Thank god I have progressed my travel plans. This morning I paid Gina for the flights, which were all still available. So now it’s full steam ahead.

Gina sent me an email stating that a paper Britrail pass was available. I opted for 8 days anywhere in the UK within a month. I revised my thinking about a Eurail pass, which is only available electronically, in favour of a Britrail pass, because  my only train trip outside the UK was to travel by train to Germany, whereas I developed the idea of  a six day rail jaunt from London to Inverness to Thurso and Glasgow to cover the period between my time in London and Somerset. The train from Glasgow to Plymouth stops at Taunton. Since I won’t be travelling by train to Germany, Gina booked a flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt on July 26, which means I will be extending my stay in Somerset by a day.

I saw my travel agent Gina this morning to select Singapore Airlines flights from Brisbane to London and Frankfurt back to Brisbane. I opted for premium economy, which is only available from Singapore to Europe, but not from Brisbane to Singapore or vice versa. Singapore’s schedule is ideal for me, particularly when I spend a night at the Crowne Plaza at Changi Airport. I can do pretty well the entire flight to London in daylight. The return from Frankfurt is overnight, but the flight to Brisbane is in daylight, arriving early in the evening. Gina booked the seats. I’m faced with filling a gap between my time in London and Somerset – rail travel being the obvious choice.

This is a year when I am due to visit the UK and Europe. I plan to leave early in July. I checked with Clive to find out if he is up to a visit by me and when would best suit him. He is conducting his Finnish retreat in July this year, instead of September, which rather threw me. He needs some recovery time before I appear, so I opted for arriving in Somerset on July 21. I will have to jiggle my timing around a bit when I book my flights.

I flew to Longreach on October 7 prior to my road trip with Simon and Nicole. I was delighted to see a pair of kangaroos grazing on the neighbour’s lawn when I arrived at their house, something I hadn’t seen before. The itinerary included Blackall, Charleville, Tambo, Quilpie, Eromanga and Jundah. Most of the tour was in far southwest Queensland. The terrain from Tambo to Welford National Park near Jundah was all new to me, though there is a good deal more country in the State, further south and west. The grass was still long in the paddocks and we saw cattle and a few sheep enroute, but the ground is drying out and el nino has taken hold. The rivers still had quite a lot of water in them, but the water courses we traversed were overwhelmingly dry. Compared with my last visit in late March, there was plenty of road kill, a sure sign that food beyond the road verges, is more difficult to obtain for kangaroos and emus.

This was the first time in five or six visits to Simon & Nicole, that it hasn’t rained in Longreach. I relished the near 40° heat.  On the… Read Complete Text

On reflection, I should have done this trip ten years ago, yet I simply didn’t want to go to the USA, and even now, I had no wish to travel there other than to see some of its legendary wild places. But with time running out and United Airlines having recently introduced a non-stop service between San Francisco and Brisbane, I set aside my aversion to the USA’s crazy politics, gun violence and tipping as a cynical excuse for not paying people properly, and, with muted enthusiasm, booked my journey. I departed on June 9 and returned on June 27. I became apprehensive about whether I would manage the hiking tour and how much money I would need for tips, so much so that on the morning of my departure, I acquired a severe pain in my left hip which made ascending the stairs difficult and unpleasant. My immediate thought was whether I would have to abandon the trip before it began. My next thought was to wonder if the pain was muscular or skeletal. Fortunately, it abated as the day wore on, which encouraged me to undertake the overnight flight.

SAN FRANCISCO

My ambivalence about travelling… Read Complete Text

I spent a fair amount of time at my travel agent’s with Jodie, who kindly undertook to deal with the entry requirements for my USA trip, plus completing the ‘good to go’ form for the tour operator. It emerged that I needed to collect my laptop from home because the entry application had to come from my email address. Jodie was also required to enter details of my UK passport, though I will be using my Australian passport for the journey. I would have been a wreck if I had to complete the application without help and as it was, the toing and froing while I sat with Jodie, strung me out. After I got home, a ‘Status Change’ email from the Electronic System for Travel Authorization arrived, which I forwarded to Jodie. She phoned me a little later to tell me that she had accessed the authorization document, which she printed and added to the documents which are due to be handed over once all the vouchers arrive.

Steve and Paulina left for Thailand on April 20. The phone he ordered on 18.4.23 on Amazon, is from the UK. I paid an extra $19.00 for expedited delivery on May 22 or 23 instead of on May 26. On 19.4.23 an email from Amazon confirmed that the phone had been dispatched with arrival due on May 22 or 23. Given that it was in the hands of a courier, the quoted arrival dates made no sense. Today, there was a knock on the door at about noon. The delivery driver handed me a package, which, when opened, contained the phone. Steve and Paulina will be back on the first weekend in May.

I saw Gina in her office and paid for my USA tour. The balance of the trip covering a day tour, transfers by car and hotel accommodation is due on May 5, when I will complete my visa application with Gina’s help. A few weeks ago, I found out that mobile phone providers in the US no longer service 3G phones, unlike providers here and in Europe. I feared that I might now have to buy a smart phone, then realised that I could just buy a simple 4G phone. Checking what is available, I opted for a Nokia flip phone and asked Steve for help in obtaining it. The latest model doesn’t appear to be available here. Ideally, I would like to get the phone at the beginning of May.

This year we have been enjoying an Indian Summer. I left Brisbane on 23.3.23, wearing shorts. From take-off, patchy clouds, which extended to and partly hid, Carnarvon Gorge, gave way to clear blue skies all the way to Longreach. An email I received from Nicole on March 12, listed a total of 165 mm of rain in Longreach on the three previous days, far more than we had on the mountain. No wonder the ground looked greener than I have ever seen it before. The weather during my stay was warm and sunny; the sky a vibrant blue, with any afternoon clouds dispersing by night-fall. Pepper was her ever affectionate self. Birdlife was plentiful as usual. Kites riding the thermals and then swooping low to the ground, their shadows swiftly preceding them. This time in the garden, yellow-throated miner birds, sparrows and the various doves, were joined by a little kingfisher and a fig bird. A pretty dragon, totally new to me, which I thought was a juvenile, appeared on the rear steps and climbed onto the hammock, ignoring Pepper’s presence. I saw the dragon on the lawn two days later and was told that it was a habitué… Read Complete Text