A Traveller’s Eye, A Thinker’s Heart
I like to tell stories. I like to take photos.
And I like to share them. Enjoy.
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FUN IN THE GENEBANK
In the 48 hours I was at ICARDA’s Terbol station in Lebanon, I shot close to 1000 photos. This is my favourite and sums up the joy I felt in sharing time with ICARDA’s Genetic Resources team. As I started firing off shots of Ahmed Amri and Mariana Yazbek in the genebank’s active collection, I…
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SPRING INTO SWITZERLAND
Padma and I had a severe case of spring fever, so we drove to central Switzerland over the long May Day weekend for some hiking in the Schwyz Alps. The hike around Mount Rigi was really quite stunning and Spring really was showing off its true colours. The area around Lucerne is marked by numerous…
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ON! ON! IN ALGARVE
After a long hiatus, the Halab Hash House Harriers re-grouped and held a run on 8 April. Regrettably it was not in our home base of Aleppo, Syria. Instead, we ran in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. Long-time ICARDA staff member and current resident of Praia da Luz, Peter ‘Beep Beep’ Eichorn, asked his…
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INTO THE LAND OF MY GERMAN ANCESTORS
I had visited Germany on numerous occasions prior to living here. And every time I visited I felt an odd sense of belonging. As long as I didn’t open my mouth to speak, I even felt German. I felt comfortable and at home. And in a way, I was indeed home. Half of me is…
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THE WALK HOME
My heart really races each time I come home from work. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. It’s not entirely because I know my sweetheart is awaiting me. I get a pretty good workout on my way home. I get off the train at Oberwinter and immediately get on a pathway to climb home to ‘Oberwinter Heights’. In…
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ESCAPE TO THE PENINNE ALPS
Winter in Bonn was getting a tad grey so Padma, Joseph and I packed up and headed to Switzerland for a white holiday. Along the way, we picked up one of Joe’s Aussie mates, Aidan. We found an isolated chalet via AirBnB on a dead-end road at 2,000 metres near the village of Arolla in…
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MARUTI THE PIGEONPEA SAVIOUR
In the early 1980s, the Indian state of Karnataka was suffering. Its principle commercial crop, pigeonpea, was being devastated by wilt. Researchers discovered some pigeonpea seeds in the genebank of the International Crops Research Center for Semi-Arid Tropics which were resistant to wilt. The seeds were directly released from the genebank to pigeonpea specialists in…
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AN AUSSIE MEAT PIE TO SAY THANKS
I’ve been waiting 21 years to say ‘thank you’ to former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer. Today I got that chance and bought him an Aussie meat pie to show my gratitude. In 1996, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his deputy Tim Fischer acted swiftly and decisively to launch a gun buyback program.…
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THE WINE WALK
In December of 2013, Padma and I were eating snapper at the Sydney Fish Market while our mate, John Peacock, was going on and on and on and on about the fabulous wine walks which our mutual friends Marlene and Juergen Diekmann organised in the Rhinelands near Bonn. They sounded like fun but I never…
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