I am staying in Mudgee, New South Wales and recently read about a local cleaning woman named Mary St. Clair who was arrested for swearing. She told the local constable that she had had a large sum of money stolen. He didn’t believe her. The year was 1875 and the place was central New South Wales in Australia. “Nice” women didn’t swear and women of her “station” did not have large sums of money to steal. He sent her to the Mudgee Gaol telling them she was suffering from “Lunacy�...

Recently I took a ferry trip down the Brisbane river to New Farm, a riverside suburb between the city and the airport.

I stepped off the ferry to the sound of a band playing “singing in the rain” and people absolutely everywhere. The winter sky was overcast and threatened a little rain, but mild temperatures mean people here can enjoy the outdoors all year around. There were people picnicking, relaxing, smelling the roses, celebrating birthdays, sleeping and hundreds more playing spor...

Australia has some wonderful and distinctive bird life. The other morning I woke to a neighbouring house alarm. Only, it wasn’t a house alarm at all, it was a bird that sounds like a house alarm, and like a house alarm, it went on all morning.

I love the birds here, they have such interesting calls. If birds were classified by their sounds there would be the Microwave Bird, the Rat Bird and the 60’s Theme Tune Bird. There is one that echoes as if it is calling through a long tunnel and ...

Annerley is a very convenient Brisbane suburb. From the higher parts of Annerley you can see the inner city Brisbane high rises and it is just a few stops on the train or 5 minutes by car to reach them. It is an older suburb and many of the homes are run down and need work. Annerley is an area ripe for development and gradually homes are being replaced with modern homes or blocks of units. The one I am staying in has a large garden so the new owners plan to demolish and replace in just a few ...

Somewhere in Brisbane there is a green bike helmet strapped to a tree with a plastic egg inside. It is also home to several earwigs and a colony of big black ants that bite. I know this from personal experience, because after finding this particular geocache I still had an ant climbing around under my jeans ten minutes later.

Rummaging around in the undergrowth of neighbourhood parks is one of my favourite hobbies. Occasionally it leads to suspicious looks, but it is perfectly innocent; I am searching for geocaches.

A geocache is a small container that people hide for others to find using a GPS device. The most common caches are made from film canisters, eclipse containers or plastic lunch boxes but they can be any size as long as they can contain a log book for visitors to sign. They are usually camouflaged in s...

I love exploring the neighbourhood parks and a funny thing happened at a small neighbourhood park the other day. I was searching for a geocache. You may know that a geocache is a buried container that is hidden for searchers to find using a GPS unit. This one was partly buried under a bush at the back of a planted area near a children's playground.
So ....... picture this.
I am lurking around the empty playground trying to pretend I am on the phone while I use the GPS to work out which bush...

I have finally seen an Australian snake … !!

Like many New Zealanders I thought I would see kangaroos at every turn, a koala in every gum tree and I would have to dodge snakes, crocodiles and dangerous spiders every time I left the town. After six months exploring in three states, I have finally caught a glimpse of a little brown snake and it was slithering away through the long grass as quickly as it could.

It’s not like they haven’t had lots of opportunities to make themselves known...