Sometimes you want to visit places a little off the regular route. The Kelabit Highlands, for example. You can get there by road, if you’re prepared for a minimum of eight hours in a bumpy jeep bouncing over logging trails, and longer still in the wet. Or you can fly by tiny Twin Otter…
Tag: flying
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in front of the “Southern Cloud” (photo from Ed Coates collection – used with permission)
Time Magazine, April 20, 1931:
Even as Col. Lindbergh joined the staff of T.A.T. and Pan American Airways… so did Wing-Commander Charles Kingsford-Smith return home from his famed flights to become managing director of Australian National Airways Ltd. One day last month …his company’s … Southern Cloud took off from Sydney for Melbourne, over 450 mi. distant… [and] was not again heard from. As did Lindbergh when the T.A.T. plane City of San Francisco vanished in New Mexico in 1929, Commander Kingsford-Smith flew to the search. Day after day planes criss-crossed the wilderness north of Melbourne. In such territory survivors might live for many days without reaching means of communication. Last week hope for plane and occupants was abandoned.
What happened to the Southern Cloud? Since I first heard about the plane 20 years ago, I’d wanted to find out the whole story. In January 2011, I finally did…
Flying with babies, zero to two. They fly free. How hard can it be?
The first thing to remember when you board a plane with your child is this: She has Every. Right. To be there. If they let her board, she’s as legitimate as anyone on the plane. Do your best to be a considerate passenger, for sure. But talkative aunties and loudsnorers are no more entitled to anything on that plane than you and your little kid. They don’t feel guilty, and nor should you. You’re not a selfish, anti-social monster. Your kid is not the Devil’s Spawn! You’re a travelling parent. That’s perfectly normal.
Continue reading
August 2005. We’d left government office jobs in search of adventure. How did we end up back in government office jobs? After a few months doing that in London, we remembered why we’d left Australia and what we wanted. So on August 12th 2005, after some serious decisions, we took the train to Stansted and embarked on the journey that would ultimately deliver us to Beijing in February 2006. But that was still some way off. Our first stop: Iceland.
We soon discovered it was lucky we’d brought camping equipment and a whisperlite stove. Two burgers and fries at a rustic burger hut on the Reykjavik docks set us back over $60. Remember the days before the GFC wiped out Iceland’s banking sector and demolished its currency? We do. They were expensive! But it was a great place to travel. Read on to find out why.
Continue reading
Seven years ago, the Space Shuttle was still flying, though not for much longer. China had yet to fly its multi-crew Shenzhou missions to the Tiangong orbital space laboratory, or land the Yutu “Jade Rabbit” rover on the moon, in each case becoming just the first nation after the US and USSR to achieve the feat. I wrote these impressions of the 14 May 2010 launch before I knew much about the Chinese program, and before I’d processed the black and white images included below.
The experiment: Shanghai-Beijing. Which takes more time door to door? The plane, or the train?
The result: It’s closer than you might think.
