Tag: Friends
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FROM ALEPPO TO JOONDALUP
Good friends are hard to come by; endearing friends even harder. But for those of us who lived and worked in Aleppo, Syria in the early 1990s friendships can be eternal. Our friends from our Syrian days, Scott and Andrea Christiansen and their daughter Caya, are visiting Padma and me. And our friends Joop and Gina van Leur flew in from Tamworth in New South Wales. So we organised a gathering to welcome them and share memories of our times in Aleppo and catch up … some hadn’t seen each other…
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UNDER THE MATAPALO TREE
I was homeless in Costa Rica for a spell in the summer of 1983. But a mate had heard of a gringo who had just moved to San Jose and might be looking for a roommate. So I called the guy and we decided to meet up at Key Largo, the local watering hole for ex-pats. I found Ladd sitting at the bar nursing a Pilsen. Easy to find … I just followed the gaze of the women in the bar. Ladd was a tall slender Texan, moustachioed with sandy blonde…
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MURDER IN FJÄLLBACKA
I love a good murder mystery and am always on the lookout for new authors. So when my Norwegian friend, Inger, told me about a series of crime novels based near her Swedish holiday home, I was keen to read on. For a couple of years, I immersed myself in the Swedish coastal town of Fjällbacka as I read a series of Camilla Läckberg novels. I think I read nine books about the husband-and-wife duo of writer Erica Falck and police detective Patrik Hedström as they solved crimes in their little…
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THE EPIPHANY. THE MENTOR. THE INSPIRER.
In February of 1986, I was lying in a hammock somewhere on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and I was deep in thought. A Honduran environmental organisation was paying me to photograph the national parks and document some environmental issues. I kept swaying in the hammock during the heat of the day awaiting better light toward late afternoon … swaying and thinking. I wasn’t happy. I realised then and there that I really didn’t know diddly squat about photography. I had been masquerading for the past five years as a nature/environmental…
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SAKE IN AN IZAKAYA WITH A FRIEND
In December 1981, I was standing on the sidewalk in San José, Costa Rica while watching the fireman’s parade. A marching band clad in blue uniforms pounded away on their instruments. I looked out amongst the band members and spotted my mate Glen Snyder blowing away on his trombone while keeping in step. Glen and I had arrived in country six months earlier as Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to environmental education projects. Glen lost no time and had already integrated himself into his local community and joined the municipal band. I…
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THE ROADTRIP TO THE ‘WORLD’S BEST BEACH’
It’s a long way to Esperance. A full day’s drive from our home in Halls Head. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t take our German visitors to Lucky Bay … a beach recently listed as the #1 beach in the World (https://worlds50beaches.com/top-50-worlds-best-beaches/). We wanted to give our guests, Heiko and Susanne, a full Aussie experience so we packed up the car with camping gear and headed for Fitzgerald River National Park. We set up a very comfy campsite and spent a couple of days by exploring the Hammersley Inlet and…
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FROM SYRIA TO HALLS HEAD
Great friendships know no geographic boundaries. So, when Padma and I moved to one of the most remote locations on Earth, we fully expected to be able to get together on occasion with our friends. Padma and I formed many great friendships more than 30 years ago while we lived in Syria. We kept in touch initially with posted letters at Christmas but when the Internet came around, we were able to keep in touch on a more regular basis, albeit at a distance. We have visited our friends Heiko and…
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SIEBENGENBIRGSWEG REUNION
It took Padma and me two and a half years to build our new family home on a beach south of Perth. But it only took two weeks after we received the keys before we welcomed our first overseas visitors. For three years, we lived next door to Markus, Claudia and Carla in a little German village overlooking the Rhine. Within a week after we moved in, they became part of our extended family. They helped us wade through German bureaucracy, taught us about Rhineland gardening, shared gossip about the neighbours…
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BRAVING THE WEATHER FOR THE PINNACLES
Anyone looking at today’s weather forecast for Western Australia would have thought the sensible thing to do would be to rug up and stay home. My weather app screamed of severe weather alerts … heavy winds and lots of rain. But Annie, our friend from our time in Cali, Colombia, came all the way from North Carolina to visit, and Padma and I wanted to show her around our State. We took our chances and pointed the car to the north for a day trip. The rain stopped just as we…
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