Please visit my other blogs too

At the beginning of most years I start a new travel blog which you can access via the links in the right navigation bar. I also have a recipe blog - the pinging chook which I originally started with the idea of posting recipes to tackle while on the road. It has expanded to include anuthing that I love to cook and eat!

Please browse and enjoy. Bon voyage and bon appetit!

2024 looms!

 Stay in touch as we take in more of Australia hwheat2024.blogspot.com 

December 31 what happened next?

What's been happening in the three month between arriving home and the end of this travel-packed year?  We haven't been idle - surprise surprise! Here are a few images.

Taking great pleasure in our green space

A bunch of parsley flowers

Walking the neighbourhood enjoying the street and river-scapes. Watching the plants grow - with daily inspection of the passionfruit vine which has a good load of green fruit on it -  and watching the insects enjoy our wee sky-rise garden. Doing masses of cooking - and eating! and jam making etc; basically filling the larder and freezer (some of the latter in preparation for a caravan journey in February-March). Lots of time spent catching up with family and friends. Feeding our minds with interesting new things - author talks and seminars from topics ranging from Persian food to interstellar chemistry. Visited art galleries - even did an art class!  

We pulled back on our volunteering work to spend time getting ourselves well and back in tip-top condition - still working on that! And instead have taken on a less physically demanding job of coordinating seminars for the Graduate Union of University of Melbourne. Next year will be a mixture of travel adventures - Feb-March caravanning to explore more of our home State, taking a couple of weeks in April to drive north to Northern NSW and Qld to visit friends we haven't seen for years and then 3 weeks in June visiting family and friends in WA. The 'biggie' will be 2 months travelling firstly across the very top of the world to reach the two North Poles, then a 10 day self-drive trip around the Faroes Islands (yes they have bridges and ferries!) and we will finish off with 3 weeks in a campervan driving from Scotland through Wales and into Cornwall and before flying home we will catch up with people we've met on a couple of expeditions over the last few years. Really looking fwd to it.  

Fascinating visit a property being rehabilitated by Angair -
Society for the Protection of Flora and Fauna 

A special visit to our youngest family members Juno and Oris - born 6 months ago

A blank canvas - with a delicious gin cocktail to get the juices flowing

Seafood paella

Quiet dining at University House after a lecture

And you my friends I wish you auld lang syne and much enjoyment in the new year in whatever way brings you joy, peace and contentment.

September 29 home again

 We’re home physically but my thoughts still drift rather like ocean weeds awash among the imagines particularly of our journey through the Northwest Passage. I am loath to let them vanish.

Snapped as the wheels hit the tarmac

Four months, almost to the day, 1000s of km away from home and we’re finally back! We touched down at Tulla Monday 1pm. So good to be home! We collapsed inside in a tumble of cases. First things first - check there’s some bubbles in the fridge and enough food etc so we can pull up the drawbridge and hole up for a few days. Then we headed out to the garden, our happy green sky-space. 

Love these beauties. Not bad not having had any attention for 4 months 

Our wee lemon tree

Sweet and juicy

Bee heaven

The orchids were trailing long waving flags of flowers to greet us and the herbs were crowding to the edges of front and side gardens. And lemons! Our wee lemon tree is weighed down with a dozen gorgeous golden orbs and tons of fragrant flowers (as is the lime tree) - happy bees are everywhere. The fragrance in that side orchard/garden is heavenly and the bees are enjoying it as much as or probably more than us. The fig tree even made a valiant attempt at a welcome with a few small green figs - poor neglected thing. Shy Hellebores hanging on to a wee bouquet of blooms seemed to be waiting for us to coo over them - we did. And our birds were back within the hour. It is good to be home!  

Tucked under the ferns and Chinese jasmine are these pretty little beauties- our hellebores

We've eaten well but homemade is sooo good.

The last 4 months have been rich to overflowing so we've come home wanting to live simply for a little while, not go out, use up what’s in the larder – there was no bread in the freezer so we made some and ‘muesli’ biscuits too. We want to simply appreciate the quiet of our little pad - and get over jet lag! It’s hard to explain but traveling into the remote parts of our planet brings home many realities of ‘urbanisation’ however you might define it - it’s good and bad at the same time ……. another time. And indeed until next time we head off ....

September 21-22 Anchorage to Seattle to Vancouver to Sydney to Melbourne

As I sit in the Seattle airport waiting to board a plane for Vancouver and the long trip home, I realise that it was only yesterday that we were in the sleepy village of Nome - it seems a lifetime, a world ago. The Northwest Passage is more remote than you could imagine. The hardships that the Inuit people experience living in the Canadian High Arctic is hard to imagine yet they are beautiful happy generous people. I will never forget them. 

Last  night was one of those interminable in-transit stops, something you have to bear for the pleasure of visiting magical places. 

A boxed reminder of a wilderness of which we have only had the slightest whiff 

My head is still in Nunangat and the Bering Strait, and filled with images of and fascination with the cultures and places I have encountered over the last month. Again to the beautiful people of the Canadian High Arctic I say ᓛᓂᓗ ilaanilu and ᖁᔭᓇᐃᓐᓂ quyanainni - goodbye and thank you.

September 21 Tiny, remote, delightful Nome

 Fresh off the boat this morning, we were driven around Nome in a couple of those gorgeous yellow US school buses - a pretty bumpy ride but a bit of fun. Somebody had spotted some musk ox so off we set - unsuccessfully. 

And the wheels of the bus go ...... man it was a bumpy ride

The Carrie M McLain Memorial Museum

We visited Nome’s Carrie M McLain Memorial Museum which has a wonderful and thought-provoking collection dedicated to preserving the cultures and history of Nome and the Bering Strait people. The King Islanders (remember those derelict structures on the island?) who now mostly live in Nome had created a beautiful installation nestled against an umiaq (skin boat). Come summer and open waters, they, and others from surrounding Bering Strait communities, would sail to the beaches of Nome to camp - up until the 1960s. While summering at Nome, families took on summer jobs, traded, gathered berries, and hunted for birds and fish. Back when King Island was inhabited, the Islanders would leave for Nome around June or July and head back in October. Each trip took around 14 hours nonstop in a skin boat. It is an excellent museum but we/I didn't have enough time to explore - they had to tip a few of us out.

A necklace of crab jawbone

Gold mining stuff

The King Islanders installation - seal skin foreground, Umiaq background.

The King Islanders' display was excellent and very well documented. An umiaq (skin boat) consists of a light driftwood frame over which a Bearded Seal or Walrus hide cover was stretched. Traditional skin boats ranged from 20-50 feet in length and were measured by the number of skins required to cover the sides. An inflated sealskin float could be lashed to the bow for stability. They could be propelled by the current, dogs on the shore attached with lines, paddles, oars, or sails. So inventive.

A huge variety of housing styles

Dogs that participate in the Iditarod race.

After the museum we were taken to meet some sled dogs. These dogs live to run and participate in the Iditarod race which is world famous amongst dog people of the north. It is a sled-dog race and evidently the Alaskan Huskies are the best. The length of the race, 1049 miles, is symbolic of Alaska becoming the 49th state. People come from around the world with their dogs and also to just be involved. These dogs seem to live to race.

Nome and the gold rush

This guy gave us a go at panning for gold - great tourist 'thing'

Lindsay having a go.

I didn’t come up with gold but beautiful garnet ‘sand’
which glowed in the sun (the red stuff!)

Gold 'flour'

From dogs to gold which put Alaska on the map. We were taken to a prospectors 'camp' and were shown how to pan for gold. I don't think any of us found any. The prospector showed us some gold ‘flour’ which he had found in beach sand collected along the 25 odd miles of beach. He then melts it down. There also a bit of silver amongst the gold.

Great repurposing - the Community Centre

The local community put on lunch for us after we had met the sled dogs and done some gold panning. Gold is still a big thing up here - some of that involves ‘sifting’ through sands along the beaches and sea floor. It washes down in the rivers. And of course we took a turn around the local trading store to check goods and prices - interesting. 

Interesting checking out what's on offer (and remember these are US$ and lbs not kg

Then we piled into local buses and were ferried out to the airport for the slow wait BUT eventually we were off away from the wilderness and flying over the coast southeast to Anchorage.

September 20 Coming into land in Alaska

 

Our ships route around the Little Diomede yesterday

Good morning peeps! Yesterday we were a mere 180m from Russia’s border with the US, this morning we’re pulling into Nome. What a sight! Last night, or rather in the wee hours of this morning, the clouds vanished and Aurora Borealis, ‘the northern lights’, turned on a gentle wavering panorama of soft swirling green. It was freezing out on deck (not properly dressed!) but worth it to see those magical patterns. The camera had trouble focusing (didn't help that a mandatory ship light was on over the next balcony) but .... we saw the lights!

Once in port and after lunch, some people went wandering into Nome. Us? we strolled for a bit on the wharf/breakwater and Lindsay then wandered off to find birds – not very successfully it turned out. 

Days are shortening so we arrived in an orange glow

Tonight is our last night on board - sad, but what an awesome journey it has been. Last nights are always rotten. The crew are already preparing for the back-to-back trip, many passengers are feeling bereft, there's bar accounts to settle, last minute disembarkation instructions, packing for early morning collection. Just sad. But good old Aurora had a lovely last day 'excursion' planned for us with the locals for tomorrow. 

Before we disembark finally in the morning, I want to say (in Inuktitut) ᐃᓛᓂᓗ ilaanilu and ᖁᔭᓇᐃᓐᓂ quyanainni to the beautiful people of the Canadian High Arctic. It has been an amazing voyage of a mighty 4659 nautical miles (8629 km) from Kangerlussuaq to Nome, an expedition extraordinaire 

The Complete Northwest Passage - our voyage map