My only visit to Egypt was in 1990. It was primarily for business and my sightseeing was confined to a morning’s visit to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids just outside Cairo.

We did not cross miles of cinnamon-dusted desert on camels to reach the site. Instead, driving down the main street of Giza, the Pyramids suddenly appeared upfront like the Fairyland Castle at the end of Main Street in Disneyland!

I find it hard to fathom that a bustling built-up suburb with buildings, streetlights, cars and markets has been permitted to encroach on one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Click here to read a short story from my 1990 visit.

A Devonshire Tea of freshly baked scones (whipped up in Captain George’s own kitchen) is the first surprise of our harbor cruise that takes us into the Lane Cove National Park and the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River. George was up early to do the baking before slipping the epaulettes on the shoulder flaps of his crisp white shirt to greet us at the gangplank of his tidy little boat at Greenwich wharf.

The Jacaranda Season in Sydney is in full swing with blotches of purple daubed across the landscape of harbourside homes and parks at this time of year. In spots I couldn’t see the jacaranda for the masts of all the sailing boats moored in the little bays.

But there is so much more of the inner harbor to take in with so many islands that once hummed with industrial activity and now standing pretty much bastions of a time past.

Once George explains this most interesting history of our once ‘working harbour’, we disappear from urban development into the silence through mangroves and along sandstone river banks in the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River. Can this be but a few kilometres of the centre of a bustling 21st century city?

Double click on the arrow to open the Picasa Photo Album and take a look at the photos to see what we experienced, and to read the captions that tell some of the story.

Last night, I went to a fundraiser for St Canice’s sister parish in Railaco in East Timor at the North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club. It’s unusual to come away from a fundraiser elated, and not with that feeling of “what was I doing there?” And it wasn’t just the excellent roast beef grain-fed for sixty days and cured for seven weeks!

I had more than a passing interest in the success of the evening as I had visited the Mission in the mountains outside Dili in East Timor with Father Steve two years ago. This trip wasn’t exactly a baptism of fire, but it was definitely an immersion in an environment so different from anything I had ever experienced, and one that I totally enjoyed.

Whether it was having electricity for only a couple of hours each night; or splashing a pail of cold water (that had come by hose from a mountain spring) over my naked body each morning; I freely accepted it as what one does in primitive circumstances. I took all of it it in my stride. This immersion in activities so foreign, coupled with being treated like a welcome guest, has its own sense of luxury. Money can’t buy this! But money can provide these happy, undemanding East Timorese with a few of the basic necessities of life.

And so it was last night, that almost 200 people were similarly inspired to dig deep to help the efforts of the mission, and they hadn’t even been there. Much of this is the work of Steve Sinn who inspires benefactors, large and small with his passion

On reflection of my 2009 visit . . .

News of the death of Libyan dictator Gaddafi has stopped my morning. I visited Libya twice in the past four years and now look forward to returning again. Tragically, Jamal, the owner of the travel company, who personally drove me to Leptis Magna on my second visit, was killed by a stray bullet in Green Square in the opening days of the revolution.

 

Click here to read my story of the 2007 visit to Libya with Pam and Ken Turner.

 

A photo from my 2008 Visit with Edmundo

I visited the Hunza Valley “where mountains meet” in the Northern Areas of Pakistan when I was working in South Asia 1985. I’m giving very serious thought to a return visit in 2012, fanned on by similar desires of Ken Turner and Pam.

 

The thought is sufficient reason to dust off my story of past experiences of nearly 30 years ago in that wonderful country.

 

Click here to read my story.

Click here to read Michael’s story of his five days with Juanita and Jan at the Lizard Island Island Lodge set in the wilderness of a ten square kilometre island right on the Great Barrier Reef. Please allow time for the large file to open.

View this Picasa Album as a Slideshow, or double click and go through the album to see captions under each photo.

You simply won’t believe the day we had yesterday!

Jumping off the back of the dive-boat into the sea as 26 year-old Captain Matt backed up to get us as close as possible without the boat hitting the reef, I had visions of ending up ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

Only today do I learn on Google
“The title of the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea refers to a journey around the world that was of a distance of 20,000 leagues, not a depth of 20,000 leagues. A nautical league is three nautical miles.”

More of this story to come.

I am on Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with friends Juanita and Jan for five days of relaxation. It may be an easy 20 kilometres off the coast of Far North Queensland by Cessna, but flying low over the coral reefs in clear tropical waters before landing on the island’s airstrip, I’m overcome by a feeling of being 20 light-years away from reality.

I’m a castaway in a wilderness not only in the unspoiled landscape of melaleuca and she-oak casuarinas, but in a technological wilderness cut off from a world of television and mobile phones (and almost from Wi-Fi Internet access that I can access in a lounge area only).

Today, Lizard Island is a terrestrial and marine National Park under World Heritage protection, combining ‘natural beauty, uninterrupted, with fine dining and refined comforts for the discerning traveller’.

Recently reading an article on ‘The Golden Ring’ of towns within driving distance of Moscow, and having a strong desire to go explore them, has prompted me to dig deep into my archives and find the story of my first trip there in 1990.

I hope you enjoy reading what I experienced there 21 years ago.

Moscow USSR 1990 . . .

On the edge of historic change . . .
between reform and disintegration, perestroika and collapse . . .

 

Please click here to open the story.

Fields of bright yellow canola and green cereal crops, (planted these days in perfect lines by farmers using GPS tracking devices on their agricultural equipment), stretch for miles below us.

We fly low over sheep stations and typical Australian landscapes with eucalypts lining the now-running creeks and waterholes.

The only telescope in the world that tracked and recorded the complete first manned mission to land on the moon in 1969 is here below me outside Parkes, NSW!

A swing back over the town let’s me see the old railway station and wheat silos of my grandfather’s day from on high; and then out over the huge distribution complexes that one day will be expanded as a central hub for the whole Continent, (if our Federal Government can ever rise above short-term politics and finally address strategic infrastructure upgrades such as this).

Here I am aloft wedged in behind Peter under an 8-metre span of red and white wing at 300 feet, happily dipping and diving through the air as free as a bird. Exhilarating!

I fear for but a split-second when Peter’s whole body involuntarily jerks sideways. “Surely he’s not having a stroke? Where’s that switch that he told me about in the pre-flight safety briefing that fires a ballistic ‘chute to lower the whole micro-light (and me) gently back to earth?”

Unbelievably, a gossamer thread trailing from a catapulting spider has struck Peter across the face, and of course there is no drama for one as experienced as he. But can you imagine a spider swinging that high?

Safely back on terra firma after an hour in the sky, we drive by a country butcher for some thick bacon rashers and freshly laid, free-range eggs.

This intrepid aviator is hungry!

Picasa Web Album – View as a Slideshow, or take your time going through individual photos with captions.

It is September 17th, 1911.

The kerosene lamps are lit but there’s no fire in the fireplace of the Station Master’s Office in Parkes, New South Wales. Spring is truly in the air.

Charlie, a first-year railway apprentice is sweeping the the platform of the red and buff-coloured Victorian station shaded by a corrugated iron roof cantilevered out to the tracks-side on beautiful formed iron-work bracketing. Roses in front of a large black and white ‘Parkes’ sign along the platform blow in a dry breeze from out west.

A steam locomotive from Central Station Sydney, 400 kilometres back east on the coast, approaches.The whistle blows long and loud as it passes the wheat silos further down the track. Slowing as it approaches the platform, it  stops with a hiss of steam and a grinding of metal on metal up under the overhead bridge leaving the passengers to alight onto the clean platform.

Charlie the apprentice stops his sweeping, propping his broom up against the red brick wall before sauntering over to Henry the engine man yelling, “Have you got the rubbish for the SM?” Henry throws him a brass buckled pouch with important correspondence from Sydney Central, which Charlie rushes to the Station Master’s Office.

The rather proud man, Leslie Augustine Regis Musgrave, who Charlie is accustomed seeing working behind the big wooden desk in starched collar and tie, and watch chain strung from the fob pockets of his vest, is not to be found. HIs wife Rachel has just given birth to their first-born, the first of eight children over ensuing years.

My proud grandfather, Les, was attending Nanna Rae’s bedside as she suckled my father, Leslie Patrick.

Unexpectedly finding myself in Parkes, the birth place of my father, on what would have been his 100th birthday had he not died so young in 1967, I am both invigorated and challenged. What do I look for that has any relevance? If anything!

We went in search of a great uncle Alfonso who was gassed in World War I.

All that I can glean from living relatives is that he was unmarried and was buried in Parkes Catholic Cemetery. I found the records saying he was buried there in 1948 but there is no record of the gravesite.

Fr Paul made a daisy chain and we placed it on another Returned Serviceman’s headstone, and said a prayer.

My father, Leslie Patrick Musgrave was born in Parkes NSW on 17th September 1911. One hundred years on, by amazing coincidence, I am accompanying a friend to a meeting to Parkes, and I will be there on dad”s actual 100th anniversary.

I was suckled in an air raid shelter in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane during World War II in 1942 where dad was the only medical practitioner for the whole peninsula.

on dad”s contribution to the local community that was published by the Redcliffe Museum.

 

Picasa Photo Album
Double click on arrow to open Picasa Web Album below

I don’t hesitate for a moment when my brother Mark emails me while I’m away in Georgia suggesting we meet up in the King Valley for a family weekend with a couple of our Sydney cousins and their spouses. “Here’s my chance to go photograph a few cows”, I recall thinking.

On this occasion, four branches of the greater Musgrave Family gather in two cottages overlooking cow pastures at the rear of a disused winery at Moyhu, and set about trying to get warm!

It’s colder than a witch’s … most of the time, and wet, but that doesn’t stop the fun and laughter. It certainly doesn’t get in the way of discovering the good restaurants and enjoying the wines and local produce of the region. And the ‘girls’ take it in turns to cook breakfast and dinner after visits to the local farmers’ markets and raiding the cottage garden.

We can only hope that Annie and Jennifer’s harvesting of rocket leaves and lemons from the garden to make their peppery, tangy green salad are not as noticeable to the cottage owner as the black furrows in her sodden lawn, after one of our party drove off the gravel and got bogged!

 
 

Since arriving back from the trip, friends are very interested in the unusual destinations included in this last holiday, and all ask about the highlights.

In a Nutshell:

R ugged mountain scenery peppered with ancient stone towers and remote monasteries are the overwhelming common threads running through our experiences in Georgia and Armenia.

Incredibly, most of the monasteries we visit have survived invaders over the centuries because they were located in remote locations on mountaintops, in gorges and along canyons, away from what were the more travelled trade routes of the period. They stand now waiting for the likes of us to arrive and enjoy the thrill of discovery.

At the beginning of the second millennia there was a Golden Age in which these monastery complexes were more than places of prayer and spirituality for orders of monks. They were intertwined in history as unique centres of culture and learning. Humanitarian sciences, music and medicine were studied, and scientific treatises composed here. Nothing else existed at the time. The monasteries were repositories of culture and language.

Visiting the Caucasus is difficult to describe. For a brief moment after arrival and driving down the broad tree-lined Rustavelli Boulevard in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, we wonder if we are travelling back in time to a European city at the turn of the 20th century.

On our first sortie outside the hotel, we pass a once very grand, orient-inspired Opera House, two impressive Theatres, the National Museum, and the Parliament House, and all within a block of our hotel. These buildings are a testament on an epic scale to a love of the finer things in life, and it’s pleasing to see that the government is placing priority in the restoration projects to restore these cultural institutions for the people.

Later, sitting at perhaps the only sidewalk café in the area enjoying an Illy espresso, it’s very evident that the people are still poor. Much progress has been made in both Georgia and Armenia in the twenty years since independence from the Soviet Union. We detect a strong desire among the people to be more ‘Western or European’ without losing a proud heritage. Their warm-hearted hospitality, their culture, music, food and wine go a long way to compensating for the numbing years of suffering under the oppressive yoke of Communism. While the young have a real purpose in life, embracing education and pursuing prosperity, there’s still a sense of resignation and lingering passivity evident in many of the older people.

I skip WikiLeaks and go straight to the CIA World Fact Book to provide you with Background information on Georgia and Armenia.

Background on GEORGIA

Dear Pam and Edmundo,

In response to your entreaties for maps and photographs of our recent trip to Georgia and Armenia to be in one place, I am now broken of back and hard of seeing but you at least should be content with what follows.

I am hoping to get a little of my own back on Eddy, my generous host of two weeks in London, when he accompanies me to the Farm Street Church for a Latin Mass one Sunday during my stay. Living under the same roof as Eddy is one big sermon, so he’s quite comfortable at the prospect of listening to a sermon from a ‘mighty Jesuit’ for a change.

An avowed atheist notwithstanding, Eddy is also attracted by the music program for the Trinity Sunday Mass that we’d seen on the church Notice Board walking to lunch on Regent Street one day. He sends me to the front pew while he sits in the back row so he doesn’t feel pressured to get up and down and kneel with everyone else. He’s happy taking in the beautifully decorated, rich interior and enjoys the choir and the music.

The organ booms and the choir sings.  We all stand. Eddy sits as the dear priest slowly makes it down the aisle leaning heavily on his walking stick in a cloud of incense. One step at a time, he carefully makes it up to the altar, and bows. I’m waiting for an inspiring sermon from this senior English cleric, and then looking forward to Eddy’s feedback, to see if any of it finds a chink in his atheist armour.

The Bach Organ Prelude and Postlude, and the choir singing a Mozart Mass delights him (and me) no end.  But instead of giving me his feedback on the sermon after Mass, he asks me what I got out of it!

My one opportunity for proselytizing is doomed. One up for Eddy!

How could I expound on the ‘anthropocentric’ character of God our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier when I didn’t really understand what the ‘mighty Jesuit’ was talking about? I did pick up on his “We can only find God and his will in all things if there are actions of ours above all prayer that fuel the mind and heart with genuine attention to the real needs of others”. Amen!

Afterwards, I reflect on my recent visit to Armenia and wonder what message the apostles, Bartholomew and Thaddeus who brought Christianity to the people of Armenia in the 1st Century AD would have been. Probably much the same as today’s ‘mighty Jesuit’, but without the ‘anthropocentric character of God’ bit.

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain’t free . . .

So what am I doing, sitting up in bed at midnight with my laptop in a hotel room in Bangkok? The truth is jetlag, and I can’t rest till I put a line through every scrap of paper with any sort of note from my time away in Europe. I’m determined to transcribe the last of them, my jottings from my recent visit to Transylvania about Dracula.

Bram Stoker, the Irish creator of the legendary Victorian novel about Count Dracula, never set foot in Romania, let alone Bran Castle, an important feudal fortress built to protect from Turkish invasions throughout the Middle Ages, where the story is set.

I did! So, I suppose I have to brag about it.

Sitting in the window of a little pension enjoying a bowl of tripe soup and biting on the sweet pepper that spurts in my eye, I can see the walls of the castle through a blooming apple orchard. Once sated, I follow my tour guide, Andrea as we make the heavy slog up the side of the mountain. Then with head bowed, climbing steep stone steps in a dark narrow tunnel within the castle walls, we finally gain entry to what in fact is a series of spartan, white-walled rooms, and a lot of children. At the time, I wasn’t aware that in 1921, the last ‘real’ occupant, Queen Maria of Romania, had an elevator installed in the fountain of the castle descending 197 ft. to a tunnel opening onto the lovely park grounds in the valley where we were parked.

My Dracula story takes legs as I view the flag of Vlad Dracul, emblazoned with a dragon, hanging on the wall in the castle.  The dragon signifies the Devil. This real-life Vlad Dracul had four sons, one of whom was Vlad Tepes, ‘the Impaler’ and a real devil, around whom the Dracula novel was written.

Thank you for staying with me. You are now to be rewarded with a true story.