Category Archives: Before our trip

oliver&amanda&louisa&peterinafrica

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I am reviving this blog a second time to document a new adventure. In May this year, my husband (and Oliver’s dad), Peter, is attending a conference in Pretoria, South Africa. Peter backpacked through Africa in the early 90s, although not South Africa, which still was in the grip of apartheid and under sanction. He started in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, africalargemapand travelled through Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi. He was on the road for 6 months. I will ask him to post some pictures and memories to the blog at a later date.

Peter is keen for the whole family to travel to South Africa and join in a safari adventure.

Peter will fly first and then Oliver (9), Louisa (5) and I will fly a few days later to meet him. We will fly from Sydney to Johannesburg and drive to Pretoria. Pretoria is one of three capital cities in South Africa.  Interestingly, South Africa has separate capital cities dedicated to the executive (Pretoria), the legislature (Cape Town), and the judiciary (Bloemfontein). So perhaps somewhat like Canberra?

While waiting for Peter to finish his conference commitments and for the first of three legs of our trip to start, we hope to visit a cheetah research and breeding centre as well as the “Cradle of Humankind” World Heritage Site, where it is claimed humans originated from.

elegant-lounges-21

On board the Blue Train

A few days later we plan to travel on The Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town: a 27 hour, 1,600 kilometre journey through the heart of South Africa. The Blue Train was part of a plan in the 19th century to build a train line for steam engines from Cape Town to Cairo. The line was built in the 1920s but only got as far as the Zambezi River; far from Cairo. Today it still runs around mountains, across deserts and over grasslands from the top to bottom of South Africa and back. We can watch the African world go by out the windows of luxuriously restored carriages; the Blue Train is billed as “a window to the soul of South Africa”. Half way to Cape Town we stop in Kimberley; an historical diamond mining town and home of the famous De Beers company.

In Cape Town we will stay on the V&A (Victoria and Albert) Waterfront at Cape Grace Hotel, which sits below Table Mountain. From here we hope to visit Cape Point (the Cape of Good Hope), the most south-western point of Africa, rich in maritime history. Peter and Oliver also hope to visit a Cub Scout Troop while we are there.

Cape Grace Hotel, Cape Town

Cape Grace Hotel, Cape Town

Cape Point, Cape Town

Cape Point, Cape Town

From Cape Town we will fly to the edge of the Kalahari Desert and Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve. Tswalu is South Africa’s largest private game reserve covering 100,000 hectares. Kalahari Bushman have lived here for 20,000 years. Unlike many game reserves, Tswalu welcomes children. We will stay in The Motse, which means “village” in Tswana, in little houses made of local stone, red clay, and Kalahari thatch. On game drives we will see lions, cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, zebras and many more animals.

image-panel-2010-motse11

The Motse, Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve

kalahari

Looking out over the Kalahari

Finally we will fly from Tswalu to Johannesberg and then on to Sydney.

Peter is enjoying planning this trip, although mindful of important contingencies. Many game reserves do not allow children under 12 to participate in game drives (thus his careful choice of Tswalu). We also are sticking to malaria free areas (which rules out for now amazing destinations such as Kruger National Park, in north-east South Africa, and KwaZulu-Natal, also north-east, with its rich and fascinating Zulu Kingdom history).

Over the coming few months I am going to encourage Oliver and Louisa to learn and post about South Africa and to help decide our day-to-day plans. We also need to plan our luggage carefully because there are very restricted weight limits on the small plane that will fly us from Cape Town to Tswalu. So lots of time to think about new bags, trial packs and safari clothing!

If you’ve been to South Africa and have any suggestions for things to do and places to visit, please post in the comments. More soon!

Amsterdam, bikes, feeling at home and Crumpler

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We interrupt our Legoland posts for a quick travel update!

Today Oliver and I travelled from Aarhus to Amsterdam via Copenhagen. This involved one bus ride, two flights and one train ride. It took about 6.5 hours. Oliver is becoming quite the seasoned traveller and, so long as I tell him each of the travel elements to expect for the day, he does not complain (although he is not looking forward to the long flights back to Sydney on Sunday).

Amsterdam seems crazy busy after the peaceful lane ways of Aarhus. The streets here are a profusion of trams and cars and motorbikes and bikes and pedestrians. So. Many. Bikes!!! I thought Aarhus had a lot of bike riders but Amsterdam is Aarhus X 1000. Bikes going everywhere. It makes total sense for the environment but it makes walking the streets precarious. And no one wears helmets. Not even little kids biked around by their parents. I love bike riding but I suspect riding here in Amsterdam would give me a heart attack! No photos unfortunately because I feared being run over if we stopped to click.

Oliver and I emerged this afternoon from our comfy hotel room (check out tomorrow is at noon; bliss!) for a quick scout around. Amsterdam reminds me of London during my first one or two visits; when I didn't know or understand the city; couldn't find my way around; didn't know its secrets. I think it takes a local to help you feel comfortable in cities like London, Amsterdam and perhaps Sydney. I really love London. I'm not intimidated by it. But Amsterdam felt intimidating this afternoon, not knowing where to go or what to see. And so crowded. We needed a local or a visiting “old hand”.

Instead we followed a map on my iPhone to the Amsterdam Crumpler Store. I planned this visit before we left Sydney! As some of you know, I love Crumpler bags and they sell entirely different ones here in Europe. I found out this afternoon that this is because Australian Crumpler sold their European business to a German company. The German company has kept the same logo, general styling and design philosophy but produced a different range of bags. Awesome!

The man in the store was super friendly and gave me a couple of sample cases (apparently they've been celebrating their birthday) and some Crumpler shopping bags. I picked up a few gifts for friends, a cool silver carry on bag for me (since Oliver and my bags are pretty full) and a funky little Crumpler man key ring. The store had so many wonderful bags, cases, notebooks and other stuff to chose from.

If you get the chance, go visit:

Crumpler Shop Amsterdam

Haarlemmerdijk 31

1031 KA Amsterdam

Telephone: +31 (0)20 620 24 54

amsterdam@crumpler.nl

http://www.crumpler.nl

Amsterdam Crumpler Store

 

Or read their blog: http://blog.crumpler.eu/en/

Tomorrow we catch the train to Rotterdam for the start of three and a half intensive days of conferencing, starting at 2.30pm with one of my three remaining spoken talks (the 5 minute one). Onwards!!

My new Crumpler bag!

 

Today I’m going!!!!!!!!!!!!

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We can’t wait to go to London. We bet it’s going to be so fun and cool. We want to go to the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Cartoon Museum. On Sunday we are having lunch with our friend, Martin (not a Martian), at a restaurant near Kings Cross Station.

Hanging skeletons in the Natural History Museu...

Hanging skeletons in the Natural History Museum of London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s 12 hours until our plane leaves. We’re catching a taxi to the airport at about 5pm today to go and check in. Between now and then we have to finish packing. But we don’t have to go to school or work today, so that is good.

In just over 36 hours we will be in London.

The first thing we will do there is catch a red double-decker bus to Hamleys toy store in Regent Street.

Red London Bus

Red London Bus (Photo credit: patrick francis)

Hamleys in Regent Street

Hamleys in Regent Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are really excited!

By Oliver.

5 days to go, Apple apps for travelling and travel blogging

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With just 5 days to go, I’ve been busy backing up my iPhone and iPad, downloading potentially helpful travel apps, and organising my iPhone and iPad screens (as well as downloading some new tv shows to watch on the plane and in the hotels; I know better than to rely on British or European tv!). I read somewhere that it is a good idea to rearrange your device screens so that you save the apps you will use while travelling on your home screen or collect them together on one screen.

My iPhone home screen

My iPhone home screen

If you’re interested generally in the iPhone apps other people find useful and how they organise them — especially their home screen – then check out David Sparks’ MacSparky blog.

Meanwhile, below I summarise the iPhone and iPad apps that Oliver and I will be using on our trip in case you are planning a trip (and/or planning some blogging).

For travel:

  • Dropbox (iPhone and iPad, free): Dropbox is a free online storage system. I signed up for an account and can upload or download, as well as share, files from anywhere and with anyone. I store copies of my travel documents in my Dropbox account.

    goodreader

    GoodReader app

  • Facebook (iPhone and iPad, free): An obvious choice for keeping  everyone up to date with our movements.
  • GoodReader (iPhone and iPad, $5.49): GoodReader is a PDF reader for iPhone and iPad. Read any and all documents with ease and add comments into the documents. I upload a copy of my travel documents into GoodReader on both my iPhone and iPad, so when I need to know the address of our hotel, I can glance at my iPhone and not dig out paperwork.
  • Kindle (iPad, free): I have a Kindle reader but I have the Kindle app on my iPad just in case.
  • London Pass (iPhone, free): Oliver and I bought London Passes, which allow entry into a huge range of London attractions. I’m not sure that they will end up cheaper than paying at each attraction but the Passes include priority entry into places such as the Tower of London, which have huge queues in the summertime. This app lists all the places we can visit with a London Pass and how to get there. It also suggests itineraries and lets us bookmark our favourite attractions for a ready-made list of things to do when we arrive.

    Meeting Gold app

    Meeting Gold app

  • Meeting Gold (iPad, $10.49): Meeting Gold is an app for taking notes and tracking actions in meetings. I use this app every day of my work week for my student supervision meetings and all other meetings. I used to take paper notes in meetings, but didn’t have any reliable system for filing what we discussed and who agreed to do what. Follow up meetings meant flicking back through pages in my notebook (or an earlier notebook). With Meeting Gold I can set up a document for each meeting in my calendar (it syncs beautifully with my Gmail calendar), write any pre-meeting notes, write an agenda, and attach and view any documents for the meeting. During the meeting, I can take notes, tick off agenda items, and refer to the attached documents. I also can easily look back at the meeting document of a related past meeting (or even insert sections from past meetings into a new meeting document). After the meeting I can write a summary of what we discussed and agreed on, create actions for myself or others to follow-up and sync them to my task management software, Omnifocus, then email the document to people who attended the meeting. Meeting Gold automatically backs up my meeting documents to Dropbox. It’s a really powerful piece of software. While we are away I will be using Meeting Gold to take notes in conference sessions and any face-to-face meetings. At work I use Meeting Gold on the iPad with an external bluetooth keyboard, but it is fine with just the iPad keyboard and means I will be carrying less each conference day (just my iPad not my Mac Book Pro).
  • Native Weather app (iPhone, free): For day-to-day weather at home I rely on the Pocket Weather Australia app. But when travelling I use the iPhone’s native weather app. It’s not super detailed, but it gives a 5-6 day forecast (now it is cloudy and 12 degrees celsius in London, cloudy and 16 degrees in Aarhus, and cloudy and 13 degrees in Rotterdam. Helpful for packing!).
  • Packing Pro (iPhone and iPad, $2.99): You know that I’m an early packer and I’ve flirted with a couple of packing apps. Packing Pro is my current choice although I am pretty sure it is too complicated for me.
  • Prezi (iPhone and iPad, free): You might also know that I’m writing my Keynote Talk for the Aarhus Conference using online presentation software, Prezi. Prezi also offers iPhone and iPad apps to view, present and edit (minor editing only) presentations on the go. This will come in handy as I practice the timing of my talk in my hotel room.
  • Skype (iPhone and iPad, free): Can you remember travelling when you had to go buy a phone card and then it would run out about one and a half seconds after calling home? Well, Skype makes phone cards and hotel-phone-bill-shock a thing of the past. The only downside is when you can’t find a fast enough wi-fi connection to make a call with video. But it is great for keeping in touch with the kids.
  • Touchnote (iPhone and iPad, free): Touchnote lets you print and send your iPhone or iPad photos and a few lines of text anywhere in the world as real postcards (for US$1.50 each). I haven’t tried it yet and I’m not sure we’ll get much use out of it if we are blogging and updating everyone via Facebook etc. But it might be an alternative to buying postcards, writing them and then posting them when I get home because I couldn’t work out the postal systems of the places I visited!
  • TripAdvisor Offline City Guides (iPhone, free): This app lets us download TripAdvisor reviews, suggested itineraries, maps and other information for cities we visit. The good thing is that the app stores information locally on my iPhone so I don’t need wi-fi or 3G to access it. This is perfect because I will have data turned off to avoid data roaming charges.
  • XE Currency (iPhone and iPad, free): XE Currency converts currencies, either with live rates or with the last updated rates (which the app stored for when we don’t have an internet connection). This will come in handy when I’m trying to work out how much that scarf really costs in Liberty of London!

    xpense

    XpenseTracker app

  • XpenseTracker (iPhone and iPad, $5.49): XpenseTracker is a fantastic app that allows me to record my expenses on the go. It keeps a running total of my expenses, divides them into different categories, lets me take photos of receipts (in case I lose them or just muddle them up), and when I get home, prints out a report. On my previous conference trips I didn’t know to request a paid-in-advance per diem, which meant I had to collect EVERY SINGLE RECEIPT and then claim it all back. So much work although made more palatable by this app! This trip I have a per diem, so now I just need to collect receipts for major items not covered by the per diem, such as taxis to and from the airport, hotel bills not yet paid by my university. So this app will be perfect to keep track. Highly recommended!
For the blog:
  • Photo Editor by Aviary (iPad, free): Aviary is a photo editing app. I read about this on a list of apps highly recommended for blogging on the go. It accesses photos from my iPad camera roll and lets me crop them, frame them, tidy or fancy them up with a range of photo editing tools. I can upload the photos to the iPad either from my iPhone or my Canon camera via the Apple Camera Connection Kit (just a couple of little plugs that slot into the charging port of the iPad). That way I don’t need wi-fi to transfer photos.
  • Blogsy (iPad, $5.49): Blogsy is another app I read about on the highly recommended list. It’s been called “the best blogging app on the iPad”. Whereas the WordPress app (below) seems to expect me to know html markup to write a blog post, Blogsy lets me write posts and insert images and links in a very simple visual GUI. I can then publish them to WordPress and Facebook.  

    Blogsy app

    Blogsy app

  • Frametastic, Photo Collage, Pic Joiner (iPhone and iPad, free): These apps let me combine two or more photos into a nice collage. This is great for posting multiple photos to the blog. I haven’t yet decided which app I like the best so I am trying a few as they all were free.
  • Native Camera and Photos apps (iPhone and iPad, free): I use the native Camera and Photos apps for taking photos. I’m sure there are fancier apps but these do fine.
  • Native Notes app (iPhone and iPad, free): I also use the native Notes app for taking notes, writing lists, recording important (but not confidential) information, jotting ideas for blog posts. The great thing is that I have my Notes synced to my Gmail account. So the Notes sync across my iPhone, iPad and Mac Book Pro.
  • WordPress (iPad, free): Finally, WordPress is the iPad app for WordPress blogs. It’s a bit tricky for writing new posts (I prefer to do it either in Blogsy, as above, or online on my Mac Book Pro). But this app is useful for making any small edits to posts (fixing crappy grammar) or moderating comments.

Most of these apps are free. Blogsy, GoodReader and XpenseTracker cost around $5.50 each but are good investments. Meeting Gold costs $10.49 but is excellent value for an app I use every work day. And Packing Pro is $2.99, but I’m not sure I would buy it again.

I hope these recommendations are useful!

What are your favourite travel or blogging apps?

PS I’ve downloaded Game of Thrones Season 1 and House of Cards Season 1 to watch while travelling. Any other suggestions?

6 days to go, tips for on the move

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Louisa woke me very early today so I’ve made good progress on my last big talk. Just one section to rewrite and then I’ll practice Tuesday morning (come and sit in and give me feedback if you are in the vicinity; Tuesday 11 June at 9.30am on Level 3 of the Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University). I’m a little worried that my talk is way too long but hopefully it’s interesting. We’ll see. In the 20 years I have been going to conferences I have seen so many different kinds of Keynote Talks: talks that are light on data but inspire you with a big picture; talks that are all data (lots and lots and lots of data) and not so many grand ideas; talks that are quite impersonal and objective; and talks that reflect the speaker’s journey and passions as much as their work.

What’s the best (kind of) Keynote Talk you’ve seen?

Since I’ve made good progress on the talk and am likely to have it completely drafted for my practice on Tuesday morning, I am happy to think about the packing and planning again. So it was a case of good timing today when I received an email from my friend, Karen G (hi Karen!). She sent me a few tips for London sightseeing: the Yeoman Warder’s Tour in the Tower of London and audio tours for kids in the British Museum. I love audio tours! So much better than finding your own way to the best exhibits and reading little plaques! She also sent me some tips about eating cheaply in London: Boots pharmacy, Budgen’s supermarket and Pret a Manger. I knew about the first and the third but not the second. Great options for fresh sandwiches, cut fruit, healthy snacks and inexpensive drinks.

Finally, Karen warned me that in the last few months there has been a huge increase in the number of iPhones and iPads stolen in London from people using them while out and about on the street and in cafes. I presume by snatch and run or pick pocketing? As you might have read, we gave Oliver a new iPad mini as an early birthday present for this trip. The last thing we want is for it to be stolen or lost. And as I’ve prepared for our trip I’ve tossed up whether to use travel apps (on my iPhone or Oliver’s iPad mini) to navigate or just use an old-fashioned guidebook. I had a well-loved London Eyewitness Travel guide, which one of my brothers never returned after borrowing it for a trip. In the end I decided to buy a copy of the Lonely Planet’s new, anniversary London guidebook (on sale for $20 at Myer last week). Although I am almost entirely digital in my workflow (on my Mac Book and iPad) and reading (with a Kindle), I will still prefer to pop this in our day pack as we wander around and not risk the iPads being stolen or lost.

Our other (mild) defence against theft is to disguise the iPads. I really love iPad DODOCases. They are hand-made in San Francisco by a traditional book binding company and make your iPad look like a hard cover book. Hopefully less attractive to thieves?! Here is a picture of Oliver’s new cover — outside and inside — and my cover. They are really sturdy and beautifully made.

My last “on the move” tip for today is the Cash Passport. Normally when I travel I take a small amount of the local currency and then withdraw money at ATMs at my destination. I’ve run into a couple of problems with this strategy: not being able to find an ATM when I need it or the ATM not spitting out the cash but deducting my balance anyway. My bank also charges a hefty fee for the cash advance and the exchange rate is pretty lousy. This time I am using a multi-currency Travelex Cash Passport. You buy it at a Travelex branch or online before you leave and load it with amounts of the currencies you need. So I have one loaded with pounds and with euros. Unfortunately I can’t load kroners on it. You get two cards (with different pins) in case you lose one or one is stolen. You can check your balance online and reload the card if you need to. Most importantly, the Cash Passport is partnered with MasterCard, so you can use it at any ATM or point of sale that accepts MasterCard. I bought mine on Friday and locked in the exchange rates (which are falling for the Australian dollar).

So we are nearly all set. In these last few days we’ll be picking up dry cleaning, washing clothes we want to take (and wearing all our daggy clothes!), packing, getting together paperwork, backing stuff up on Dropbox, etc etc.

Any last-minute (or not really that last-minute compared to when other people pack) tips for us?

1 week to go, the conference Grand Slam!

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So Oliver and I will be boarding our plane almost exactly a week from now.

I was going to post about conferences: what they are, what happens at them. But I haven’t had time to finish it amidst writing the three talks I’ll be giving at my two conferences. I’ve finished two and I am working on the third talk. It’s the longest talk — the 45 minute keynote — and I want to make a splash with it.

For this talk I am using Prezi instead of Powerpoint. Prezi is a relatively new online presentation platform. Whereas Powerpoint is very linear in the way you present information, Prezi is more visual. It’s hard to explain without seeing it so check out a simple presentation that Oliver wrote in Year 2 (here).

Oliver's Prezi about Anzac Day

Oliver’s Prezi about Anzac Day

Prezi is working well for this keynote talk because I’m hoping to take the audience on a bit of journey from the early days of our collective memory work until now, and the big, new questions that we are grappling with. Prezi lets you map that journey visually. Perhaps I will post the link to my Prezi after I have written and given it.

Meanwhile, I am writing it! The last few days I have tried to focus just on this task, staying up late and getting up early to finish it before we fly. While writing I’ve managed to catch a bit of the French Open. I have lots of happy memories of writing grants until all hours while watching either the Australian Open (which falls during peak ARC grant writing time) or Wimbledon. I am a big tennis fan.

One of my happiest travel days ever was during 6 weeks I spent in London in 2001. I was visiting at University College London and attending the Annual Meeting of the British Psychological Society and then flying to Valencia, Spain for the 3rd International Conference on Memory. On this particular day — a warm, sunny London summer day in June — I got up early and caught a train out to Wimbledon. I joined the queue for a ticket for the outside courts. The queue was 3 hours long but there was lots of entertainment along the way; the English really know how to queue! Once inside I sat right beside one of the outside courts and watched Frenchman Arnaud Clement play. Later I watched some doubles. It was a magical day. Sun. Pimms. Tennis. Gift shop. Too bad that Oliver and I will be a little early in London for the 2013 Championships.

I have often talked about trying for a conference Grand Slam. But it is tricky finding conferences in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York to coincide with the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbeldon and US Open. I’ve already been to Wimbledon, as you’ve heard, and to the Australian Open (a few times). I have a great new collaborator and colleague in New York, Professor Suparna Rajaram, who is just as keen on the tennis as I am. Now to find a French collaborator! Not sure if I could complete the conference Grand Slam in one year but it is always good to have a goal in life!

English: Wimbledon Championships

English: Wimbledon Championships (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I’ve finished writing two of my three conference talks, except for some fiddly error bars on the graphs for Talk 2. Here’s a preview …  Just one more (big) talk to write now before we fly.

Talk 1: A five minute special for the Social Aspects of Memory Pre-Conference Workshop in Rotterdam. I don’t think I’ve ever given a five minute talk before. It’s short. People who know me know that I have much more to say than five minutes worth.

The 5 minute talk for the Social Aspects of Memory Pre-Conference Workshop in Rotterdam

The 5 minute talk for the Social Aspects of Memory Pre-Conference Workshop in Rotterdam

Talk 2: A 12 minute talk in a symposium on Scaffolding Memory Across the Lifespan in the main SARMAC Conference program in Rotterdam. My talk is one of five themed talks so the trick is to make my talk relevant to the overall theme of the session as well as pick up on ideas that my colleagues might say in their papers (without being too repetitive). My talk is number four out of five, which means I will shallow breathe through three before it is my turn.

The 12 minute talk for our SARMAC symposium on Scaffolding Memory Across the Lifespan

The 12 minute talk for our SARMAC symposium on Scaffolding Memory Across the Lifespan

11 days to go, busy, busy, busy …

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11 days until we fly and we are flat-out with preparations. I am busy writing three conference talks (a 5 min one, a 12 min one and a 45 min one) and helping my academic colleagues and students with their talks. There is a large group of us going to the Aarhus and Rotterdam conferences and we are all giving at least two papers each. So we are frantically working out what we want to say, making slides, practising and timing our talks, and getting posters printed. Normally I would keep working on the talks as I am travelling to the conference or even after the conference starts (at night in the hotel), but I want to finish them before I leave so I have as much time as possible free for Oliver. Tomorrow I will post more about academic conferences.

For now, here is a link to a live web cam of Tower Bridge in London. It’s pretty cool. At any time of the day or night you can log on and see what is happening in London and on the Bridge. Here is what it looked like a moment ago: at around 10.30am in Sydney but 1:30am in London.Screen shot 2013-06-04 at 10.25.02 AM

For more live web cams in London try here.

Oliver and I may well be standing on this bridge if you log on to the Tower Bridge webcam in 11 or 12 days time. We will be the ones waving at you!

14 days to go, blogging inspiration part 1

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Two weeks until we leave and it’s great to hear from people who are reading along with us. As I’ve said to a few of you, I think I’m enjoying the blog writing process more than Oliver, at least for now.

My friend, Malcolm, first gave me the idea of blogging. He suggested that I set up a blog for my recent 5 day bike tour in Central Otago, New Zealand.

In mid April this year, my brother, Gary, and I rode the Central Otago Rail Trail; 150 kms on gravel along a former railway line that once linked a series of small gold mining towns, from Clyde in the west to Dunedin in the east. We had an amazing adventure and took some great photos.ORT start of the trail2 ORT highest point2 ORT trail2 ORT Wedderburn2

But internet connections were hard to come by, which would have made blogging tricky. And I was too exhausted at night after riding up to 60 kms a day to do more than eat and fall into bed. So instead, Gary filmed quite a bit of our journey using a camera mounted on his helmet!

On our European trip, Oliver and I will have more reliable internet connections as well as iPads and my laptop, which should make the blogging process easier on the road.

In a couple of posts to come we will feature two blogging inspirations. The first is amazingly20130527-135555.jpg talented, 10-year-old Zoe Benham, the daughter of my academic colleague and friend, Grant Benham. Zoe blogs at laelae.com; she writes about “the world she lives in and lessons learned growing up.”

The second is Lisa McKay, who I knew as a Masters of Forensic Psychology student back at the University of New South Wales. Since then, Lisa has completed a second Masters degree in International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame, travelled the world providing psychological and spiritual support to humanitarian workers, written two very successful books, fallen in love over the internet, and started a family! Lisa blogs at lisamckaywriting.com, writing beautifully about journeys, home, family, love, spirituality and more.

In a separate post we might summarise our blogging equipment and apps to inspire you to blog on your next trip (that’s you Thomas, Jamie and Emily!).

16 days to go, Oliver says “make ’em laugh”!

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Today I asked Oliver what our next post should be about. He suggested jokes because “we’ve got to keep people laughing!” He’s enjoying the idea of people reading the blog especially after one of our readers sent a wonderful book to Oliver in the mail. Thanks Karen G! The book is about Charles Darwin and the voyage of the Beagle, which should prepare us well for a visit to the Natural History Museum in London. Karen addressed the envelope to “Oliver Wyatt, soon to be intrepid traveller”!

So to keep you laughing here are some (planes, trains and automobiles) jokes handpicked by Oliver:

How do you know Aussie policeman are strong?

Because they can hold up traffic!

What’s the last thing that goes through a bee’s mind when he hits the windshield?

His bottom!

Why can’t penguins fly?

Because plane tickets are really expensive!

How do rabbits fly?

By hare plane!

What’s the difference between a kangaroo and a train carriage?

Well if you can’t tell the difference, I’m not going to try to explain it!

What price would a baby magpie buy a sports car for?

Cheep cheep!

Source: 501 Great Aussie Jokes

Got any good travel jokes?