Places I’ve been

I’ve already posted about places where I’ve lived, so I thought I’d follow up by summarising all the other places I’ve visited: holidays and so on. These won’t be in chronological order.

I’ve visited all Australian states except Western Australia; the nearest I’ve been is the Head of the Bight, a mere eight hundred kilometres from the border.

I’ve also never been anywhere near Darwin, but I have visited the southern portion of the Northern Territory (Alice Springs, Ayres Rock, etc). The most memorable NT moment was having a wedge-tailed eagle hovering just above my head, while I was standing on top of Ayres Rock. See here for an elaboration.

We visited New South Wales more than once in my childhood (as already mentioned I was also born there, but that doesn’t count). The most memorable Sydney event for me was the Whovention in January 1989, a convention for Doctor Who fans celebrating twenty-five years of Doctor Who on Australian television. I went in a Davros costume made from (among other things) a garbage bag and some liquorice allsorts.

Uncle David’s family lives in Melbourne, so I’ve been to Victoria a few times. I’ve visited Queensland once, when friends (the Marlow family) were living there. Tasmania too, has been ticked off my list; we went there to meet the woman my cousin (Robert, son of Brian) was going to marry (and did: Katrina). One memorable event is that when we went white-water rafting there, the only person to fall out of the boat was the guide.

Enough about Australia. What about overseas? I’ve talked about how we spent some years in Scotland; we stopped in Thailand on the way there to celebrate my second birthday with my uncle’s family, and in Indonesia on the way back for a couple of weeks. I’ve also alluded to our holiday in Europe in 2000. This happened because my sister’s twenty-first was in January that year and my Dad’s fiftieth in February, so it seemed a ripe time for a holiday. We caught up with friends in Scotland, visited places in England and Wales, went by ferry across the channel, visited the Netherlands and Germany (staying with friends in both places), and took Austria and Switzerland by train. Our German hosts - the Schellenberger family - are from Neubrunn.

I had to return to Australia for study, but the rest of my family stayed on, joined by my grandfather (Papa) who took my place, and spent some time in France. I forget the details, but there was some sort of memorial event for a relative who died in the war (which was, as you might expect, part of the reason for the trip in the first place).

One place in Europe that we didn’t get to, but which I’d like to visit someday: the Kepler Museum. (The site’s in German, which I can’t read, but I thought I’d mention it.)