Year: 2017

Today I went to the opening of the new Collection of Australian Art at the Gallery of Queensland. A huge gallery beautifully laid out and thought out, with magnificent works of Australian artists, starting from  Indigenous groups, to colonial days and after, right up to more recent contemporary art.  In amongst two hundred exquisite items…

I picked up the phone and rang his mobile in the hope that he would answer.  A male voice did answer and I said loudly and hopefully Pambo ? Pambo ? No, he said I am a relative but we have taken over the business, is there anything we can help you with. Not this…

Just imagine all your menfolk taking a shaving brush in hot pink and mixing their shaving cream into a soft and luxuriant lather. Well now take this image and see what nature has provided in the form of yes, you guessed it, a Shaving Brush Tree. I came across this on a walk in the…

We left India in 2013. So imagine my surprise when unusually for me, I looked into the blog and saw that I had loads of comments mainly in 2017 !  Well, I am not a very controversial writer and I suspect that most of my readership likes a quickie (pardon the pun) on FB and…

As the Economist put it are we the new GERIACTIVES, The SUNSETTERS or NIGHTCAPPERS ? How about the NYPPIES- not yet past it ! Or the more expressive OWLS- older working less, still earning. There are more descriptive terms, which is an indication of the heightened interest in finding the right description for this new…

The Samariá Gorge has been a National Park in Crete since 1962 – a major tourist attraction of the island – and a World Biosphere Reserve. We travelled by bus from Chania to a height of 1,250 m at the northern entrance.The cool winds swirl around the pine trees at the top and a little shiver goes through…

We took the boat out to Balos Bay with thousands of other tourists. We had looked for something a little more contained but our number was large enough not to allow this so we scrambled on, literally in the nick of time, onto the Gramvousa ferry and we fought for our place in the shade…

The island of Crete is the birthplace of Theodorakis, Mouskouri and Kazantakis, giants in music and literature of the Greek world. The diminutive – akis- seems to be the norm on the island but there is nothing little or small about these people who are proud and strong as they showed time and time again,…

35 minutes from where I live is my closest beach – one that rivals many others on this great continent. I have a photo of the beach but today I am not going to show you that. My posting is all about how a casual walk on the promenade led me to Redcliffe Point where…