We Australians tend to have a bit of romantic flair when it comes to road trips — epic drives along the Great Ocean Road, hitting the Nullarbor at dawn, or chasing the sun north in winter. So when my partner and I first dreamed of living on the road in New Zealand, we...
There are travel stories you tell to make people laugh, and then there are travel stories you tell to make people believe you were either very brave or very stupid. This one sits somewhere gloriously in the middle. Picture it: a sleep-deprived Aussie in Tokyo, the...
I remember the first time I landed in Tokyo after a long-haul from Sydney: bleary-eyed, hair like a tumbleweed and carrying a daypack that somehow doubled as a luggage sculpture. I shuffled toward the platform and froze. There, like some perfectly choreographed flash...
There are a few universal truths in travel. One: if you say “no worries” with enough confidence, people assume you know what you’re doing. Two: if you’re Australian, overseas, and within 200 metres of the ocean, you will be assumed to surf. Properly. Competently....
If you’d told me years ago that my closest and most complicated relationship on the road wouldn’t be with another human but with a 65-litre backpack named Bruce, I’d have laughed. Yet here we are—twelve countries, forty-seven airport security checks, three...
If you’ve ever dreamed of watching the sunset from the cliffs of Oia, Santorini, let me set the scene for you: imagine a postcard-perfect village of whitewashed houses and blue domes, the Aegean glowing molten gold, the air warm and fig-sweet… and you, standing...
There are moments in every traveller’s life when they realise they have misplaced something essential: a passport, a wallet, a sense of dignity. But for an Australian, nothing is more spiritually destabilising than losing a pair of thongs. We’re not talking about the...
There are moments in every traveller’s life when you realise—suddenly, violently—that the world does not revolve around the café culture you grew up with. For some, this occurs gently, like learning that not every country believes avocado belongs on toast. For me,...
