred to me that nobody else knew where I was either.

I’m a couch surfer, and as such I’m familiar with [...] Continue Reading…